might make a few guys a little less peaved about getting JM'd

 

I feel bad for y'all in scheduling - honestly. I've never gotten bent with a scheduler because just like everyone else, crap rolls downhill and on the Comair food chain you guys and gals are the dung beetles and so are we.....except we've got a working agreement that affords us protections. I don't know what the folks in planning are doing but the directives they receive certainly can't be helping you folks out and we could trace a lot of the issues all the way up the organizational chart.

On a similar note, I still can't understand why it is that with such an enormous percentage of pilots on reserve (even with LC1 & LC2) that we're burning through the entire list EVERY DAY. Are there that many displacements, sick calls and ferry flights?

As for the LC1/LC2....I can see where that doesn't help you staff when it's most needed, even the long call reservists are being used past 75 hours/month. And oh yeah...love the avatar. Maiden.

 

I think we burn through reserve so quickly because we have a lot of people on ready reserve. If you assign every available pilot a ready reserve on a particular day and the y are not used within the ready reserve window, they become useless. I’m not sure who decides on assigning ready reserve, but what they are essentially doing is changing the availability of a pilot from 14 hours to 6. You are cutting availability of reserve crews more than 50%. But what do I know? I’m just a furloughed pilot.

 

Here is part of the problem. So we have 5 ready reservists at the airport and 2 SC guys at home. The short call guys at home are suppose to be called before any ready reservist is given an assignment. The problem is that the company sees it as taking a delay by calling the SC guy and therefor uses the ready guy. I don't think that this is the way the contract is written.

Twice last year the company tried to junior man me as a line holder while there were not only reserves at home, but there was a ready at the airport. The chief told me that they liked to hold on to ready reservists early in the night in case they would be needed later. I laughed and then told him, that they couldn't junior man me with reserves available and then I told them that I would be at home and hung up the phone.

I remember a buddy of mine standing up at one of Fred's meetings just before the bankruptcy and asking why our reserve system isn't being used as a reserve system and why it's being used as another type of flexible line. Fred just replied that he wasn't going to reply to such an attack. An honest question and the CEO at the time wouldn't even talk about it.

 

That reserve pilot is still good for 14 hours, it just depends when his or her duty day has started. If you are pre-notified, then they are just forced to get your day going within that 6 hours, but once they've got you, then you are good. I'm sure they've looked at the historic percentage of reserve callouts and see that most are called out within the 1st 6 hours anyway.

 

Well what he's saying..is that when the massive amount of readies don't get used, and once that 6 hours of RR is up..they're done for the day..leaving them "useless".

 

I see. So you guys are saying that our ready reserves aren't even being used for the most part?

 

I understand what you guys are saying but my question had more to do with the "demand" side of the reserve equation -- why are so many reserves being used at all? Is it because pairings have been held back after the SAW and subsequently hidden in open time only to be parsed out to reserves later?

Keep in mind too that displaced lineholders go to the top of the availability stack before reserve lineholders, with the associated contractual limitations of course.

 

Well i remember I sat my 6 readies every month without fail..and i got used MAYBE three or four times in ten months while sitting ready.

 

I agree, I was JRF and VERY RARELY got used on a RR