30 from bottom,

The reserves are undermanned. If you look at last years reserve lines, you will probably see that they have significantly cut them down. In the MEM MD FO, we have around half of the reserve lines we used to have.

When they cut the amount of reserves, the company can dilute our BLG even more. In my seat, they added around 50-60 people as line holders. 50 (more line holders) X 60 (our "new BLG") = 3000 hours. We have around 700 MEM MD-11 FOs. Just by reducing reserve lines by 50 (and making them line holders), that alone cut our BLG by about 4 hours per month.

These are rough numbers, and actually it is probably worse. I didn't look at how many FOs were pay only.

The company believes (and they are correct) that they can man most open trips with reserves. Most trips are picked up every morning and the few left will be assigned to reserves. They will draft occasionally, but a little time and a half is a pennies to the savings from 4A2B.