Max juniority to get seniority? Have your finger on that PHL 73 bid when it happens...

 

MIA isn’t that junior anymore (A32F). LGA and LAX were the most junior, and PHL wasn’t far behind. ORD is super junior on the FO side, but at 35% up there, I still couldn’t hold a line, per 3xp.

 

ORD's juniorness is artificial and temporary. They needed to fill the base and had bunch of withhelds they were not going to use yet so they used new hire class drops to basically fill the majority of the base. Once those withhelds get released it will be a while before anybody new gets ORD320 and when they do will be junior for a long time (along with those new hires in base now relative seniority plummeting). ORD is typically a senior base all around.

 

Any way to look up how many 320 withholds in ORD?

 

The final vacancies list the withholds. There may be another way I am not aware of it.

 

Besides flexibility, making extra money on reserve (i.e. OG or PR) it’s not that easy. A whole lot of people will go first (MU, MO, etc) and even then OG or PR it’s 100% a scheduler option. Which I found it’s only on when you have < 2 hr show time or with crazy early or crazy late sign in. Only after a test run by the scheduler fails without using OG or PR.

 

How does reserve QOL at AA compare to regional reserve QOL? Is it the same? Little bit better? Little bit worse (I would hope not lol)? Any WO regional flow thru’s in particular wanna chime in on that?

 

No defined SCR call out time certainly does take some of the pressure off, but you still have to be reasonable. Other than that not really.

 

Pros: no airport standby (ready reserve), no SC call out time, 85hr max per month.

Cons: Contract language weak and somehow got worse during last round of negotiations.

Heavily favors the senior pilot. But so does every other airline. Only difference is we went from a balanced system where everyone more or less worked the same. To a system where the jr guys get totally boned. Throw in awful contract language and voila.

Still beats any regional by a mile.

 

I came from Envoy and sat reserve for 90% of the time there. I've sat reseve 90% of my 6 years here. Reserve at American is definitely better.

-last day of reserve, LC is auto released at 10 am and SC is released after 6 hours of on call (if not used by that time)
-if you land on your 2nd to last day of reserve where debrief ends after 2200, and nothing is on your schedule at that time, then you are on LC your last day. It's nearly impossible to use you then.
-Once you are assigned a reserve trip, 99% of the time, the trip ends when it was scheduled and they don't add onto you. At Envoy before the newer contract, they'd send you out for a turn and keep adding on for 4 days. The 1 add on limit at Envoy was a game changer for me.
-The union has some good software to alert you of any open trips for today or tomorrow. I can live with less stress as I don't have to constantly check open time.
-The new contract puts us first on the upgrade list for first class. As a reserve, I fly broken trips a lot so there is more deadheading. I'd say I get first class 75% of the time.
-You can arrange your monthly schedule to 3 day blocks, which prevents you from doing any 4 day trips.

This new reserve system definitely favors the senior. When you are first starting out, you will be working a lot but your limit is 85 hours for the month. Once you reach 79.45 for the month, you are done (there is a caveat for the last day of the month). As a senior NB FO, I typically fly between 4-8 days a month, with many of those as 1 leg days.

Let me know if you have other questions.