Originally Posted by
Sink r8
Second, ther is nothing unfair about the junior pilots getting more difficult duty. If 1/3 can't commute to reserve, but 2/3 can, then you have an improvement over a system where none of the reserve pilots can cit long call at home, because SC are mixed in, in such a way that noone benefits. What's unfair to the junior 1/3 of Reserves is, even when they graduate to the top 2/3, life doesn't improve.
But with the current reserve, almost all of pilots can commute to reserve. Sure, there are some who live on the opposite coast who can't, but they are flying past a number of bases to choose their base to be on reserve at. Those guys couldn't sit LC at home anyway (I'm thinking west of Kansas City for say, JFK)
Maybe 2/3 of the reserve pilots get a bit better schedule, but at the complete trashing of the 1/3's schedule who end up on SC all the time.
I don't agree that sitting SC means you don't fly - I know that has been your case the last two weeks, but I think that's because there have been lots of cancellations, resulting in 23K recovery flying.
I've sat reserve most of of the 2009:
April - sat six SCs, flew 2 trips or so.
May, June, July and August, every time I got SC, I had a trip by the time I commuted to JFK.
Sept, Oct, Nov, assigned 3 SCs or so a month, flew on 1 or 2 of those SCs.
I'm not flying in Dec, so I can't comment on this month's flying.
For me, as a middle of the pack reserve, my QOL has been pretty good. I can't see being on LC the whole month as improving it much.
I don't want a system, be it within the line holders, overall pay, reserve or vacation where the top half of the group (be it overall seniority, relative category or whatever) gets huge benefits and screws the bottom half of the group.