Adlerdriver

That's not what the FCIF or CBA says.

The FCIF which referenced the contract said, "The reserve lines published in the Bidpack will constitute 80% or more of all known reserve days."

My opinion on the example you use (115 R-lines vs 48) is that the large drop in R-lines (down 58%) has to do with the underlined language above. The part you left out is the subsequent increase in secondary lines. They went from 97 to 131 (up by 25%). Total secondary lines plus R-lines went from 212 down to 179. A 15.5% drop in the total number of "non-regular" lines in the MEM MD-11 Captain's bid pack between Feb and July. Same thing's happening over on the FO side and in every other fleet/domicile.

The R-lines they publish are based on historic factors the planners track to help them build R-lines with the R-days where they expect to need them. i.e. the "known reserve days". However, under the old system, they had to include a bunch of "unknown reserve days" in the R-line build. Because of what happens during the conflict window, there a A LOT more unknown R-days than known R-days. That much is obvious simply looking that the numbers fdx10 posted. R-lines went from 115 down to 48. A 58% drop in published R-lines. So they reduced the R-lines by almost two-thirds and they're using 80% of known R-days to make those lines. I'd say that means the known R-days are probably less than half of all R-days the company expects to schedule.

My guess is all the gaps in reserve coverage created during the Conflict window with vacation slides/extensions, training, trip conflicts (that now knock out an entire block of R-days), etc. are all considered "unknown reserve days". No way to predict a pilots vacation desires, training bid, trip conflicts. There wasn't enough flexibility under the old system to re-insert these "unknown R-days" back into the system once they got removed from someone's schedule. So, they had to take their best guess and shotgun out some extra R-lines to account for all these unknowns happening post bid award. The final option was to stick whatever R-days they could into the bottom secondary lines.

Now, they can publish less R-lines using 80% of those known days and are probably counting on 100% of the unknown days being covered by the new options they have. They can do this knowing some R-days will get snagged during the view/add. On top of that, they now have the 25% more secondary lines instead of R-lines which means there will be more room for R-days in the secondary lines. Not only can they use 20% of the known R-days to do that (by publishing blocks in open time) but they can now also publish blocks of the unknown R-days.

As I said earlier, the end result is an overall loss in the total of combined R-lines and secondary lines. On top of that, a large increase in the percentage of secondary lines when compared with R-lines. It's a more efficient system, so this really shouldn't be a big surprise. It was all there in the TA when we voted.

P.S. And I don't mean to sound completely negative about this. Some folks may appreciate the added flexibility and hopefully added transparency when it comes to secondary lines. In exchange, the company gets a more efficient system. That efficiency is a double edged sword. Less pilots is less pilots - I hope we get something pretty damn good for that give back. Kronan may have a point about comparing Feb to Jul, but there's no way that this doesn't decrease the number of non-regular lines in our bid packs.
We get better secondary lines (we hope) and in exchange a lot more folks are going to be getting them. Some locals in MEM who prefer reserve are probably not going to be real happy about having to wait an extra couple of weeks to get their schedule when they can no longer hold a regular reserve line. We'll see how it all shakes out.