alfaromeo

Each month on reserve, you have 18 days of on call each month. The method of bidding reserve will be completely changed once NW comes onto our scheduling system so it is not worth discussing the current bid system. By default, you are on long call (12 hour leash). You can be given up to 6 short calls (2 hours or so leash) a month. The method of assigning short calls is very scientific. They give a blind, drunken monkey a handful of darts and if he hits your name on the dart board, you have short call. Seriously, there is no rhyme or reason to how they assign short calls, so don't try to figure it out. When you are on short call, they will also assign you a rest period where you don't have any phone obligation at all. For example, they assign you short call starting a 9 am on Tuesday. You are automatically placed on rest from midnight to 9 am.

You can understand a lot about the rules if you remember that you need to get 9 hours rest and need to acknowledge trips 3 hours before report. 9 + 3 = 12, which is the long call leash.

After a block of off days, you have to check your schedule after 3 pm (within 9 hours of midnight), in case they have assigned you an early flight on your first day of on call. When you come back from a trip, you also have to check your schedule as you are automatically given 9 hours rest and you could be given a trip with the minimum rest (that rarely happens).

Long call pilots are divided up into days of availability groupings (which I think is similar to NW). For domestic it is 4+ days, 3 days, 2 days, 1 day. Maybe an international pilot will add in if it is different for international. Within your days of availability grouping, trips are given out by RAW score (the amount of flying done that month) with the lowest score going first, seniority does not figure into who gets a trip.

However, if you are in the 3 day grouping and they are going to assign 5 pilots 3-day trips for the next day, then they go in seniority order to figure out who gets which trip. There is a template on the computer for you to put in your trip preferences so you can try to get a preferred layover, no all nighter, etc.

When you have vacation or training days in a month, you get RAW credit for those days, that way you do not come off vacation and immediately become the number one guy for a trip. They call these Credited Reserve On-Call days or CROC days.

If you are on reserve in a month and then on a regular line in the next month, they can assign you a trip that goes into the next month. For instance, if you are on call for June 28-30 and on a regular line for July, they can give you a 4 day trip on the 28th or even a 4 day trip on the 30th. You get paid straight pay for the time that goes into July, but you can get burned on days you thought you had off.

If you are on a regular line for a month and pick up a trip that goes into a reserve month, you have to fly the rotation, even if you hit your off days. In this case you have a 4 day trip on June 28th. You have to fly the trip into your reserve month (July) and if you have an X-day on July 1st you get no pay for that flying except it counting against your reserve guarantee. ***Correction***. You can keep your X-Days, but you have to call scheduling to have them move them. ***End Correction***

The long call leash is designed more to give you flexibility if you live in base or close to base. It is not really designed to be commuter friendly. Hopefully, there will be some more commuter friendly provisions in the future, but for now commuting to reserve is tough at Delta. When you are on your last day of reserve you can call scheduling and see if they will release you early. Usually they will unless they are getting swamped with open trips.