UA has some pretty bad reserve rules that have been modified over the years including some changes in the merger agreement that were put in place to increase the pay of the reserve pilot when the company exercised some of those provisions. This included a Monthly Guarantee increase of an hour for every unused Short Call/ Field Standby assignment for the third and subsequent SC/FSB assignments given. ALPA believed that this would cause the company to reduce those assignments down to the absolute minimum. Unfortunately, we now know that Crew Scheduling views those assignments as very cheap insurance and they are more than happy to pay for them and that increase in pay has not achieved the ALPA desired effect of reducing these assignments.
Global Reserve also has “movable” days off every month. Your base is “Global” if you have any Global flying that month in your bid package, Global is Atlantic crossing, Pacific past Hawaii, and South America past 15 degrees South. If your base is Global, you get 6 HDOs that can’t be moved and 6/7 other days off that can be moved for a Global trip. A day off can only be done if there are no legal reserves to cover the trip without their days being moved. If that is the case, then the reserve that needs the least days moved is the unlucky pilot that gets their days “rolled.”
Both global and domestic reserve have one “movable” day off that can be moved for any trip. Same rules apply that it can only be done if there are no other reserves available to fly the trip without moving a day off
Now let’s be honest about reserve at UA. We all love the fact that UA is a very widebody heavy airline currently we have 96 – 777s, 63 – 787s, 16-764s and 38-763s. With that comes a great deal of flying that due to both FARs and Geography is difficult to cover with last minute sick calls and last minute mechanicals. You can’t break apart a SFO-SIN trip in the middle like you can a 4 day domestic trip.
So, with that operation comes a great many opportunities for us as pilots, but also comes the need for extra reserve staffing and associated extra Short Call assignments to protect these trips. We all benefit from that with upward mobility, but none of us wants to get our days off “rolled” when our kids baseball/recital is that day. So, how do you get the most pilot benefit out of the flying and associated staffing needs without having a miserable life for reserves?
In the last contract ALPA attempted to put in some mechanisms to reduce the Short Call/Field Standby “abuse”, but that has proved insufficient. I am hoping in this contract they will put in provisions that make SC assignments and rolling of days off dramatically more expensive (and kill FSB altogether). I believe if rolling of days off resulted in Premium Pay for the trip assigned, the likelihood of getting your days rolled involuntarily would go down dramatically, as somebody would volunteer for the trip at premium pay. Would it eliminate the day off roll, prob not, but reduce it substantially and then we would be back to just dealing with a very occasional issue that comes with being a widebody heavy airline.