Originally Posted by Baradium

There is no limit to days off in a row awarded via PBS, so you can work all of your days in a single block. They can also connect with a previous month. In these cases the company seems to award a 30 hour rest period every 3-4 days to reset you to being legal for a 4 day trip, giving extra days off. They get the advantage of choosing where your maximum availability is while you get the benefit of extra time off. Since you go back to long call after the 30 hour rest period you end up with a minimum of well more than 30 hours before your next assignment or short call.

All reserve pilots are long call. You can be escalated to short call up to 6 times per month. If you sit short call without an assignment you are given an hour credit towards guarantee. Short call callout is "promptly available" which is generally understood to mean something along the lines of " approximately two hours in normal traffic" for most bases. It's intentionally not a hard limit so that you don't have to stress about traffic changing throughout the day or if it's worse than you thought it would be. Some pilots report a lot of short call escalations relative to the maximum, but it really depends on how your day off blocks fall.

You can "yellow slip" to preference flying on your reserve days although there's no guarantee you'll get them. A big money maker for reserve pilots is if they can setup to "green slip" (which is premium flying) on their days off. If you green slip on your days off as a reserve the trip is paid on top of reserve guarantee AND you are given back those days off on your next scheduled reserve on call days that month (if none are left they go into a payback day bank for use later in the year, it rolls into extra vacation days if you do not use them in that case). You can also preference to fly on days off, which has a position in the coverage ladder, but those slips are more tactical in use.

On certain fleets reserve pilots can do what they call "rolling thunder" in which they bid to be off the beginning of the month and repeatedly green slip as the month goes on removing all of their reserve days and putting all of those trips on top of their original reserve guarantee, resulting in incredibly high monthly credits. This tactic seems to work best on junior fleets and bases, but even in more senior bases and positions it can happen at least partially.

You can trade days based off of reserve availability and some other rules. Basically, if you aren't making the staffing worse you can move your days on your own.

Reserve availability is posted and you have a visible position on the assignment list based on how much you've flown and the number of days you have available. You can also see what reserves have been given what assignment. Reserve assignments are structured and you have a good idea of what your chances of getting used are on a given day by your position on the list.

If you reach the reserve guarantee in a given month you are labeled "full" and free of obligation for the remainder of the month. You have to meet or exceed the guarantee for this to happen. So if the guarantee is 75 hours, and you credit 75:00 you are off the rest of the month. If you are at 74:59 they can assign you another trip but you will be off if there are any days remaining after you complete it as you will then be full. Green slips do not count towards being full.