Can you elaborate as to why? Just not being used much? And out of which base? And Thank you!

because if you play it right you can work one trip every couple of months and get paid to be at home.

I despised reserve and I live an hour from my base. I felt like the companies b!tch. Nothing says "you're my b!tch" like being reassigned an out and back turn while flying the last leg of your pairing back to your base and your lineholder captain gets 50% reassignment pay while you get nothing. Or you're passing through a base at the end of your pairing expecting to deadhead home only to receive a message from skeds saying that you've been "out of base" reassigned another day of flying. Or the unlimited SCs and FSs that skeds builds... go to bed at the bottom of a silo with no SCs or FSs left only to be awakened by a skeds phone call at midnight telling you that you have a SC/FS.

First world problems. In base lineholder > in base reserve > commute lineholder > commute reserve

I can't speak to Global reserve life. It sounds like rainbows and unicorns.

New hire commute from Montana
 

Greetings, I am going to be in an upcoming new hire class and just wanted to get any input that I could on my situation from any commuters that know the life. I will be a career commuter from western Montana, so my ultimate goal will be Denver as my hub. Do any current commuters out of Missoula or Kalispell know the grind? I am just trying to get an idea of what I am in for as a newb. Thanks!

nb reserve is definitely less stable. Too many times a lax or Pdx turn will pop up because some crew is late inbound. rarely happens on the WB.

Domestic / Narrowbody sucks at United because that's how 55 percent of the pilots and their union want it. After all, it's a choice, right?

how would you make it better?

definitely putting a cap on the amount of times the company can short call you would be a start. Am/pm short call lines. Extra money for FSB. I haven’t been on reserve in a while but I think I could only count on one hand the amount of times I actually got to utilize my long call. And I was on reserve for 2 years. Oh and Global reserve needs a complete over haul. Who only wants a string of 6 days where you can actually plan anything.

Just tell all the kids in your class not to act entitled and like they worked years upon years to get to united. Kinda getting tired of the 25 year olds thinking they paid their dues...Also, it would help if you guys/gals read "flying the line".

Increase the assignment window from 117 mins to something manageable. Caps on scheduling to fit the operation vs the availability of people (e.g. magical SC appearing in silos). Aside from that, I don’t remember enough about the particulars, just that when I hear what others do, my memory of what we had was terrible.