Regional Pilots?
 

For A New Guy On Reserve What Is The Average Day Like?

Sit around and wait for the crew desk to call. If they don't call repeat the same procedure the next day. If they do call you go to work.

Wake up, make sure the cell phone is charged and not on silent. Stumble into the kitchen and make a bowl of cereal with some questionable milk and then sit on the couch in your boxers and watch some cartoons, Price is Right, Sports Center, The View, whatever. After some TV you might get ambitious and go to the gym. Its a good way to kill a few hours and it makes you feel like you did something. When you get home from the gym (make sure you shower at the gym, hot water at home is expensive) is a good time to have a bread sandwich for lunch. If you picked up someone's discarded paper at the gym, now is a good time to page through the want adds and see if there is anything you can do on the side to make a few extra bucks. If you get bored in the afternoon, you can always put on your uniform and go to the mall. Usually lots of soccer moms and MILFs there in the afternoon. After you get tired of that you might head home, stopping at Mickey D's for a feast from the dollar menu and call your buddies up for a beer (assuming you have enough time between duty periods). Pass out and repeat as necessary. Your experience may vary.

That made me chuckle.

It should make you weep because it's accurate. And it should make prospects run and get another job because it is what is just around the corner in our glamorous lifestyle if they join up!!

Just living the dream:D

I know...Im about to start sims and cant wait for RESERVE! (I hope you sense the sarcasm.)

How close do you have to be when they call? 30min? 1hr? I was just planning on living at my bayhome and being a fishing guide on the side. Use to be a waterfowl guide but I've been salt fishing way to much now.

Watch Toilet, I'm about to be constructive, don't blink!:D

Depends on what airline you are at. Here at XJT there are two kinds of reserve, short and long call. Short call reserve means you need to be able to report for duty within 2 hours of the call. Long call guys get 12 hours. Per the contract 10% of the reserve lines have to be long call. I live about an hour south of the airport in Houston and sat reserve at home. So I guess if you can get from your boat to the airport in 2 hours, thats the way to go. Otherwise, try and bid long call. I would have loved to spend reserve on a sail boat or something.

I have heard of reserve times at other airlines being anywhere from 90mins to 3 hours so it all depends.

Normal reserve at Air Wisconsin is a 2-hour call out. But we also have Long Call Reserve. But that is not really reserve and can actually go pretty senior. It is in fact a 36-hour call out period and these are usually filled in with trips where people have vacation or something like that.

Last month my line had 4 days of Long Call and I got used on all the days, but they told me way in advance that I would have the trips.

Normal reserve at AWAC is 2-hour callout. This is what new hires will get, and it could be for several months, depending on attrition and hiring. We have not had much movement for a few months so a lot of people have been sitting reserve for a long time.

At TSA, airport reserve means you have to be within 15 minutes of the gate. Home reserve gives you an hour and a half. The home reserves are the ones who generally get called first, since we try to keep the airport reserves for an absolute last-minute emergency.

I have been sitting reserve for almost a year now...WAIT, it is by choice :) I can actually sit at home since our reserve domicile is MCI. I have 90 minutes to get to the airport if I am quick called. However I have only been quick called 1 time since I have worked for this company. I have some months where I still get my check but was able to just hang out for 20 - 25 days of a 28 day bid. However, the past few bids have been rough and I only sat 2 days in the last 28 day bid. Probably due to timing out of other pilots and vacations in the holidays. If you have other things you like to do reserve can be nice. 95% of our reserve CA's can hold a line but choose not too for QOL. FO's are different...they just want to work...That just confuses me :)

So on these reserve schedules that people take by choice, do they pay the same as an actively flying bid? Or do you just collect per diem and the monthly guarantee? If the pay isn't much different, it would seem that there is some hope for us family guys (and you gals out there) to be home more. Or have I misunderstood the pay structure?

Xtremef150???
 

Xtremef150, Who Do You Fly For? I Would Like To Graduate And Stay In Kansas!

Most reserve lines have a reserve guarantee (usually 65-75 hours) and you get paid that no matter how much or how little you get called out. No Per Diem unless you're actually working. In most cases per diem ($1.50 - $2.00/hour Time away from base) can add up to an extra $400-600/month (tax free unless you go places where the IRS per diem is less than actual) and that can be significant especially on first year pay. Also, you are usually on call more days (18-20) than you would if you actually held a line (say 14-16 days/month). If you live in domicile it can sometimes be really good (you may only fly some turnarounds, etc) - if you live out of domicile then you need a crash pad and it ends being pretty bad.

Most of the airlines are working to get more productivity from everyone and no one wants to pay you to sit at home.

