I was wondering if anyone knows the history of why reserve "guarantee" has always been so low(crap pay), at least since I've been a part of the industry.

I don't think that anyone can deny that reserve flying sucks, no matter if you are at United, SWA, AA, or Jetblue. By nature, not knowing your schedule and having to plan around the "unknown" stinks. Why not give people an incentive to bid it?

Why, in this industry don't we reward those that are willing to take a crappy "unknown" schedule by giving them a high guarantee.

If we were to negotiate a high guarantee for reserve, this would have multiple beneficial effects:

1) local people would bid reserve - you get paid the same whether you work or not, so if you're local, why not bid it? If you gave it a nice guarantee, then more senior bidders would bid it. You might get a nice cross section of seniority bidding it, instead of the most junior.

2) If you have a high guarantee, some people could actually afford to move into those high "cost of living" cities, thus almost no one actually having to commute to reserve, which would increase QOL for commuters, and QOL for locals since there would be some benefit to bidding reserve(ie Win-Win)

3) The number of reserve pilots would be minimized by the company because it would cost them more, thus incentivize them to build more productive line pairings.

4) If reserve went more senior because of the higher guarantee, then if you could hold a BES, then you would be reasonably sure that you could hold a line if you wanted at 100% in a BES. A lineholder with a 72 hr line can always pick up an extra trip if they want more pay (not always as easy for Widebody guys).

I don't want to go into a discussion on what number would be the right number of hours guarantee, so as to not negotiate in public, but I would argue there is a good number out there where reserve would no longer be the worst of the worst. This would be a cost item in negotiations, but when you consider it in the grand scheme of things, wouldn't it be a win for everyone? You'd either be a lineholder with the ability to pick up extra flying if available (a good thing) or at worst be making a high guarantee. Lineholder productivity would go up since more senior bidders would bid reserve.

I think raising the guarantee to a nice level would be a simple fix to reserves to make it more palatable and hopefully incentivize locals to bid it.

It's a lot easier than making a whole bunch of new reserve work rules that potentially will **** off lineholders or make for really unproductive reserves which would probably cost a lot more than a high guarantee.

What am I missing?