Originally Posted by
Bucking Bar
I am with you here. Overall, the changes resulted in much improved pay for reserve pilots.
With the bucket system and weekend flying there might be some junior Douglas pilots getting really abused compared to everyone else. If anyone has flown an ALV+15 month against their will, I've not seen their example. The trade off for the junior pilots that want to escape the MD are doing back to back red eyes to one hour + van rides up dirt roads in a diesel powered version of a 1972 volkswagen vanagon populated by four exhausted flight attendants, your Captain, the van driver and his significant other. At least the local version of the Rush Limbaugh show is blaring to the sound of something that sounds like an Orangutan is singing to the beat of combat boots in a clothes dryer. WOMPITY WOMP eeeeeeeelalalala WOMPITY CRASH! Pregunte deLLTAH KAPITAN tomorrow twenty three fifEETEE van. Then they motion for you to light their cigarette. When in God's green earth have First Officers carried cigarette lighters? Anyway, how do they smoke at 10,000 feet? Jeesh, I'm bidding back to Douglas test flight work.
.
Bar,
The way the bucket system is set up as soon as said junior Douglas Pilot hits bucket two, he goes to the back of the list.
Any variation greater than being one bucket ahead of other Pilots is random and occurs despite the bucket system.
Reserve usage varies greatly by category - the smaller categories are much more random then the large categories (law of averages at work) but there are a lot of other factors besides the bucket system that impact utilization.
Scoop