When on resere do you bid your schedule or do they put you on when they want?

Depends on your seniority.

I'm not really sure what the above poster meant by his post. Yes, you pick your schedule, as much as your senority will allow it, at least for normal line-bidding companies. The Company doesn't just assign days of reserve. I'm not sure how reserve works with PBS.

If there are 20 reserves in base, there will be 20 reserve lines. These lines will have reserve days on them and will vary on which days reserve sits. Depending on the company, you can have 18-22 days of reserve per month. Some companies do up to 6 days of reserve at a time (so like Monday - Saturday). Here we generally do up to 4 at a time. When one is a "senior" reserve pilot (haha), you could get reserve Monday - Thursday and have 3 day weekends for the most part.

Now, obviously the M-Th reserve blocks will go more senior. When my base opened I was the lowest senority person there. I didn't even bother bidding . It wouldn't of mattered.

the reason i am asking is because i want to work it out with my current employer to be able to practice medicine a few days a month and wanted to know if it is possible to arrange reserve to do that?

It varies with the airline, but generally...

You would normally have 4-6 days on reserve, then 1-3 days off. It is possible to get called to do an overnight trip at the end of your last reserve day...in which case you would end up working on your first day off. You can usually safely plan on being free on your second and subsequent days off, so that should give you at least one or two days a week to moonlight without conflict.

Depending on how much notice your other employer needs, you might be able to call the airline first thing in the morning of a reserve day, find out the reserve depth for that day, and get released from duty if coverage is adequate...just depends on the airline.

Bidding reserve with PBS isn't too bad...it basically sums up that you bid for a line, if you don't get it, you do a Clear Sked and Restart and put in the days you would prefer off. Someone then hand builds the reserve sked after that. Make sure you read your contract regarding reserve scheduling. For us, we have to have at least 2 consecutive days off unless we waive it and we cannot work into our day off unless it's beyond company control (flight back to base gets cancelled due to weather). The rules are different everywhere, but one thing is the same...crew scheduling will mess with the reserves because 1. they're new and don't know any better and 2. they're sitting there with nothing to do. I personally will never accept a trip that works me into a day off.

When you ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY have to have the day off ... COUGH into the TELEPHONE !!!

That's the ONLY way someone at ANY seniority level can absolutely guarantee themselves a day off ... PERIOD





Later, CC

AND FURTHER MORE ...

Do you consider flying a part-time job ?

If you need to work on the side from the flying job, something is wrong with that picture ...

If you just want to work elsewhere and fly, something is still wrong, just not the same thing ...

Later, CC

Regarding Comair reserve -
You will get soft days off and hard days off. Soft days are moveable and scheduling can call you into work. Hard days are your only true days off.

You will be bidding only days off and preferred reserve window. The rest will be up to crew scheduling.

Good Luck!

They do the same thing at XJT. When you are on reserve you get to designate a block of days off as "immovable". If scheduling works you into your "soft" days off they have to restore the day off later in the month and YOU get to pick which day it is (with certain restrictions, like you cant put a day off in the middle of block of 4 days on).