RAP by RAP. You’d only be sitting out of base for the length of your Reserve Availability Period (RAP).

I didn’t read this entire thread, but I’d have a hard time believing they’re sending people to sit out of base when we’re so overstaffed.

 

Maybe not yet, but it sure looks to me like they will need to for maybe a month due to training delays. This is just at one particular base where it appears they had an unexpected exodus, and they sent a huge number of people from the most recent new hire class there.

 

Which base?

All the new hires get told they will only be awarded specific bases depending on what the numbers look like at the start of their class. They are also told this doesn’t mean anything, because while they are on a delay they will be able to bid for the actual base they want and there’s a decent chance it will be awarded by the time they return to Indoc. Essentially, scheduling just throws them wherever there are lots of vacancies just to get them in the system.

There can’t be an “unexpected exodus” from a certain base. Scheduling will not allow people to move if it puts them in an understaffed situation.

For expample, let’s say you want out of LGA and you’re the least senior for available reserve needed. No matter how many vacancies there are at any other bases, you won’t get awarded anything if no one has a bid in for LGA to replace you.

 

Everybody in the last class got Pittsburg or Columbus.

 

Ok so this is actually more common than you might think. Recently there was a vacant with only PIT listed for FOs. This isn’t because that base is understaffed. It’s because no other base can take on anymore FOs with the overstaffed situation. People get CMH or PIT in class allll the time. My class started with like 8 people in Columbus and before we even went to OE there were only two left there (the rest already switched bases, or back filled into a different vacancy)

 

My experience has been....

I'm EWR based, been on reserve since IOE (August, and my choice at this point). The 4 times I sat out of base reserve it was because they only had one leg for me to fly. Say an IND FO gets sick before his/her last leg of a pairing from EWR to IND. The put me on that flight, have me sit out of base reserve for the next day in IND and then fly me home that evening.

The one and only time they asked me to fly on out of base reserve was to work a flight home earlier than my scheduled dead head. Just got off work earlier.

 

This reminds me of another thing I don’t quite understand... As you mentioned, the most recent FO vacancies were 8 spots at PIT, and they assigned 25 (out of 36) of the latest new hire class there. Only 2 of the vacancies were filled, but then they let 12 of the 25 new guys go to other bases.

 

Not at all. They so over did it last year with new FO classes there is a huge surplus. The training delays won't really put much of a dent in it. Even with the attrition of FOs to other places and upgrade, when training ramps back up again we will still have more FOs then when we did before the hiring boom.

 

I get that, but if they actually award the number of lines they’re expecting to in March, there will be (unless I’m reading something wrong, entirely possible) only a single-digit number of trained FO’s for reserve. There’s another 20 or so at the bottom of the list, but those will not be through training until May/June. I guess the answer is to make the line pilots fly more hours?

 

While you are on reserve at Republic, are you allowed to pick up trips if they are available?

Additionally, say you are EWR based but live in DCA. Could you pick up trips out of DCA even though you are EWR based?