Commuter reserve holder question
 

I've talked to scheduling and ALPA scheduling but I'm not fully grasping the rules and how to stay out of trouble. Maybe if it's written down, I can visualize if better.

Say, as a reserve holder, you have 8 reserve days in a row. You do a 4 day trip and then they assign you your 30/7 rest after the trip ends starting at 13:15. What is the earliest id have to potentially be back? Obviously, I need this to know if I could catch a flight back to base in time.

Apparently it's not as simple as 7:15 am with a 12 hour call out after rest ends, since the end of the 30 hours of rest would end at 7:15 pm and then roll into long call. It seems there's some 9 hour prior thing involved and can turn into a 10 hour call out. It's still confusing to me as a new guy.

Is there anything I can do to help the timing work out better so that my earliest possible show time is within normal commuting hours, or is this just at the whim of scheduling?

Thanks for the help!

Simplify it by thinking of it like this: You can get a long call assignment to report no earlier than 12 hours after the rest ends. You can be put on short call no earlier than 10 hours after (+2 hours report)= 12 hours after rest ends. So, its really the same thing.

If you want to attempt to control the commute issues for the late night hours, either yellow slip for something the next day, or preference a short-call period later in the day allowing a morning commute-in.

+1

When I commuted I found the easiest way to make life easy was to yellow slip a commutable trip on the open board that fit my days on. Crew Scheds is always happy to give you the trip on a yellow slip. The bonus is that you don't sit SC and you don't pay for hotels.

If you get a YS can they still change your schedule and give you a different trip with an earlier report?

yellowslips are requests. There are lots of reasons why you wouldnt get a YS. Some reasons include youre in the wrong "bucket" (you YS a 1 day trip but youre in the 3 day bucket and there are other pilots legal andavailable in the 1 day bucket regardless of seniority), someone senior to you in the same bucket YS'd the trip, or youre not legal restwise (NA in your scenario).

Once the trip is assigned to you the day prior, typically it does not change. I have had a trip pulled off and then reassigned a different trip one time in the past but it was due to an IROP.

In your scenario, however, its pretty unlikely scheduling would put you in 30 hours rest after your trip. They'd probably assign you another legal trip right after, then assign you the 30 hour rest when you come due. They have become real savvy about "creating" trips for available reserves on the narrowbodies by splitting up open time trips and tailoring them to your bucket (easy to identify by the 0xxx rotation number). Also, if there's no open time in your category, they often build you a rotation to cover another base's open time. They do this a lot with LAX717 reserves, they build deadheads to go cover NYC trips and then deadhead back. As a commuter, this would be beneficial to you since you can deviate.

As stated above, you can be placed on short call 10 hours after your 30 hour rest period ends. This is considered coming back on duty after a day off, so you are able to use the "2 hour slide" for short call under certain circumstances, in which you can be unavailable for contact for the first 2 hours of short call while you commute in. I have used this a few times. Works as advertised.

I LOVE reserve. I bid it on purpose. Feel free to PM with questions Im a professional reserve bidder. As a matter of fact, I have no idea how to bid a line :D.

I agree with this but can they not also do this?

When they assign 30 hour rest CS also says "By the way, at the end of your 30 hours you are assigned short call (or a trip) starting at XXXX time."

Denny

Yes they can. As a reserve you must check your schedule within 30 minutes of blocking in. I do, and I take a screenshot. If you are not assigned anything else besides 30 hours rest. You are under no obligation to be contactable. I have had them put a trip on my schedule that started <12 hours after the rest, I acknowledged it before I analyzed it, and way-lah, it was mine. When they get short they get very creative, and they are short now. It's only going to be shorter this summer.


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If one wanted to commute home earlier on their last day of reserve, could they put in a slip to start short call 12 hours before they wanted to commute home? ie I want to catch an 8 am flight home, request to start short call 8pm the night before instead of waiting for 12pm to roll around for release.

I had a three day block of res and had just returned from a two-day, checked my schedule when I landed (nothing on it) and flew home. As I was pulling into my driveway I got a early am SC the next morning. Are you saying that since they didn't put anything on my schedule during those 30 minutes after block-in that I should've had 30 hrs of rest?

Here's what I DO know about that situation. If you end a trip and the next day is a reserve day, you automatically go back on long call assuming there is no trip, short call or 30hr rest period scheduled. You don't go into rest after a trip ends, you only go into rest prior to the scheduling of a new trip. In your case, after you landed with nothing on the schedule you were on long call. The trip assigned shouldn't have been less than 12 hours from the time of notification.