There is zero calendar day requirement... only hourly requirement. The term “days off” in the contract only references hourly periods free of duty. If you have a reserve line, you are guaranteed within the month one 48hr block free of duty,(two “days”) one 72hr block free of duty (three days) and one 120hr block free of duty (five days). In addition, last day of reserve they can schedule you into your first day free of duty. Calendar days are irrelevant.

Calendar days really are not discussed. In a 30 day month Alaska sees, 720 hours. They get 480hrs of your time (280hrs of which is duty and 200hrs are rest) and you get 240 hrs free of duty... so, if a 24hr period is a “day”... they get 20 days, you get 10.

Again, it’s important to remember, the entirety of the contract is built around the long standing bias of pilots not commuting but living in base. That has been a philosophy of not just the company’s staffing model but the pilot’s negotiating perspective as well. And it has served both sides well for a long time. The company doesn’t need a bunch of extra staff on reserves. The pilots can save their powder to negotiate for things like pay etc since if you’re on reserve, and not commuting, that’s really not a too bad a gig in the grand scheme.

The only reason this is even coming up now, is that they just brought on 800 pilots who are used to schedules more favorable for commuting and some new hires who, looking at nearly every other airline figured commuting/days off/schedule would at least be as good as their regional.