VOLLU

I see it mentioned a lot in this forum. Can someone ‘splain this newbie what it is and why it’s so hated?

RAHkid94

the airline has a trip that is uncovered, because they’ve already burned all the reserves they had picking up flying from other airlines or they never had enough staffing for the schedule to begin with. They then call the must junior (or occasionally most convenient) pilot. If they are unable legally accept the assignment, or choose not to pick up their phone and it’s a day off, they move on to the next most junior pilot. The first pilot who answers and is legal to work must take the trip. Generally this ends up being someone on their last leg before being done with work. So instead of getting to go home, you get to stay on the road. When things were bad, 4 day trips routinely turned into 6 day trips with a max duty day at the end. They had a bad habit of ACARSing you just about the time you went through ten thousand in your last leg, which just ruins your day.

Some people will tell you that if you have plans or something you can get off the hook for junior mans, but the union has said nothing to indicate that and it’s basically up to the scheduler/management pilot as to whether or not they accept your excuse.

VOLLU

Is it typical among all regionals? Is it particularly bad at ZW?

WiscoAviator

My understanding is that Republic doesnt do it at all but they're the only one I know of. Open flying should always be covered by a reserve pilot first so junior manning will be worst at airlines that dont have adequate reserves. For us that happens to be Captains right now.

AZwiz

​​​​​ Yes, it's typical policy. Yes, it's particularly bad at ZW. .... Denied PG

Flymeaway

SkyWest doesn’t have junior manning either.

idlethrust

More like .....a drop denied -lack of rsv coverage
So let me see how many rsvs are actually available? 15
how many trips in open time -2

still lack of rsv coverage-denied
if those numnuts could have negotiated pbs or something similar in the last contract along with atleast two monthly commuter hotels maybe the entire drop / swap process would have been automated . No human intervention.

tonsterboy5

Junior manning is the great process of when the company is to incompetent to properly staff or use a brain when it comes to scheduling.

example. I want to release from a mainline dead head from IAD to ORD on day 2 of my 2 day trip to pick up a critical trip from IAD that would make my trip 3 days with the last day being critical. Request submitted half way through day 1 along with a phone call. “Sorry we can’t drop or release deadheads till day of” denied. Day 2 comes around and they can’t reroute me due to not being able to work anything else without an extension into a junior man, which I am not junior. So they end up having to junior man someone else who doesn’t want to work it. Way to go company

SonicFlyer

Is there any way around that?

RAHkid94

Not after they made mandatory responses to scheduling ACARS part of the FOM.