I'm sorry but the whole checking 1 minute into your SC window while in the 2 hour Non-Contact doesn't make sense. If I'm 1:55 into my 2:00 hour noncontact window "commuting in" and I check my schedule at 1:59 after ladnding in base, there could be a rotation sitting on my schedule that reports at 2:01 into my short call. So it confusing to me that a local would apply the non-contact clause for 2 hours and only check 1 minute into the SC window.....Can't CS put a rotation on your schedule at anytime in your 2 hour window, and you could be required to check at 2:00hrs to "report" immediately at the end of the 2 hour window? That's how I always understood it in my 7ish years here.

SRH says " during their period of unavailability, the pilot assumes responsibility of acknowledging any rotation placed on their line".

Does that not mean that CS can place the rotation on at any point during the period of non-contact. So a local checking their schedule 1 minute into the SC period doesn't absolve them of anything for the first 2 hours sitting at home.

 

It's not about the 2 hours, it's about not being assigned a trip with a report before your SC that reports in the first 2 hours. Before the SC they can put a trip on your line that reports anytime during the SC. If you are NC they can assign a trip as early as 2 hour in. "When the pilot checks their schedule, their line may contain a rotation with a report as early as two hours from the start of the short call period." Once the SC starts, the schedule check puts you back on promptly available. You have eliminated the possibility of a trip in the first 2 hours. But if you want to hang at the airport for an extra 2 hours of "me" time sitting across for the gate without the annoying when and where calls from scheduling because SAY IT WITH ME... you are not contactable. If there's an immediate need they will figure it out. That's what reroutes and VAS are for.

 

you’re telling them you are non-contactable for “up to 2 hours.” They can’t put a rotation on your line until SC+2:00.

at SC + 0:01 you check your schedule and see nothing. You call and tell them you’re contactable. Your non-contactable window is now over 1 minute in and the soonest report is back to prompt (2-3 hours understood depending on base).

 

so to tie a bow on it, the benefit as a local to doing this is basically avoiding a call to report for a trip the second SC begins? I commute and use this provision all the time but just don't see what the huge benfit is to doing it as a local other than maybe being unusable for a trip they try and get you on shorter notice the second SC starts?

 

Bingo. You could theoretically be in NC status for only 1 second. The whole point is to effectively reduce the report window of a SC from 6 hours to 4.

P.S. You don’t have to actually call CS to return to “promptly available (though you can), you could simply check your schedule in iCrew or VRU. So really, only one phone call is even needed, and even that could be done via Crew Assist if you really wanted to.

 

Yep. Or even a trip which gets assigned or reports in the first 2 hours.

Also, I’m not sure I’d call living outside about a 2 hour drive ‘local’, but that’s me. Outside about 2 hours, you commute, just not by air… Regardless, this only works for someone who can report within about 2 hours.

 

The point is from 1200 the day prior (when SC are assigned and you tell scheduling you will be NC) up until the time in your SC window you choose to view your icrew schedule, scheduling cannot assign you a rotation that reports in your first two hours. Scheduling can only assign a SC pilot a rotation that reports inside the SC window. So with a 6 hour window, by going NC you are cutting your usability by 1/3. If you don’t go NC then they can assign you a report 1 minute into your SC window, and it’ll obviously go out late because they can’t call you until your SC starts and you still have your promptly available time to get to the airport.

So, with standard SC contactability, you can get a report 0:01 into your SC window. The point of going NC is that you wouldn’t ever be PWA legal to be assigned that rotation in the first place. Again, going NC for SC only gives the company a 4 hour window to hit you with a report time.

And for the “long” local commuters, parsing the language I don’t see anything in the PWA or SRH that says you have to wait until SC starts to call scheduling and end your NC status. If it takes you 3 hours to drive in you could call them 1 hour prior to SC starting and end the NC at that point, and if you have a rotation assigned reporting at the 2:00 mark into your SC you can still make report legally.

 

I have already started using the NC strategy, and have seen the benefit. There was a 3 day that popped up with a report 1:30 into my SC window. I have no doubt they would have assigned me that trip if they could have, and hope I get there in 1:30. Because I exercised the NC clause, they cut up the trip and GS'd the first part of it, I didn't get any more calls on that SC or my SC the next day.

To say that there is no benefit means that you just don't understand how it works. For the whopping price of one phone call and setting a reminder to look at iCrew, I wound up getting two hours of pay and three days with my family that I wouldn't have otherwise. That being said, it is totally valid if you are the type of person who still just doesn't want to go to the effort for that, and I totally respect that. You just can't say that there isn't benefit, only that the benefit isn't personally worth it for you, and that's fine. I guess it probably benefits me if fewer people do it, ha!

 

It's probably more of an issue in NYC and LAX. Although per PWA SC is promptly available to any of the 3 in NYC but only LAX in LA.

Right now, 9pm on a weekday night, no weather impacts, time/distance to employee lots from my house that's about 12 DME to LENDY on the LENDY arrival. (About 5 miles to I-287 at the 80/287 interchange)

EWR 32 Miles / 40 minutes
LGA 45 miles / 54 minutes
JFK 56 miles / 1:08

But a "get here at SC+2:00" at 0600 on a typical day (told google "leave at 0600"

JFK becomes 2:10
LGA becomes 1:40
EWR becomes 50 minutes

 

More data would be needed in order to conclude that the no-contact provision was the reason you did not get the trip. I was sitting on short call last month and received a green slip notification for a trip departing within my short call RAP, consistent with my days of availability, and for which I was legal to be assigned as a reserve. Sometimes they opt not to use us, or in a more bizarre case, forget we are even on short call to begin with.