Looks like you've just gotten lucky.

Section 23 Q. 9. > "A pilot will be obligated to fly a GS or GSWC rotation if he is notified of and acknowledges the award."

I ran into this recently. I accidentally answered my phone and the scheduler wouldn't let me out of the GS. I basically begged him and he said he'd move on to the next pilots, but if he couldn't find anyone then I was obligated to fly it. It wasn't a time critical assignment... it was 14 hours out. Be careful answering the phone. In my case, he found another pilot and took the trip off my schedule.

Another thing I learned recently, they don't have to give you the 10 minutes to respond when they're in a time critical assignment. I recently got a call and let it go to voicemail. By the time I listened to the voicemail, logged in to the check the trip out, and called them back, they had already moved on to the next person.

All this talk about GS's is kinda pointless right now anyway. GS season is over. We have triple the amount of reserves required in NYC on the 320 B next month!

You must be lucky because 9/10 times that everyone else answers their phone and tells them they can't take the trip, you get the run around about putting in qualifiers so you don't come up for stuff you can't take. The only ones that they are nice about letting you out of are out of base GS's from my experience.

The reason why nobody answers their phones any more for GS's is because of them not letting you out of something you didn't know you were going to get. It's very hard to put in all the qualifiers to weed out all the stuff you may not want. A lot easier to let it go to voicemail then hop in I-crew and see what it is and if you really want to take the trip.

Yes, that's why I rarely answer the phone when I get a call. Also why I only list one phone number with them so they don't have to waste more time calling a second number.

This scheduler didn't call for several hours. I didn't want to get a call the next day when I didn't show up for the trip even though I would have been in the clear. Yes, you can put in qualifiers, but in some cases you're trying to cover numerous options. And I've also learned from experience you can't always delete the old request and put in a new request because the new one won't be effective right away depending on the time of day.

Obligated is not necessarily true. From WSC.

A pilot's obligation to accept a trip on X days or regular line off days is not absolute, whether the trip is the result of a white slip (same day or next day), yellow slip, green slip, or inverse assignment. A variety of circumstances might make accepting such a trip impossible. For example:

• Not being physically located so as to be able to report.
• Having consumed alcohol.
• Lack of available child care.
• Lack of available transportation.
• Not being adequately rested.

Know your contract. Not all of the schedulers do.

Kinda difficult to pull those excuses when a trip is 12+ hours to report. Easier and less heart ache to let the call go to voicemail and check the trip out first.

Unless you're in an MD-88 with a flaps 5 derate with a 160 VR running down the runway, or MD-90 doing the same. Then there is the 739.

Delta had zero obligation to honor the XJ flow once they were no longer owned by NWA. As an olive branch, Delta threw in a years worth of flows. They didn't even have to do that.

This is a really interesting phenomena. I remember being a newbie on the 727 and the old grizzled captains waiting for separation before takeoff. And that was pre-GPS, we-are-within-5-feet-of-the-line kind of navigation accuracy. What ever happened to that???? I guess we are all more manly nowadays.:cool:

Get a kid. Do temporary adoption if required. Then fail to adequately plan child care. Problem solved.

I did get a call for a GS once when the phone was on mute, all I heard was the voice-mail which basically was them telling me that since I didn't answer they were moving on to the next guy. I immediately called back but the trip was gone.