Have to give yourself one flight.

I like our reserve a lot. Don’t know how it compares to other carriers but I’ll often bid it in leu of a line. I live in base however. Long call is 12 hours, short call is undefined. So if you’re in Nyc and need 3.5 hours to report, so be it. We use a bucket system so the more you fly, lower bucket you go into for getting called again. Vacation credit shows up as flight time too, so if you have a week vacation in the beginning of the month, you start the month with 25.40 hours and in the lowest bucket. It’s very feasible to only get one trip or nothing all month in this scenario (probably not during the summer busy season). Short-call reserve plus a week of vacation also nets 89 hours min guarantee in a 31 day month. That’s a moving target depending on number of days in a month. You also have options to pass on trips, depending on who else is in your bucket.

“Sick if needed” is great too. Its exactly what it sounds like. You’re on reserve and get sick. Don’t want to use sick time if you weren’t going to be used anyway. Call in sick if needed and you’ll only be docked sick time if they actually needed to fly you. A good variety of trips on reserve ranging in length. Lots of out and backs, in my bid status anyways. Had a busy month lately but only spent 3 nights in a hotel all month. Just a crap shoot really.

We have over guarantee flying for reserves, and Premium OG which is time and a half. Depending on how bad they need you. Obviously we haven’t seen too many of those lately as we’ve been flying a 50% schedule most of last year. Should start picking up again though.

I read a lot of our own pilots on here who seem to have no shortage of things to complain about. Maybe commuting is taking a toll on them. I live in base, and I’m honest when I tell you that I wouldn’t trade my job for any pilot job in the world.

I’ll agree with most of this. Reserve isn’t horrible. But I do miss the airways days of not having to check schedule finishing long call assignment, so you basically couldn’t show before 24 hours after an assignment. But I don’t know what the other big boys have in terms of work rules for checking schedules after a long call assignment.

Ill catch a lot of spears for saying this...but our reserve system seems decent compared to what I know of the other majors. We have dedicated Long and Short call. Yes they can transition LC to SC 5 times a month and must pay you .5 hours pay for doing so. Usually happens once a month to me. On day one we can’t be assigned a trip with a sign in before noon (DAL is 1000 IIRC).

We have groups for assignment purposes. Each group is based on approximately 10 hours of flying time. So a pilot with zero time flown that month is in group 1 a pilot with 12 hours would be in group 2, 24 hours group 3 etc. the schedulers will use the lowest group pilots first and it will be based on seniority within the group, so sr pilots can pass if there are enough reservists. The groups prevent the jr pilots from having to do all of the flying.

sick if needed is one of the best things we have over the other bigger 3(not sure about Southwest)...our 60hrs of sick time a year is a joke for junior guys, senior guys with 500+ hours of sick time love our sick bank rules/payouts, but if you are just starting out good luck not calling in sick for 3 years to build up your bank...Commuter policy with 1 flight needed is nice but it of course is not paid if you can't make it. Being able to drop or trade down to zero or how low you want to go on your line is nice and not sure if others are allowed to do this...Short call rsv with no call out time in any base is really nice, and not having ready or airport standby rsv is good too( I believe UAL does)​​​​​...IMAX is one of those things were you are clearly all about it or could care less, I will say it is seniority depended on your bid category and is like having a 2nd full time job to make it work(not my thing but others love it)..Getting an Over Guarantee trip on your last off day during a rsv month is pretty sweet..example your last day off of stretch is Sunday and they call you for a 4 day trip, the whole 4 day trip is paid above your rsv guarantee and you burn 3 rsv days with pay that is on top, pretty good but sure others have something similar...the list of things that suck is longer but everyone remembers the **** they don't like more...

oh and I will add that our junior guys get a little more vacation time then the other guys early on but I think the senior guys at DL and UAL get more, so we will probably sacrifice the younger for the senior guys at some point 😉

What I’ve also noticed is that there are quite a few contractual items you don’t get to enjoy if you’re a commuter. When you’re on your trip and get reassigned because of weather or mx into a commute busting sequence, you get ****ed. For some the first instinct seems to be to come to APC and tell everyone that AA is just a big regional. Btw a schedule integrity solution was offered in the company’s section 6 opener in 2019 if you recall.

Best: Whatever part of the contract that says the company will shovel copious amounts of cheese down our throats every flight. Agree with the reserve comments above too.

Worst: Having a line and being treated as a reserve pilot via reassignment mid sequence. Also our PBS software feels like the developers were the lowest bidders. Very nuanced and takes practice and mistakes to really learn

This literally just made me lol. If I have another cheese plate and turkey sandwich crew meal I’m going to start mooing. To be fair, the hot meals pre COVID were better. Let’s hope for their return soon.

and my wife wonders why I will never eat a turkey sandwich on my off days...

What is the ability to drop to 0 hours of flying month after month at AA, UA, DA, and SWA?