Originally Posted by
Crazyernie
Must short call preferences be adhered to in seniority order?
I may not be taking into account targeted days of availability or a junior pilot starting their first day of a reserve block, vs me already being on reserve, but I did everything to avoid a certain early short call only to see junior pilots assigned my preferences and I got the opposite of what I slipped for. Grrrr.
These are excellent questions and I hope they make the rules more clear. I’ve been confused as well. As a data point this last week I started a 3 day block of LC. I looked at what SCs were on offer and it had 4 available, all with 4 day targets. Well there were no people in 4 day buckets and the only two in 3 day buckets were me and a senior guy.
The available SCs were: 0800, 0900, 1300, and 2359.
I put in preferences for “if needed” thinking as Fangs said that it becomes a yellow slip if you are needed. I was starting a block so 1000 was my earliest report time but I know that yellow slips trump that so I figured I could get the 0800 or 0900. I preferenced 0900, 0800, 1300, 2359 in that order. Well lo and behold I got the scheduling special of last choice😕.
I can only think of 2 possible reasons: 1) Your SC preferences can’t really become a yellow slip and therefore can’t break the 10 hour protection coming off an off day and in addition the senior bubba preferenced the 1300 SC. Or 2) Scheduling doesn’t pay any attention to this at all and randomly doles these out before moving on to the next fire.
A few questions: Will a preference break the 10 hr protection coming off an off day? Will a straight yellow SC? Also if you submit a straight yellow for a SC for a specific time, will they either award that or leave you alone, or once you raise your hand for SC can they assign you any SC they want?