Funny thing I just discovered and want to make sure I'm not getting hosed... I was awarded a VTO for this month with nothing but R days on it (as you can imagine, I am pretty junior in the seat) and my 7 days of vacation blocked and counted as full days (42:00). My base RLG was 45:30, my accrued is 40:37, and my levelling after my first stretch is 49:32. If I read the following correctly:

4.H.2 - If a reserve pilot's R-day(s) is removed for vacation or training, other than initial, transition, upgrade (ITU) training, an R-day value shall be credited toward his leveling and RLG for each R-day removed.

I won't be leveled for the vacation hours and must pilgrimage to the crashpad for 4 days of channel surfing since I am still short of the RLG and the vacation won't be added to the leveling. Am I right and sad?

I learned that last October. There are numerous references in the contract about this issue, and some imply you will be leveled and some say you won't when awarded a VTO line consisting of reserve.

I sent all of the references to enforcement to get some clear answers. The bottom line according to enforement is you fall under all the rules of reserve when your VTO is given in reserve days, except leveling. Their arguement is you don't have specific reserve days removed, so hence, no leveling. If you want all of the references in the contract that you could argue for and/or against, PM me.

But this issue needs to be fixed next time!

Man, agreed! We need to add this to our list of things to fix - I'll send to my Rep. Guess I'll get to catch up on my reading and net surfing... Thanks for the info!

You should check Section 25 M. 1. g. Since you have exceeded your RLG (since you say you're leveled for 49:32) for the month, you should be finished.

BTW - If you are that junior, you should bid reserve with vacation, not VTO. A much better deal

Yes, you are correct. In hindsight, I should have taken ANY reserve line, but I bid the commutable ones and left probably 25 or so lines out. Still, I'm so junior I can barely hold any regular reserve line! I guess all the MEM guys who live there are soaking up the RES lines since we're currently fat in the seat.

I'm so junior I can't even hold reserve.

Regardless of what reserve line you hold, I think you should be able to move or drop r-days very easily given the current manning situation. Given, if you bid a reserve line you wouldn't want to drop any r-days because this would force you to pick up whatever slim pickings exist in open time and make you actually have to work! Which defeats the whole bidding reserve thing in the first place.

Um...you would think. Not so fast.

Evidently, having max open of 17, being 18 out of 20 on the reserve list, and running out of landing currency while putting butt dents in the sofa has no influence on the magical scheduling computer.


"Request denied due to Insufficient Reserves."


If reserves are so insufficient, how come I know that Oprah is back up to 250 pounds?

YUP! same thing happened to me...TECHNICALLY you were awarded a SECONDARY LINE, even though it was all R-days, it falls under VTO guidelines for vacation. So no leveling occurred. Furthermore, they continued to level me as though I had a full 85 hour month, not using the 43 hours I had remaining as the basis for the percentage of use. I brought this to both the unions and my reps attention. My rep couldn't believe it (really?) Anyway,for what its worth, I requested it be passed to the negotiating committee for the next contract...don't hold your breath

Well, I'll add my name to the "not pleased" list with my rep and see if we will all be pleasantly surprised...