Originally Posted by
notEnuf
It buys you the extra minutes to get the cover back on the boat. Plus if they panic and call the next guy for the trip, then the boat cover never goes on.
Schedulers do some weird things under stress, like call multiple people. They can ignore the coverage ladder in an immediate need. Beware......nevermind, you're right, answer the phone.
That might be a dangerous game to play, especially in light of what occurred with the 747 pilots on short call a few months ago.
Scheduling may decide to move on to the next pilot in the coverage ladder, and you might be off the hook for the trip. The more likely scenario, however is that they will put it on your line after leaving you a message and wait to hear back from you in 10-15 minutes. If you don't acknowledge or call back in that time frame they will cover the trip and put it down as a no-show.
Beyond that it's not particularly fair to stick the next pilot on the trip when your were next in the coverage ladder sequence.
I'm guessing your being a little facetious about getting the boat cover on, but I'm personally a little leery of being somewhere without questionable cell coverage while on short call. The "I didn't have cell coverage" argument may not hold up. I switched to T-mobile a few months ago and the service is terrible, so it has certainly been a point of angst for me.
Rumor I hear is that the 747 pilots got there jobs back, however I believe the company did their best to keep them off the line for as long as possible. A few months with no pay in the prime of your career can't be the easiest pill to swallow. I do believe the company has been gunning for some of the pilots on that fleet though for sometime, so take if for what it's worth.