Originally Posted by JTwift

for reserve, we have long call, short call (pretty standard), but also field standby, which is where you sit at the airport for 4 hours.

we also have global reserve for fleets that are designated global (basically international, outside of the Americas, to keep it simple). This gives you a handful of hard days off, but also other days off which can be changed by scheduling. Yup.

scheduling can assign short calls and field standbys at a whim and there’s nothing really keeping them from doing it. You barely get compensated if they do it.

reserves can pickup trips that are silo or silo -1, so if you’re on a 5 day reserve block, you can grab a 5 or 4 day trip. This is seniority based, or whoever is quicker, if nobody grabbed it.

our reserve pool is based on days of reserve left and FIFO (first in first out). with the aggressive pickup and the short calls and field standbys that just magically appear on the schedule at whatever time, it’s really hard to tell if you’re going to be next up or not.

if you get back from a trip with a day of reserve left, good luck getting out of that one without some assignment.

if you’re on a trip, they say you’re treated like a line holder, but that’s just for rest, really. Any reassignment pay, etc, doesn’t apply. So your Captain (or FO, I suppose, if you’re a CA on reserve) could get a nice 50% bump for something and you get… nothing.

there’s a reason there are so many unfilled Captain positions. Nobody wants to upgrade until they’re sure they can hold a line as Captain.