I have heard BOS 190 reserve has gotten worse. On the 320 FO side, we are still over staffed so I work a lot less even being junior. The reserve grid on the 190 hasn’t been green in months so I’m sure it’s a different story.


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I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it’ll flip from the Airbus being overstaffed to the 190 before you know it. They want a big fat buffer before they let more guys bail to the Airbus, which is why you see those big new-hire class photos of almost all 190 pilots. IMO, if you’re local to Boston and with less than 5 years of property, the 190 will afford you better QOL and possibly better pay if you can work the system a little.

 

Senior 320 guy here. I too am done with reserve too, maybe. Being a line holder at my seniority would get me 13 days off a month...same as reserve. Sure it'd be nice to know your schedule, but any day CS doesn't call is a win in my book.

As far as the silos. Looks good on paper, but the company controls the staffing ( no hard formula) and what's to say they don't direct everyone into silo B ( and then I go earliest because I'm senior...wtf?)? Zero required balance. The silos are today's reserve with pseudo divisions.

The loopholes in the contract are beginning to surface and it'll be interesting to see how the company implements/ interprets them.

Reserve rules have gotten better for junior folks, just like you said, because they had to. The union and the company knows these folks will be on reserve for a long, long, long time.

Thankfully i can go back to a line, but it would be 4-5 day trips including great destinations like SDQ or STI with absolute cr@p sleep schedules.

Flipping a coin.

 

Thanks for sharing your view from the Airbus side

 

How long have you been here? Only 13 days off a month? Doesn’t seem right since you said you were a senior fo.

 

Maybe he meant senior relative to the rest of the reserves

 

Woops, 320 CA. Senior amongst the rest of the reserve folk.

 

I wish we could think outside the box more (as a pilot group). If they made reserve great enough then it would go senior and no one would ever be forced to be on reserve. Just because it typically sucked in the past doesn't mean it HAS TO. Also, taking a newly minted FO on a plane that is new to them and making them work an unpredictable schedule with circadian rythms all over the place doesn't make sense from a safety perspective (neither does having them cram in their consolidation and then not touch the airplane for 60 days because we're running fat on reserves at the time).

 

What I find hilarious was how the union decided to go completely out of the box and make a whole new reserve format. Now all the loopholes I tried to talk about are coming back and biting us. Just remember this for the next round.

 

The loopholes jumped off the page for me the first time I looked at the TA... I've heard of some pretty sweet systems at other companies, not sure if they're still the same but it would be pretty easy to get reserve to be great.
Not that easy to get the company to agree to it, I concede. Then again, voting yes to the first TA doesn't help. Maybe I'll be in a place in my life where I can get more involved in the union during the next round of negotiations. If I can't count on the pilots to vote rationally then maybe I can assist the guys who are writing the TA in hopes of getting a better one in the first place.