Originally Posted by
nene
As a pilot who stands reserve by choice about 75% of the time, I can tell you over the last decade, SC assignment has varied all over the place. I have no knowledge of this specific uptick, but it has been a large uptick in SC's for a few months in the past.
Generally, I had noticed that Skeds does seem to "punish" a group when they have had SC's be unavailable (out of place to be used, call in sick once assigned a trip, etc) over a certain period of time, they seem to flood the system with SC assignments for the next few months.
This happened on the 765 for sure a few years ago when a few NYC SC's were not in place, so they started assigning more than a half dozen SC's a day for the next few months at both ATL and NYC. At least now you can use the extra hour pay to go get yourself a hotel room!
Yep, lived that. Summer of 2017. My recollection is that it was shortly before the 747 was closed down and there were no more DTW departures - every rotation started/ended with a DH? I think? Anyway, a JFK-ICN flight diverted to DTW for some reason, but no SC pilot was actually in position to continue on with the plane. They had to cancel the flight in DTW. Cost the company big $$$$. When Flight Ops investigated, they found at least 4 pilots who had not commuted to SC in the previous 2 years. No KCM record, no non-rev or JS listing. Nothing. They were summarily fired. 3 of the 4 got their jobs back when APLA burned a crap-ton of green stamps (the 4th pilot supposedly had nearly 2 dozen negative interactions with the CPO and the company flatly refused to hire him back). The company basically said, "you wanna play a game? Okay, let's play a game." They maxed out every single pilot they could on SC that summer on most every fleet. In once instance, they put 11 765 F/O's on SC for 6 departures. I think I actually got used off SC one time that whole summer. It's one of the reasons I personally have so little sympathy or tolerance for pilots who get paid big bucks to do a job, but play games instead.
And we wonder why when "one guy craps his pants, everyone has to wear diapers."