Originally Posted by
gloopy
Many ask the same question you did based on the old school notion of looking at "the list" and basically knowing you can't be used. That's absolutely not the case here the vast majority of the time, so I'd never, ever, use that as justification not to commute in, to leave early (without asking) or crack a beer obviously, etc. Trips can pop up fast, including ones from other bases cobbled together aka "reserve only" trips that unless you're live streaming every open time trip in every base they will pop up and take you by suprise even if skeds was planning on kicking it to your BES for a while.
"But there's 10 pilots ahead of me, why did I get the call?!" Days available, trip length, report time, release time, block time, credit time, time the trip became available, each pilot's place in their SC or LC window, RAW buckets, Short Call buckets, your and other's Yellow Slip preferences, is someone on the list really even on the list, etc.
Originally Posted by
Mach86
Appreciate it. So basically no sense looking at any list as the variables are too many to process.
What Gloopy said is correct about short notice trips popping up because someone banged in sick.... trip cobbled together and covered with out of base reserve, etc.
It is unfortunate the Reserve Avail List (RAL) isn't a complete list of truth data, but with a little cyber-sleuthing around icrew, you can find the missing data to make the list more usable. I don't mind taking the extra 6-9 minutes because I have used that knowledge on quite a few occasions to call scheduling and have an errant YS trip assigned to me, or to have a short call assignment completely removed because there were not 1 but 2 pilots junior to me in the same days of availability grouping that were legal for the short call.
The RAL starts with listing pilot in order of their days of availability. For NB, those groups are 4,3,2, and 1. Then within a days of availability grouping, pilots are put into Reserve Assignment Weighting (RAW) buckets. RAW is a score based on a pilots accumulated credit....the more you get used, the higher your RAW Score. When you RAW gets over 81, you move from RAW bucket 1, to bucket 2...over 130, into RAW bucket 3, etc. Finally within a RAW bucket, pilots are listed in inverse seniority order.
Lets assume scheduling has a 3 day rotation to cover. If no one submits a Yellow Slip requesting the trip, then in very simple terms, assuming everything is equal and everyone is legal, the most junior pilot, in RAW bucket 1, in the 3 day of availability grouping is going to get the rotation.
Obviously, everything isn't always equal. At the start of my block of RES on call, I will write down the names of all the junior pilots that are in my days of avail grouping and in same RAW bucket as me. I then pull up their monthly schedule in icrew. If their landing currency is expired, it will show in a remark at the bottom. If they are scheduled for some kind of training (IQ, CQ) that will also show. From here, I can see if today is their first day of on call...if so, they can't be used prior to 1000. If they are coming on vacation, they can't be used before noon. Have they been on call the last 6 days? Then they are due for a 30 hour rest period.
All of these items above affect when/if a person on the RAL is actually available.
Short calls are a slightly different animal. Scheduling can choose which days of avail grouping they want to choose from, and decide how many total short calls to assign within that day grouping. But within the days of avail grouping, SC assignments still go in inverse seniority order (unless someone puts in a yellow slip asking for short cal). Again, in general terms, our PWA states that junior folks can get up to 2 Short Call assignments before someone senior to them gets their first. If you are the only person in the 3 day grouping, there could be people junior to you in the 4 day grouping and the 2 day grouping, but if scheduling decides they want a 3 day person on short call, you are going to get it, even if you have already done two.
I assume this is why DL requires a 4 year college degree to get hired....so you have an above average chance on figuring out when/if you are going to work that day.