Originally Posted by
Probe
In 07 or 08, I flew with somebody who was insanely pi$%ed off about our reserve system. I had been on the same system for 2 years, and thought it was our best system, ever.
Fast forward to 2015. Other than that guy, the ones here on APC are the only ones who I have ever heard complain about our reserve system. I fly with them regularly. ALL of them think it is a good gig, unless manpower gets short.
ALL of us are happy to get all the short calls we can get.
If manpower is short, you are going to get abused no matter what system we have.
If, by choice, you chose to commute to it, TBSS.
Yes and No Probe. I agree with you that people always complain about reserves. The L-UAL reserve system was actually pretty darn good. The problem with today's reserve system is that they don't build the SCs by 0900 which they used to do on the LUAL side. Currently, the schedulers just make them up whenever they want throughout the day, even as late as 1900. The issue for a reserve, is that you can't aggressively pick up the SC time you want. That affects commuters and those living in base. Years ago when i sat reserve on purpose, i like to bid the late SC's. Some commuters do not want the early ones to be able to come in the day of, etc.... We used to have this issue on L-UAL side until ALPA forced them to build all SCs by 0900. And they also stomped out the blatant misuse of SCs where everyone was assigned one down the list for no rhyme or reason. I've bid reserve a couple times over the past 3 years, and this reserve system has blatant misuse by the schedulers all the time and we have no recourse. It needs to be fixed.
Outside of all this, I would not vote 'NO' against this TA because of it. The reserve rules implementation is being dragged out any way and even with the arbitrator siding with the pilots, the company has no impetus to get it done quicker. If i was on reserve, then at least give me 16% pay raise to put up this crap over the next year or two as they fix it and fully implement everything, which they will get around to.
For those that bid bigger equip or to CAP and are on reserve, please don't whine on the forum. You reap what you sow on that one. Bid off to another airplane as a line holder or wait for seniority to rapidly move up, which it will continue to do for awhile.
For the new-hires, you have no idea how bad reserves were before but not using that as an excuse. I think the reserve system is decent. Need to enforce the SC assignments and to have full transparency by seeing where all the reserves are on a particular day and the monthly reserve coverage for each day. L-UAL used have all of this clearly visible on Unimatic. Unfortunately, this is CAL mgmt and what L-CAL guys were accustom too. Stinks for everyone. But for a newbie, you will move up quickly on seniority.