Originally Posted by
sailingfun
The other good thing is you have no obligation to be phone available. You need only check your schedule or messages often enough to insure you can report in any 18 hour rolling time frame. If you need 4 hours to report you need only check messages or your schedule every 14 hours.
Just to be clear to any half wingers or others, that's not how UAL currently operates. Maybe this is in the DL AIP/TA as I believe this poster works there, but at UAL, you are always expected to return the crew Desk call within a reasonable amount of time. They will not consider a 14 hour delay in calling back as used in the above example reasonable. You will receive a UTC / missed trip and be deducted 4:03, value of a reserve day.
The reason for this is that the Crew Desk needs to know that the pilot understands that they have been assigned a trip and the crew Desk is therefore assured that the trip is covered. We also refer to this principle as positive contact.