I have a Zoning Hearing Board Meeting to attend. It's always the first Thursday of the month and you have to schedule it a couple months ahead. I will miss this months meeting and I have to cancel and pay all the fee's again. How easy is it to get that Thursday off reserve LGA 80?

It may seem contrary to common sense, but this ambiguity is the best thing about this stipulation, and most if not all AA pilots would agree. In practice, you will NEVER get flack for sitting reserve 2 hours away from your base. Scheduling may gripe about 3 hours, but I have NEVER seen or heard of anyone getting slammed for it in any way. While I was at SFO, guys sat in Fresno on reserve without a problem. If you know the Bay and how long it takes to get anywhere there with traffic, Fresno can sometimes be practically on the moon.

4.5 hours (the Fresno sit with traffic) is as far out as I've ever heard the term "reasonably available" stretched to encompass. Maybe there's something longer up at LGA.

EDIT: these times WILL NOT APPLY to you in your probation year! You'll just have to suck it up for a few months. It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: don't stretch to the limits of the rules when whether you keep your job still depends partly on the (un)happiness of others.

Rider850, you'd probably get it off organically most months. If your schedule didn't fall right, your Chief would probably give you that day off as a vacation day, or if you didn't have vacation, as a non-paid day off.

Thanks.....

That may be quite reasonable for a pilot who's not on probation. I guarantee you will be under tremendous pressure to not do that your first year, and it would be a very good idea to give way to that pressure until you're off probation.

Thanks. If there is a merger and by the time the POR rolls around, probation will not be an issue for me.

Crew skd keeps bringing up '2 hrs'. The union has fought, and won, 'reasonable available'. It was kept in the MOU.

Not too many guys live within 2 hrs of of either JFK, EWR, or LGA. Pick the worst airport for each direction EWR for the east, LGA for the south, and JFK for the NW, and more and more guys can't make some made up time.

The typical practical limit is about 4 hrs. A bunch of guys live about 3 hrs and the percentage increases dramatically inside of 3 hrs. Once you get to 4+ hrs most guys fly.

On probation it's not worth your career getting dragged into the office for late trips, or missed trips, because you're pushing the limit. Can you? Knock yourself out. Remember it's probation.

Keep in mind that probation ends on the last day of probation and NOT the last day of the last trip prior to the end of probation. Guys have lost their jobs in that window.

As a guy who is coming from a regional and has spent the better part of 7years riding the rsv pine of 90mins to the gate or your doa... This is like listening to Mozart!
Thanks for towing the line on your contract guys! We appreciate it.

Some of us have most of these stipulations already in our crummy regional (XJT) contracts... Only bright spots I see are sounds like AA gets an extra day off each month and that "reasonably available distance" thing sounds pretty swank. Otherwise we have the standard 2 hours for short call/12 hours for long call.

I'm curious, are the new reserve rules better/worse/about the same as the old rules?

One other thing I found as a noob sitting on AA reseve... I lived fairly close to the airport, and crew schedule figured it out. Sometimes, I'd get an assignment where they wanted a warm body immediately, and since they knew my living arrangement, they skipped people and went right to me. This was back when there was actual seniority on reserve, and you could pass.

Just because I am the closest thing to airport standby, doesn't mean they get to violate the contract.

My point - once off probation, hold them to every single contractural item. Know your contract. And never volunteer the fact that "Oh yes, I live right next to the airport, I can be there in 15 minutes." You end up on some sort of secret "list.".