Originally Posted by Captain Tony

Scheduling here has been instructed to get the most value out of reserves. Management sees reserves getting paid to sit around and wait for sick calls (you know, their intended purpose) as losing money. So the company withholds the max allowed open time to keep the reserves busy. They break up a 4 day trip, and deal a couple of legs or an overnight to as many people as possible. Then suddenly, a few people call in sick, and it's a crisis. They extend you, take away your days off, and push you to the FAA limits (forget the contract) to compensate for the emergency they created. If you're "lucky' enough to hold long call reserve, you will either be preassigned a trip, or called at midnight and converted to short call in 12 hours. This can happen 7 times a month, so you shouldn't count on any RES days going unused. Short calls can be assigned ready reserve (8 hours sitting at airport) 6 times a month. When you ask them why you're being placed on Ready or short call, even though they already have 6 people doing it, the response is "because we can". You cannot plan anything because they move off days constantly. You may go in for 1 round trip then come home 6 days later. You will deadhead twice to fly 1 leg, then get put "standby" on a full flight to get home. Scheduling has no respect for you. They are told in training that pilots are greedy divas who make $30-$90 an hour and will do anything to get out of work (they let the schedulers think we work 40 hour weeks). They talk to you like an animal. When they schedule you beyond the contract limits, the chief pilots and union don't care. They see reserves as cannon fodder who should "suck it up" and be glad they have jobs. Almost every reserve "rule" in our contract ends with the phrase "unless would result in a cancelled flight or extension of a lineholder", so basically reserves have no rules. In summary, you will be a slave to this company, worked every day to the point of fatigue, then expected to come back the next day with a smile and do it all over again. For years. I have so far spent a total of 6 years on reserve with this company. It's so bad that I'm willing to commute to avoid it.