Reserve in a nutshell is sitting around on alert. You have scheduled days on and off. Scheduling will call you when they can't fill a trip with the normal person. Sometimes you get notice in advance, sometimes you get called last minute (around 2 hours). Not sure about passing on trips at Delta (I'm Fedex) but that can help with the quality of the trip you get. Otherwise you generally get a crappy trip that someone else doesn't want to fly. Crappy is relative to the time of the year. If the weather is cold and snowing in the NE there is a good bet trips in that direction will go to a reserve guy.

Reserve usually sucks because you are away from home waiting to be called to go to work. You know the days you are going to be at work but you don't know where or if you'll be going. If you live near your base reserve could be great (getting paid to stay at home and wait to be called).

If you have a regular line you know where you're going and when, although the schedule of days you have to work can be worse than that of a reserve line. At Fedex you can't swap reserve days for trips, so having a crappy line with trips allows you swap for other trips and to try and improve your schedule.

As has been said, reserve is what you make it. Go in with a good attitude and it makes the time go faster.

Hope this helps.

JC Dude