I don’t really get this. It’s not “fixing a company issue”, it’s making certain aspects of the job better. No amount of extra cash would get me to upgrade into reserve, but if they fixed reserve I’d happily upgrade and take the extra cash. That’s a perk for me that happens to help the company with staffing.

These are work rule, pay, benefits improvements. Unless you mean work rule, pay, and benefits improvements but only for lineholders?

Just because it benefits the company doesn’t mean it’s bad for us and vice versa. Options are good. It would be nice to make reserve more viable for people who aren’t solely motivated by money from an upgrade or WB flying. Right now we have some incredibly cushy gigs and some incredibly crummy ones. You can make the crummy ones better without making the cushy gigs suck. Reserve could be something desired, not dreaded. We could tweak it so that those that want to make money can make money being on reserve and those that want less stick time can preference not flying.

Bad reserve rules are definitely our problem. They might not be for you today, but if we find ourselves in crummy economic times down the road reserve might not “be a choice” anymore and negotiating improvements there now will pay dividends.

 

the point is that the company should be motivated enough to improve reserve rules without us spending negotiating capital on it.

nobody says that reserve should suck in principle. People just say that the company should fix it anyway - maybe even via an LOA. But they are holding out because they think they can get something in return

 

I’m not arguing what needs to be done, I’m saying that we don’t need to pay for it by giving in other areas. If reserve was more palatable people would upgrade. I’d agree, money obviously doesn’t motivate people to bid into reserve as it is now. I’d personally bid from pretty senior NB captain back to NB FO before I dealt with reserve as it’s written. Reserve definitely needs fixed, but not at our expense. They seem to find the money to prop up the regionals, electric aircraft, etc. While they're at it, they can spend the money to fix their staffing issues, or deal with the consequences. Without a change it’s only going to get worse. The deliveries haven’t really started yet and we can’t get people to fill vacancies. My focus is on gaining the biggest gains for the entire group. That comes from tightening scope, improving pay rates, vacation and sick leave accrual and pay, retirement, reassignment protections, etc. The biggest gains for the group would be met by focusing on these things. Reserve needs to definitely be addressed, but at the company’s expense, not ours.

 

Using the term “we” is disingenuous… fact is every one of our pilots has a different opinion on how reserves should be run and what weight of emphasis should be given to reserve work rules in the next UPA. I’ve personally sat reserve on NBs and WBs over my entire career… and have sat reserve the last two as a 756 Captain flying global and domestic… and it ain’t really bad if you live in domicile. I also commuted to global reserve for 9 months… it was busy and not great for QoL but it was self inflicted so I didn’t complain. I personally (remember I said every one of us has an opinion) don’t want the union to put too much emphasis and bargaining chips on improving reserves if it takes away from the overall improvements to lineholder work rules. We should not make reserves IMO so advantageous that senior pilots are bidding it… that’s a$$ backwards on what we should be striving for.

 

Every trip in SFO and LAX is better than these EWR trips. The belief that west coast 756 are all “Redeyes” is BS. Just look at the latest trips in CCS. Very few ANFs. Almost every single EWR trip in the summer is an ANF followed by an extremely early wake up East Coast time. Both segments are ni WOCLs on most trips. Plus a bunch of 3 day 17 hour trips and 4 day 20 hour ones.

No thanks.

 

bid west coast… problem solved!

 

In general I am in agreement with this sentiment, but I would add one caveat. History has taught us that our industry can undergo long periods of stagnation. Is it fair for someone caught at the bottom of the seniority list during such a period to spend a decade or more on reserve?

Now mind you I'm just "spit balling" ideas here off the top of my head so perhaps there are good reasons not to consider such ideas, but I for one would approve of some system like what the flight attendants had. Don't know if they still have such a system, but when people ended up on reserve after a certain period of time then reserve went into rotation and senior people ended up on reserver once every 3 months. I would make the trigger period quite long as in 5 years or more, but none the less I see longterm sitting on reserve because of industry trouble as a real issue.

 

I don’t think the older bubbas are gonna bite off on that! I do think their needs to be some QoL improvements (SC/FSB, first day report, rolling days off, etc) for RSV… just don’t want a lot of bargaining capital making reserve so awesome that it’s a better gig than being a solid lineholder!

 

Creating some diversity within reserve would fix a lot. There should be some seniority WITHIN reserve. Even the “best” reserve month is still 12 days off. 12 days off isn’t enough

 

The people who are not taking NB upgrade are more sr. than a lot think. Sr. enough to hold lines, but even at 60% in category horrible lines. Fixing reserve enough that sr. Pilots would bid down may improve those lines if some super sr. Pilots want that, but that’s a big maybe. I have a buddy at another legacy that is a very jr. line holder, he is able to drop and trade almost at will (even, and especially, trade to achieve different days off) We have zero flexibility. As some note we are ALWAYS below coverage. You want to entice the mid sr. Pilots living the easy life on the WB? Give them some control and flexibility. The biggest advantage of being a line holder used to be what could be done AFTER the monthly award, not necessarily what you were rewarded. It was a huge change in QOL. Now it’s worse days off than rsv, and the same bad trips, but zero hope in moving things around… Of course it’s all about me lol, and since no one is asking, what would get me to move over would be 5.5 hr credit per day so that busy NB schedules compensate closer to productive WB ones. And more importantly that the company has to staff a % of rsv pilots and cannot manipulate coverage numbers to block line holders from being able to trade for ‘gasp’ different days off. Otherwise like me I suspect we will all be waiting till 40% where we can maybe get weekends off. And the ranks filling the CA slots will be those stuck on rsv anyways, so might as well get CA pay.