Short Call Release
 

I am on short call and my son has a ball tournament about a 4 hour drive from the airport. It doesn’t start until the late afternoon and will go until the evening. I don’t sit reserve often and clearly screwed up my schedule...again. Do they ever release pilots from short call early?

Absolutely. Call and ask. All you usually get is 2 hours early.

You can call to be released 2 hours early, but that’s it. You could also try and YS a red eye or early show and have your shortcall adjusted.

One strategy would be to yellow slip for a short call the next day which has an early start time which forces them to release you earlier. They have to give you 12 hours off. Calling and asking for an early release is probably less than 50% likely to work, but I have had them release me about one hour early on my last day of availability to make a commute. That's just going to depend on who answers the phone and how the staffing looks.

The way I played stuff like this was to sit at the half way point in a Starbucks or something 2 hours away from being able to report. Call, and ask to be released. If they say yes, you’ll be at the game at your release time without pushing it at all.

Let’s say you have a 6pm release time. Call at 3:30. The will often say that you are released at 4 if you don’t hear from us.