Originally Posted by
Flamer
All clear except the last part. How can you start 5 hours after rest when you are not contactable during rest? The only way I could see this happening is if it was acknowledged prior to your rest
Let me see if I have a grasp of it?
Coming off an X-day your reserve starts at midnight base time. From midnight, they can place something on your schedule and start the 12 hour window for a trip assignment or they can convert you to shortcall within 10 hours with a 2 hour commuter extension. Your only obligation to acknowledge either a trip or shortcall is 3 hours prior.
On an X-day, all pilots are available for a following day assignment of a trip with a checking of 0500 base time or a RAP as early as 0500 base time. No acknowledgement is required on your X-day (Its assumed you are vacationing and not contactable). When the swing shift arrives, they will typically call you after 1500 base time at some arbitrary point in time to verify that you are aware of your assignment if you have a trip or shortcall. Again, there is no requirement to answer this call or verify an assignment on an X-day (you can and most do in good faith).
After midnight, it gets interesting as you do have a requirement to acknowledge a trip or shortcall by 0200, three hours prior to a potential 0500 shortcall or sign-in. This equates to a duty period that essentially can start as soon as 5 hours following X-day; this is likely the logic that is used to say that an assignment can start as soon as five hours following an FAR 24/7 rest period. Once you roll past 02:00 base time of the first day, your only requirement for establishing contact or verifying a status is 3 hours prior to the event.
From what I've experienced.
While on reserve or a trip and on long call the following day, they will assign an open time trip for the following day early on the morning shift. No one will likely call you until the swing shift, but they will call you three hours prior to the following day assignment. The AM schedulers rely upon the VRU for next day assignments while the swing schedulers may clean up with a phone call if you haven't acknowledged. Once open time for the following day is assigned, if another trip pops up the schedulers will (they always have for me) call and notify you, minimum 12 hours notice otherwise pop ups handled by short call. Some people forget that a long call assignment can come down to you at 21:00 base time (while you are enroute home) for an 09:00 report the following am.... Commuters beware.
There's probably more. The basics are most definitely setup around a reserve living in base.