I agree with the above poster that you can not compare a military deployment to an airline job.

Any US airline job would be better than a military deployment. You could say the same thing flying at GoJet or Mesa.

Thank you for your service.

 

There are some pretty sweet deployments that I'd take over Mesa...

 

I agree 100% with the bold part. And as others have said, I truly hope we as a pilot group can work together to make that come true. Though my time at JB is much less than yours and BD, and I can certainly see the potential of becoming like Juiceless Joe© in a few short years, I am not there yet.

To be fair (and I have said this before), when BlueDriver states facts without all the negativity, I find his posts worthy of note. He is certainly a smart fellow, and has experience that others can learn from. He just makes it hard to listen sometimes is all.

Also, the point of my post wasn't about military service, just putting things into perspective. We have many here that served; most days, it was just a job. But every so often, it was a real adventure (often unwanted). Thanks for your support of veterans.

Yes, my time in 121 is obviously smaller than our non-military brethren. And I was very fortunate at my previous place, it was a great time to be there. Just as I feel JB is for me (and many others) today.

For all I know, I have flown with BD before and got along just fine with him. In fact, none of the CAs I have been paired with here have been all that negative, which is part of the reason I find the job as enjoyable as I do. Who you sit next to for 1-5 days at a time certainly has an influence on your outlook.

 

How are the new reserve schedules playing out. Can a top short call pilot get weekends off for NYC either plane? Do line holders ever bid down to reserve if they can’t hold a good line?

 

Your second question answers the first.

yes, top (senior) reserve bidders can hold anything they want off so long as they are on the contractually required amount of days.

yes, there are some senior folks who are local and have been line holders for 5-8+ years who choose to bid reserve. It is possible to bid reserve and hold every weekend off..after awhile.

 

Reserve is brutal. I’ve done 1hr and 10 minutes of block this month. When they called I had to reschedule golf and turn off my jacuzzi.

 

That's because we are in the slow months right now, it's going to change going into summer.

 

I know, I’m just celebrating my little wins. ;-)

 

You forgot to add that if you bid SCL you have virtually zero flexibility to move any days around, unless you want to spend an hour staring at a grid of numbers to be denied a swap from Monday to Wednesday because 1-day reserve is below minimums.

That being said I’m middle of the rung in the reserve bench and can hold weekends off. But mmmm there is still about 0 flexibility. 30 reserves on Tuesdays With 31 required makes it hard to swap days around, some how though, the weekends only have 8 people on it.

I could be missing the magic formula for moving days around.

 

I can also hold weekends off on reserve, and overall it's treated me okay. We have pretty bad reserve rules as a whole, but during the slow months it's cake. I've been able to swap a few days around during round one when needed, but not a ton. Once it's FCFS, however, it all gets denied.