Originally Posted by
AltoCumulus
I Try to bid a zone that starts at around 1000. That keeps me flying during reasonable hours. Knowing that I will be pretty much assured of flying during reasonable hours is more important to me then being released early on my last day.
The main difference between a live-in-base and a commuter.
I am also assured of being able to have a little bit of time on day 1 to run some last minute errands, take the kids to school, etc. My family does not get woken up at 0400 with my phone ringing. I have not seen a sunrise from inside an airplane in quite some time. I have a buddy that always bids the 1700-0700 zone because those guys hardly fly and that is important to him.
If someone can put forward a reserve system that the company would agree to without blowing-up everybody else’s world then I will support it. But if all you got is Jet Blue - bid for zones daily....forget it.
I have a difference of opinion on what an ideal reserve system would look like. This has nothing to do with drinking the kool-aid in SEA. If we can’t tell the difference between the two then we are truly screwed for 2020.
Define "blowing up everybody else's world" ??
"I don't want a call at 4 am because it would wake up the rest of the family. Please don't call at 8am because that's when I drop the kids to school, nor at 9am because I have to get the milk n eggs. 10am sounds great!"
#livinginbaseproblems
If there's one thing obvious by now is that there is some sort of disagreement about the living in base mindset and the commuter mindset. I don't see how a commuter line mindset would hurt those living in base. Most commuters want productive trips and late start/early finishes. If you're living in base, that's not bad either. That allows you to take the kids to school, pick up the milk/eggs, and end early enough to spend that last day with family.
Originally Posted by
AltoCumulus
As far as days off go, your day off starts at a specific time which is 4 hours after the end of your contactability perIod on your last day. Know that you can and will be used until that time. Alaska has contactability periods starting as early as 2am and as late as 6pm. Those on here proposing calendar days off probably come from airlines operating in one time zone or with operations that shut down after 11pm.
What are you talking about? Almost every airline out there has calendar days off for reserves. Multiple time zones and flights that are redeyes with 11pm or later departures. Virgin did too.
If you start your zone at 6pm is it realistic to expect to be off at midnight? What about the day you come back?
Um, yes, why not? What's the last departure of the day out of LAX? The redeyes are gone by midnight or maybe 1am latest. There's nothing wrong with a reserve window ending at midnight. That means with a 2 hr callout they can still call you at 1159pm for a 159am go.
Should you start your zone at midnight, or do you expect to be able to be off most of your first day at work?
Depends on when the reserve window starts. If it's the PM shift which is say from 4pm to midnight, then yeah day 1 is "off" from work until 4pm, which commuters like because it allows them to come in that day of.
So you start at 1700 on day 1 Andrew end at midnight on day 5 which effectively means that if you aren’t used by day 4 you can just go home. That sounds like about 3 full days of reserve.
It's not 3 full days of reserve. It's 5 full days of reserve. Stop with the silliness. You can easily be used day 1 even after 5pm for a turn flight or a redeye. As for the last day 5, you can't do a redeye but again even after 5pm you can still be called out for a turn flight. I've been tagged on the last day of reserve for a LAX-SEA turn which left LA at 550pm and returned at 1230am. So no it's not 3 full days of reserve, it's 5 full days.
Sure, we could negotiate that, but that would come with a high negotiating cost
I must admit, I heard for a long time about 'secret sauce' and never figured out what it was. Now I know. Hopefully your type is the minority going forward.