Originally Posted by
PA Slammer
I don't know, is the "goal" to fly reserves as close to 100% as possible? Or is the goal to have crews available when needed?
If you start using the reserves as partial line holders you start to loose the flexibility you WILL need from time to time.
Yup. Reserves are pilots "in reserve" (!), ready to be used if needed, when needed. When they start pushing up reserve productivity there's a point where they're not reserves anymore, just lineholders scheduled week to week vs monthly.
This happened infamously at CAL in 2003 as they were cutting to the bone to stay out of another BK. A bright idea was one more round of furloughs and the reserves would just fly a lot more. Along came the Iraq war and we didn't have enough pilots for the very lucrative CRAF requests and we lost out on a money maker. Person who came up with the idea was fired.