Originally Posted by
Probe
Short call abuse;
I cannot believe all the reserve whiners earlier in this thread. I just went back to the last day of last month, and the 21st of this month. Every fleet and seat in SFO, LAX, and DEN. I chose those because that is where the ones complaining were based.
What a joke. Sorry guys. The average reserve had 3 or 4 short calls. A few had 6. A very very very few had 7. Far more had 0 or 1, than 6 or 7. This is short call abuse? You want to hold off on a nice pay raise, early, along with several other enhancements, so you don't have to sit short call 3 or 4 times a month?
My credibility meter is pegged with anyone who complained about short call abuse.
Sorry, I gotta call it as I see it. Anyone is free to go to CCS under Trading/reserve availability and check it out for themselves.
Not only is there no "short call abuse", it looks like being on reserve is far better than it has ever been at United. I didn't even see any seat where the average reserve flew more than 60 hours. The average looked much less. Even the narrow body fleets.
I don't know what short call abuse is, but I do know what reserve gamesmanship is. I see no limit in the contract to put reserves on short call. In my previous airline life every day of my life was a short call event. However, for those attempting to commute to reserve I can see how short call is a problem. The commuting discussion is a separate one indeed. however there too is an issue. A new pilot may not want to move his family to EWR when he/she is trying to get based somewhere else, so commuting for a while is both an option and perhaps a financial necessity.
Crew scheduling does lots of things that qualify for reserve gamesmanship in an attempt to snag a pilot, keep a pilot and put a pilot in a seat when they probably should not.
Examples are:
1. calling reserves outside of their call windows
2. calling reserves for one purpose, and then changing the subject during the conversation in an attempt to assign you a trip.
3. assigning "fake trips." IE...DH IAH-MSY. Fly MSY-MSY, DH MSY-IAH. I had this one last month out of a field standby with 30 minutes to go on FSB duty. Anyone ever been scheduled to fly DEN-DEN? with a DH to get you there?
4. assigning trips that were made up, and not even in open time, and then using the reassignment language in the CBA in an attempt to keep you on duty longer so they can figure out where to send you later.
The 14 page hand out from ALPA on pay was very nicely done. I think we need a 14 page handout on scheduling gamesmanship.
We should call it reserve trade-craft.