Originally Posted by gloopy

Long call til converted, but plan on being used, a lot, especially the next couple years (you'd be off reserve long before then anyway).

They can give 6 or 7 short calls a month and on most categories most of the time you will get short call or a trip. When you do "sit long call" it usually won't be for long before they give you something else. You will rarely start and then sit for days on long call on a reserve period. Very rarely these days.

The best you can count on is nothing on day one before 10am, although statistically its usually several hours later than that. You can try and snipe the best trips for you (yellow slipping) if you know you're going to fly anyway.

You'll hear legend and lore of guys with long "reserve beards" and some who have to go to the sim to get current, but these days you will fly and fly a lot in almost every category almost all of the time. Chilling out at home very often as a commuter on long call is mostly a pipe dream as well. Most long calls you will see are things like day 3 of 6 on call, or the last day of reserve after finishing a trip, etc. Unless you live in a select few markets, there is no way to commute on long call while being in compliance with the commuter clause as almost every city pair has blackout periods where you won't have 2 (or even 1) flights for a worst case scenario.

Don't plan on much long call for a while.