We had both previous contract.

70% felt differently.

 

yes, $30/hr.

 

More like 60 come August.

 

Agree. And it's not ideal, because those with some seniority should have two viable options to bid for, lineholder and a HUMANE reserve system. Like many, I sometimes bid RSV when it suits me. Because it's not terrible, depending. The JB RSV system stills needs improvement, but the NK one sounds brutal.

 

The grid system doesn’t require reserves to be flogged, but most of the the decent stuff was there has been dismantled over the years. The prevailing sentiment for years while growth was at an exponential rate was you spend 2 months on reserve as a new hire and maybe 3-6 months at captain upgrade and then the rest of your career as a line holder. I’ve met a few captains here that never spent a single day on reserve in either seat at Spirit (and didn’t bypass upgrade). So reserve QOL was never a top of the list item in previous negotiations, and few pilots batted an eyelash as anything good left was eradicated. Merger aside, there could be a number of reserve quality of life improvements to existing NK work rules that would have zero impact on the grid/dtz, but there’s not a ton of enthusiasm around spending negotiating capital on that… except for the bottom 20% of captains in each base.

 

All jokes aside, that's going to be a fundamental difference between our two work groups. There's plenty of senior people that did reserve at JetBlue because of how cushy and easy it can be. I myself am deliberately bidding reserve for a few months to get holidays off. I'm not trying to pick a fight. I'm just saying that there's going to be wildly different priorities there.

 

Now I know where the disconnect is. I thought you knew our reserve rules.

DTZ doesn’t work unless we have our reserve rules and our grid rules. DTZ comes at the expense of the reserve pilots. Having experienced longer than normal reserve time, it was okay, but I also knew how to bid to maximize my time with my particular family set up.

DTZ on its own is worthless on its own. RPA has DTZ, but no one is dropping anything since reserve over there can drop and pick up OT.

Where I think we can improve is within 48 hours of a trip. Line pilots can’t pick up a trip within 48 hours. I’d be for having reserve pilots proffer for or have aggressive pick ups. This would allow for reserve pilots who want to work, work. And pilots who don’t want to work, can stay home (within reason, of course.)

 

And there are very senior pilots here that bid specific reserve periods because of how rarely they are used, and with limited growth of certain bases combined with the added B6 senior pilots I think there will be more appetite for a decent desirable set of reserve rules on both seats. I was more trying to clarify how reserve diminishing here was more turning a blind eye than out of a fundamental need for it to be awful in order to support the grid system.

 

This 1000%. It would not impact line holder ability to drop, and allocates flying to those who really want it.

 

There is a fundamental disconnect here. The regional airline opinion that reserve is just something to suffer through is not going to fly with Blue pilots. We have a good number of pilots who reserve on purpose, or cycle between RSV and line when it suits them. At times RSV goes senior. We can drop or swap RSV days, and that's not going away in the name of "you'll be a lineholder someday" or "RSV only lasts XX years". The point of a collective union should be to create as many desirable positions as possible, not for some to get fat eating the rest.

Some of you seem want to leave things as they are with RSVs, and throw a small bone to them instead of allowing RSV to be 1st class citizens, that's just not going to happen.

And RSV times are increasing as our airlines get bigger and more mature. Gone are the days of the junior upgrade only being on RSV for months, that time is measured in years now.