Originally Posted by
Adagosto11
He also explained the bottom 8 get an 8-hour airport standby day (no pay change). The next 8 pilots get a 2-hour callout. Only the most senior get the 12-hour callout.
Just the threat of being stuck on an 8-hour airport standby away from home is enough to make me think all of this. I came from the old US Air, and while that was a major airline, it was more like a glorified regional. Even they didn't pull the airport standby thing too much, let alone 8-hours.
So, IDK..I don't think I can get passed that. If it were a bid, that's one thing, but I'm thinking this could be an extended kinda thing.
thoughts?
Long call reserve, 12 hour call out, is not available in Phoenix. There are only two long call lines in the other bases and they go very senior.
8 hour airport standby shifts go first to any pilot who bids a line of them (someone who badly wants weekends off or a holiday off and can't get it any other way), then to someone who proffered for it, then to the most junior pilots available on that particular day. Pilots actually bid for standby shifts when it allows them an easier commute on their first day (a 1500 standby shift is easier to get to than a 0400 or 1000 short call shift) or when they think an early standby shift will let them get released earlier to commute home on their last day. I bid for 0600-1400 standby on Monday after I lost my overnight due to a maintenance delay the day before because I wasn't legal for 0400-1800 short call and 1000-2400 short call might have caused me to miss my last flight home. They didn't use me and I caught my flight home, but even if they had used me, at least they couldn't work me to midnight.
Two captains are assigned standby shifts in Phoenix every day, but there is a good chance that at least one of those spots goes to someone who wants it. It is true that anyone unlucky enough to be at the bottom of the reserve list for awhile will get ready reserve more often than anyone else. Airport standby has a 15 minute call out.
I look at it as yet another way you have to pay your dues as a junior pilot. I think most regionals have a form of airport standby.