Originally Posted by
Jack Bauer
Not to worry, in 24 months when the excess bodies have been drained from the system, all reserves (jr and sr) will be flying their tails off. Before someone comes on here and says I just have a bad attitude my response is, wait and see. The manning with new work rules and computer formula tweaking will take effect. Its a matter of time.
I hope I am wrong and Sailing will say I am but lets get feedback from the average reserve and line pilot in 24 months. It's one thing to hear a dozen reasons why you SHOULD be increasing your quality of life and quite another when you are actually living the new reality.
Jack,
I think you are mostly correct. Reserves will be flying their tails off in the high volume (Summer/spring break) months, but mostly sitting on their tails during the down times.
One of the main themes of our new contract was increasing the ability of the company to work the heavy months with fewer guys - this will result in what you say for the summer months but I dont think it will be too bad in the off months.
Due to this it only makes sense for the company to try to push most of the training and IOEs to the off months which may increase pilot utilization somewhat in the off months. But once we start hiring and doing a lot of IOEs hopefully being on reserve for over a year will only be for the guys that want to fly reserve.
Scoop