If a pilot is on reserve with vacation in a month that has OE, what is the upper limit on OE flying? I've looked at reserve in a vacation month and OE bidding already. Now I'm looking for the trifecta tips.

 

Not sure what you're asking. Are you asking what the maximum about of OE you can be assigned can be? I don't believe there's an upper limit in terms of days flown on OE, but there is an upper limit in terms of block hours flown without having been signed off before a Board review is required.

If you're asking about the shadow period, my advice is to stuff maximum number of LC days into the shadow such that if OE goes long, PB days are earned.

Or, maybe I tried too hard to answer your question and it would suffice to say that the upper limit on OE flying as RES is your shadow period.

 

I was asking if they can schedule OE that exceeds the RES flying limit crew scheduling is bound by. i.e. are you ever “full on reserve” from OE trips. Can they exceed reserve guarantee and fly you up to FARs on OE?

 

Question regarding coverage award days. I get it that there are days where you are forced certain days. But what I don't understand why after a coverage award the reserves available would be greater than reserves required... Once the number of reserves required are met shouldn't they stop assigning those days as coverage awards?

 

I don't know the inner workings of RES coverage awards in PBS. But it does make sense to me that if they need X reserves on each day in a month, at some point there are fewer RES bidders left that would fulfill X.

In other words, coverage goes bottom-up, not top-to-bottom. Again, there's plenty I don't know about PBS. What does make sense to me is if they need 100 RES pilots on the second Saturday of a month, at some point there are only 30 RES bid awards left and they need 30 RES pilots on that Saturday. So the 30 remaining RES awards get coverage that day.

 

Welcome to the start of summer flying....I've been seeing more and more reserve assignments acknowledged early on the daily trip coverage that are not pwa compliant, so let me just reiterate the most important reserve PSA for the new hires:

After your required end of rotation schedule check, Robocalls/Micrew/CNO are all never valid notification for a trip assignment (only for converting long call to short call). For actual trips you must be called by a human scheduler at the start of your short call period, or if you self acknowledge in iCrew by viewing your schedule and entering your pin. At which point, on SC you have a couple hours (intentionally vague promptness) to show up, regardless of what the original report time shows. Seen too many deadheads go out to short calls lately that departed within the first hour of their SC windrow. You do not have to take that assignment or acknowledge it before the start of your windrow. The proper response, after a human notifies you, is to tell them you will be there safety permitting within a couple hours (or acceptability, a few hours in LAX/NYC). At which point it's their choice to hold the plane for you, or more likely reroute someone else to cover it. Don't let them fish!

And it's not just new pilots, I still see the occasional senior fall into this trap.

 

The people who need to hear this definitely are not perusing APC.

 

Yes but... I'm seeing coverage awards but in icrew it shows for example 6 required / 9 available. So they "forced" 9 people to sit reserve on a day with 6 required. Would make sense if they had 6 coverage awards and it stopped at 6/6.

 

You seem to be conflating PBS with PCS/iCrew. They're not the same.

Don't ask me why they're different because I don't have a PhD in that stuff. I do know that they are entirely different beasts though.

 

Go read the white paper. It explains a little of the PBS vs reserves available.

Short version: the formulas have uncorrected issues based on the way our training and vacation pay has increased.