Originally Posted by forgot to bid

+1



I don't think buckets affect the amount of flying being done by reserves but I think it affects the amount of reserves doing the flying.



I don't really follow how getting rid of buckets reduces the headcount. However many pilots are take a month off is how many reserve pilots you can cut. If before you had two pilots flying 70 hours combined, now you have 1 flying 70 and 1 flying 0, so now you know you can get rid of one vs a system that had everyone churning about the same place.

And when RES was a straight RAW score system, seniority was a part of it and a major factor. It used to take 3 weeks for them to get to me. The whole point of the bucket system is as much as possible give the most senior pilot the month off and have the RES pilot work in his place. That's why they bandied about the "senior pilots want it" "everyone junior to #1 in category is junior and complaining only because they're junior" and termed it that the junior pilot would get "relief" within 5 days of work when he got to bucket 2. But that's not how it works but yet the bucket thresholds have remained unchanged from its inception no matter what peak or lull season we were in.

I really do not believe we should have a system giving people a month off and having other people fly in their place and say this is good.It's a perk for senior pilots that lets the company know just how fewer pilots it needs to operate. From what I can tell looking at ATL88B's vs A's and given more SCs and ALV+15, you can cut another 20 reserves off ATLM88B and be just fine, it'd match Captain staffing.