Reserve in general sucks. You're the company wh0re. It does have certain perks though, especially for pay. As long as we show up, we get 4 hours of pay. I had 3 days last month where all I did was show up for stuff that never happened and then commuted home and nabbed 12 hours for it.

Commuting on reserve has ups and downs. The downside is being bored as hell sitting in a crashpad and getting flown all over the system to pick up random legs/trips that no one wants.

The upside is crew sked will sympathize with your lowly exsistence, deadhead you out of your home airport instead of base, and you usually make it home on your last day of work. The entire time I sat reserve, there was only one day where I had to commute home on my day off. Now that I'm a line holder...I have to use days off for every commute since my line is almost completely uncommutable....but it pays more.

My buddy that is flying for Continental now said that when he was flying for Pinnacle and was on the reserve line he would bid flights on his reserve days off so he ended up making quite a bit more money? Does this ring a bell? How easy is it to do this?

Maybe if you didnt have a family already and didnt already have a second job like the National Guard wher eyou get a supplemental income

I plan on being a fishing guide once I get back home and living on the water lol. I always liked it.

Well, you do get less guarented days off, but sometimes you can get a lot more days off than a line holder, at least in our company. We do only get 76 hours paid a month unless your credit time goes over this. However, about 30 - 40% of the line holders don't break the guarentee anyway. This means if these guys fly 60 hours they still get paid the same as a guy like me that spent my time going to the gym or working on the house...basically enjoying myself. Just limits your drinking nights since you are on call.

Oh and you can request to be called last or called first based on your seniority and whether you want to work or not

SO, can you request to be called everyday if you want to ?

Yes. Normally, reserve callouts start at the bottom of the seniority list and work upwards. However, if you put yourself on the volunteer list (that's what it's called at TSA, at least), you can jump to the first on the call list - assuming nobody senior to you is on the volunteer list.

An hour to report at our regional. No airport reserve. The only thing that really sucks about sitting reserve is not getting per diem pay. Guess the call time just varies depending on how big the cities are that your airline has bases in. Just make sure you have a cell phone, some guys here are not willing to pay the cell phone bill and will sit at home all day long to be next to their "cheaper" phone! I'm cheap, thankfully not that cheap. Gotta go to the gym atleast once a mon... year, I mean.:D

True. Worse if your airline is staffed even somewhat properly and you don't ever break gaurantee and/or can't pick up open time in a day off.

Ok, this is an interesting discussion, but I am really not following it. You guys are using terms that I (a non airline pilot) do not understand.

So, in the interest of clarity, could you guys, in basic terms expalin to me what being on reserves mean. I mean I know it means you are on call, but you guys are talking about 2 hour reserves and 12 hour reserves.

1. Do yu have set days on and set days off?

2. Do you have to be at the airport on your days on in case they call you or can you be at your house?

reserve means you're a backup. you're there to fill in when someone calls in sick, goes on vacation, etc.

you have set days off (depending on your schedule that bid period) but generally fewer than people that have a flying line.

each airline is slightly different in how they want reserves to be situated. if you're airport reserve, you have to be sitting at the airport in uniform, ready to go.

the 2hr call means from the time they call, you have 2 hours to be at the airport ready to go. so if you live 45 minutes from the airport, you can sit at home while on reserve.

12hr call means that you need to show up in 12 hours once you get the call. generally its when they find out the need someone tomorrow, but don't want to waste a 2hr or airport reserve person, i.e., it's not an emergency fill-in

hope that helps

Thanks btwissel,

That helped a lot. So, its like being a roustabout (In the Police world, that swhat we call the new guys that works the beat of an officer that calls in sick or has a scehduled day off)

1. What is a bid period

2. WHat does flying thr line mea? I hear that ter m a lot. I assume it means each pilot bids a ertain work line. A Line being a work schedule (ex. Mon-Fri with Sat and Suun off). When I was a ramp agent, I thik we did something similar but that was in 1996 and I didnt really pay that much attention to it.

a bid period is just a period of time (usually 28 or 30 days) that you can bid for a schedule based on seniority.

and a line is just that, it's a line of the overall schedule for the airline for that month.

so for example and to pull it together, lets say you want the 12th and 13th of Feb. off.

you then bid a line that includes those days off. if you have the seniority to hold onto that line, you are awarded that schedule for that chunk of calendar. if not (say someone more senior wants the same line) you then get bumped.

most if not all bid processes allow you to bid in preference order, so you can bid as many lines as you want in order of how much you want them. that way, if the one line you wanted is taken by someone else, you aren't left with the crappiest line

Ok. I was going to ask what happens if you get bumped. Do you go down to the next line? and if so, what if that line is taken by someone senior? But like you said, you can bid many lines in order of your preference. Thanks for the help and forgive my typos. I tend to type fast