September Reserve
 

Hey folks,


DCA 737 FO here.

I need as much time as possible off in September. I was considering bidding reserve, but I definitely don't want to get called out very much. Historically, how busy are the reserves in September?

It’s always a roll of the dice doing that. It’s not seniority based. The guys who are on reserve full time will likely know the system better than you.
I’d say bid a low time line and do what is necessary.

It drops off everywhere a lot once school starts. They offered significantly many full month and partial month COLAs due the reduction of hours. Look at Crew Resources to see if your base is affected and the award to see if many took advantage of it. If they did not there will be a surplus of reserves. You might also get a clue by comparing the g lines for Jul Aug and Sep. If it moved a lot to show many more reserves then they may not have gotten all the COLAs they hoped to get and there would be excess reserves. If so the trip pool will show overstaffed days and you might be able to do some PRDPs Personal Drop No Pay. I’ve been able to do up to 4 of those during kids in school months.

If you really want to get into the weeds look at the SSC monthly reports for Jul Aug Sep of LAST year. Attachment 2 chart shows PPM and it drops off like a cliff in Sep meaning they don’t need to resort to premium flying because they haven’t run out of reserves meaning reserves aren’t maxed out. Attachment 6 shows hours flown per reserve and % of days used per reserve and both drop significantly in Sept.

OR just do what Cal73 suggests. If they are overstaffed the reserve pool will be positive and line holders get first crack at trip trading. You might be able to drop an entire trip or two outright. The last 10 days of Aug for DCA 737 FO currently shows 8 of those days significantly over coverage even though trip trading has been going on for over two weeks, showing the back to school effect.