Yea. I talked to him. He said it's not the same system. Before the merger, the United side did have it where reserves could pick up trips 2 days prior to report. It was called "fast fingers" because it was first come first serve and instantaneous. Click a button and the trip was yours. Now, it's more like the system we have now - day prior at 11 am the trips are assigned.

He also confirmed that they do have some type of ready reserve system that really effects narrow body fleets, slightly effects the 767 fleet, and doesn't effect the 777/747 fleets at all.

The big plus they have in their reserve system that GSG and I were hoping for is their reserves can what we call yellow slip for trips that are -1 from their day available group. So, if you are sitting in the 4 day SILO, you can bid for a 3 day trip, 3 day SILO - 2 day trip, ect.

They have some other nice perks, as well. He said they have a 2 1/2 hour call out, but if the company calls and needs them sooner and they decide to make it sooner, their is some kind of premium pay added to their trip. He also said if they deadhead and get assigned a middle seat, there is some kind of extra pay added as well. Finally, he did confirm that they do get to choose their crew meals, but said sometimes they get other people's crew meal on the first day of a trip. Which is funny compared to how we get our crew meals.

Hell. I didn't even know what a crew meal looked like until I got off the DC-9. Back then, a good "crew meal flight" was when they had peanuts, pretzels, AND cookies in the back.


So, all in all, I get the feeling that their contract is very much like ours. It's good in some places, sucks in other places, and the junior, and the narrow body fleets get screwed.

My takeaway is still that we shouldn't concede anything in our new contract and my orange bling is still out in full force in response to the company's response.