Originally Posted by
Dynamiterabbit
Was going to start a new thread but this one seems like the right place for some general questions that a potential new hire or applicant might want to know.I’m trying to gauge QOL at United for a pilot on reserve (within driving distance). Here’s what I hope are easy questions for a current UAL pilot to answer.
1. What is a g-line? Perhaps this will be inherently answered by the next question.
2. PBS: my previous experience with PBS is straightforward to me; a monthly bid was basically “please give me a regular line with all of these requests, if that doesn’t work please try a regular line with these different requests, if that doesn’t work try this set of reserve requests…” etc. So no one was really a full time “reserve” or “line” pilot; some months a 95% pilot might get a (crappy) regular line. Is this how UAL works?
3. For reserve bidding, do you effectively ask for certain days off, etc, then PBS gives you what you can hold within certain overall restrictions (min 3-day blocks, etc)? Or are there predetermined reserve blocks that you bid for?
4. How often is there a true, “be here as soon as you can” callout? I’ll be driving from around 1.5-2 hours from SFO, so if there is some traffic… it’s a little tight. I’m sure it’s fleet and time-of-year dependent, just looking for the general vibe.
Thanks in advance!
1. it’s the line where someone guaranteed a line. Doesn’t mean people junior to that person won’t hold a line. If you’re senior to that person you’ll hold a line of you so choose.
2. You can bid anyway you want, reserve, then a line, then back to reserve etc. Easiest reserve bid would be award reserve Monday to Friday (H++), Monday to Saturday (H+) , that would prioritize Monday to Friday (H means high priority then more pluses means you want those higher). Pbs is about filling buckets where you break down trips/reserve dates by priority and then it gives you what you can hold.
3. you can ask for days off either specific (date) or days of the week, or oppositely you can ask for the days you want to work. It’s not predetermined, that’s line bidding .
4. short call is 2 1/2 hours, anything earlier then that is you helping them. 2 1/2 is the contract.