The juice isn’t worth the squeeze to be a junior CA on the narrow body. The pilots peeling off for junior CA or WB FO means a new hire on the NB gets senior, and quick.

For example, an FO I flew with, who has been here for 2 years, already has a sweet schedule on the 737. 17 days off, good trips, some holidays at home, etc.

If he were to upgrade, it would be nothing but reserve or 90 hour lines with redeyes - for years.

If 737 CA paid significantly more than WB FO I’d understand. But it doesn’t. Why put up with the pain when you can hang out and really not make much less?

 

Difficult to predict when you're going to get hit with multiple short calls and field standbys a week in advance. Or even a day or two in advance. Or when you finish a short call at 10pm, get released from short call, and put on another one the next evening. Or booking a ride home when multiple days off can be rolled. Then there are reassignments. Positive space commute would help with folks that wouldn't mind commuting to a line for better seniority. But for reserves the positive space commute doesn't make reserve that much more palatable.

Positive space commute would definitely be an improvement, but the reserve system is the larger problem. Hopefully both get addressed.

 

I can't imagine reserve not sucking even with some tweaks. Reserve going senior is pure fantasy. We are grossly understaffed, the awful pairings aren't going away (day overs, redeye, cle overnights), and the non profile reserves guarantee the rest of the reserves are working every holiday... fixing short call abuse and field standby is nice but it isn't rainbows and unicorns.

 

Wait, we fly to cle?

 

Pure FSB and SC lines that pay 90 credit hours would be an improvement. And already in the contract. Except the pure SC lines only pay 76 hours. We used to actually have pure FSB lines built back in the 02-03 time frame. 90 hours credit and commutable on both sides almost always. Utilizing these would be an improvement and would save the crew schedulers a ton of time having to build SC's and FSB's. Utilizing these would also make commuting to reserve easier to plan. We don't utilize them because they want us to pay for the improvements. We already paid for the pure FSB and SC contractual language. But we'll have to use negotiating capital to improve the reserve system, again. And fix the unfilled vacancy problem while we do it.

 

We will know Friday! I expect full PPU type incentives for reserves picking up trips or being assigned. Should make it at least go a bit more senior.

 

Wouldn’t that make reserve suck MORE for commuters? Getting stuck in a crash pad while senior dudes cherry pick all the open time doesn’t sound like an improvement.

 

I like Kirby, but his solution to most problems is throwing money at theoretically short term problems. Any reserve foxes are likely to be QOL neutral/negative for pilots, but allow for money making during high demand months.

Making reserve months 70 hrs, but 16 days would drastically increase QOL for a commuter, while decrease the cost. This however would require an appreciable number of additional bodies (a fixed cost).

OR

They can allow reserves to pick up PPU on their reserve days and/or fly on their days off (variable cost). HUGE increase in earning potential, and manpower positive for the company as well.

I suspect this contract will have low hourly rate increases, with massive short term earning potential while we’re short staffed. All pairing adjustments become “untriggered reassignment,” etc. As long as we’re growing, he’s happy to have slimmer margins, when we slow down, the additional pay (labor cost) provisions that are built in to our co tract will dry up. The old chess V checkers thing

 

The only system I could envision to make reserve somewhat attractive would be to make it a quasi line with
- no duty before 12 noon on day one
- company paid airport hotel for every day
- ability to trade reserve days via crew companion rather than being at the whomp of CS

in that world every day could be FSB / SC - if you can sit in your company paid hotel room.

 

how about being able to pick up a trip before 11am the day prior.