Originally Posted by
Regionalsuck
You can pretty much avoid it once you get out of the bottom 30-40% of reserves generally (ceryainly not always). The problem would be is for a new hire CA getting an upgrade instantly... you would never move up on the reserve list because you would constantly be pushed to the bottom by a never ending trickle of people upgrading senior to you.
The bottom 10% will be assigned airport standby virtually daily the day before. The next 20-30% up will be called in off RAP regularly to replace them.
I went through 4 years of this as a commuting CA stuck on the bottom with displacements and it was miserable. Being perpetually ultra junior you can never get anything you proffer for either which just makes it worse. CA’s get abused on reserve much worse than FO’s too because they are always shorter on CA’s. Not to mention the CA’s are now liable to cover both seats to make things even worse!
I'm shocked you held on that long. I barely lasted commuting to reserve as a junior FO for less than a year.
And for anyone thinking this guy is over exaggerating the negative aspects of QOL while commuting to reserve he is spot on. If anything it's worse than he is describing. Especially when we went through a time where CS was always denying releases from RAPs. Try being on RAP2 on your last day at 18:00 and CS still not releasing you when they have 7 other pilots good for overnights.
I don't see how these junior FOs getting forced to upgrade will make it more than a year living this lifestyle.