Originally Posted by
moon
That junior man comment was kinda made in jest, yes other regionals are crappy I'll give you that and yes reserve is a necessity at an airline. Where the differences come in is where envoy lacks behind many peers. Start with reserve. 8 hour airport standby shifts with no limit on how many a month or how many in a row envoy has to be the worst they can even call in as many as they want during "OSO" as long as there are enough recliners. The reserve system is required yes, but at any given time Envoy has well over 25% of the pilot group on reserve because heaven forbid someone has a 15 minute connection. Then There's the commuting to reserve while other regionals have set in their contract commutable first days and contractual mechanisms for early release on last day. Envoy pre assigns 4 am RAP and it's up to whatever scheduler you get on the phone on your last day if they are going to release you or not.
And let me add a touch of reality to this one too:
The standby shifts are assigned in reverse seniority order. My first month on reserve, I did 5 days. This was pretty much the norm for everyone in our class. And when new pilots that started after you (likely in 2 weeks time) show up on the reserve list, then they start picking up those standby shifts. The more senior guys might, if they get unlucky, do one standby a month. This only happens on the very crappy days when they actually go through the reserve list and use everyone. Very rare. More often standby shifts are picked up by commuters wanting to make day 1 commutable. Also, you cannot be assigned a later standby shift on your last day (unless you are the last reserve available).
OSO (Off Schedule Operations) happens a couple of times a month. And again, the added standby shifts go to the most junior pilots available. Some OSO days they don't add standby shifts at all, it depends on the reserve coverage.
Day 1 is preassigned RAP1(starting at 4am). But you can still proffer for a later start. Other days are RAP2 unless you confirm something else. A lot of commuters tend to proffer for standby starting at noon making day 1 commutable. And since the standbys go junior, most of the time you will get it. When you're a bit more senior, you can just proffer RAP2 and will get it.
Our contract also has pretty good provisions for reserve guys commuting who want to keep flying as much as possible.
I've been released early from my last day of reserve every single time. If I had RAP2(RAP2 is 10AM to midnight), earliest I've been released was 3pm, and the latest was 6pm. Sometimes you get one of the less liked schedulers. If they refuse, wait 5 minutes and call again usually works.
Commuting to reserve sucks I'm sure, but there are lots of things you can do to make it slightly more tolerable.
Yes, sometimes you get served a sh*t sandwich and get called to sit airport standby for no apparent reason for 2 hours, or get called from home to taxi an airplane around for 30 minutes. But most of the time things go pretty smooth, even on reserve.