Originally Posted by
cfimechanic
I have a question regarding reserve time. If I am on 2hr reserve do I just need to report to the airport within 2hrs? Or do I need to be at the plane ready to fly in 2hrs?
I am planning on living in Richmond VA, about 1 hr 45 min drive from DCA. I am realizing with traffic and parking I am cutting it close. Will I have enough time to wait for the call at home and make it to work on time?
I'll take a crack at this, DCA folks would probably have a better answer, I'm in EWR.
I believe the intent of the wording in the contract is 2 hours to report for duty, you report for duty at the departure gate. If you are really ready to go, packed etc when you get the call and you can normally do the route in 1:45, and it generally takes less than 15 minutes from parking lot to gate, you'd probably be OK.
My initial base was LGA, there are certain times of the day where you can't make LGA from my place in 2 hours (rush hours). On a 3 am RAP start, I would leave my house about 5, drive to about an hour away from LGA, sit and read for a couple hours then come home. It sounds worse than it is. Depending on how much you get used. In a 5 day RAP, you get utilized 3 days, you'll likely only do something like this twice.
If you get utilized quite a bit, the "call out" doesn't really happen much, most of the time I got notified for trips either the day before or several hours before the trip. The "we need you at the gate in 2 hours" maybe happened 5-6 times in six months of reserve.
Also, in your case, once you've been on a month or so you might be able to bid and get 11 am RAP's, the traffic would be likely be going in the other direction by the time you had to head in. As always, bases are different, YMMV etc.