Originally Posted by seafeye
I believe if you want those pilots back here working then we need to increase our labor costs. PSA is one of the few airlines that pays 1.5X for SDO. This is how we can hit management hard. Increase labor costs and our bean counters will bring them back faster than if no one picked up open time. Remember there are still many reserves and most F/O's fly only 30 hrs a month. Captains maybe a little more. If noone picks up Open Time all that will happen is that the reserves will get abused more.
Management would love NOTHING more than for every reserve pilot to fly exactly 75:00 every month; this insures maximum efficiency for each labor dollar spent. Unfortunately for them, this goal is next to impossible to achieve because management has a responsibility to keep sufficient reserves to cover irregular operations and all open flying.
If pilots stop picking up open flying, then yes, reserve utilization goes up. This means that there are fewer available reserves to cover the aforementioned irregular operations and open flying. Fewer available reserves means it doesn't take much before flights start canceling due to lack of crew, and NOTHING (in my personal observations) ****es passengers off more than a flight canceling due to an airline not having enough pilots to fly. Of course the company has Junior Manning available to them to cover flights, but that's a very small band-aid on a large wound at that point and leads to increased sick calls and sharply lower morale. When crew cancellations reach an unsustainable point (one only management can decide), pilots are recalled to bolster reserve ranks and displaced captains return to their seat.
There's a reason UPS pilots have a clause in their pilot contract that if management announces a furlough, the union can legally call for an Open Time Ban - it does in fact work to keep pilots off the street.