Wide Body Reserve
 

Looking for some insight on what reserve is like for the people that got wide body FO as a new hire. Is the reserve stretch as long as the new hire captains?

As with anything it depends on fleet and base. SFO and EWR are most junior. A very quick glance at the December bid awards shows the most junior line holder to be around 8 months on property for SFO 787. SFO 777 as well as both 777 and 787 in EWR were around a year and a half. This is, of course, skewed a bit because of the holiday month. Also, as with any PBS system, it will depend on how you bid and what you’re willing to give up to get a line. Lastly, there was just a large displacement bid for EWR 777, so that will change the landscape for a bit as well.

I would suspect that you’d get a line faster as a new hire wide body FO than you would as a new hire captain. Also, at this time, any newhire getting a captain award will spend a year in the right seat before they upgrade. So, depending on their base, could be a line holder for some of their first year.

FWIW, there haven’t been any widebody spots offered to newhires in 7-8 months.

This is technically true, but widebody slots have still been going extremely junior on vacancies. New Hires may not be able to get WBFO on Day 1, but it’s still fairly common for the first plane a NH gets trained on to be WB. It depends on your timing of Indoc v vacancy.

Reserve QOL as a WBFO is almost entirely dependant on where you live relative to your base.

If you can stand reserve (2.5 hour call out) while working out at the gym, golfing, finishing the honey do list, etc then it is much more palatable than if you are a commuter.

New reserve rules won't be fully implemented until next Aug, so we will have to wait and see how those effect things. Definitely should improve things, but we will wait and see.

In the mean time you will always "start" as a long call reserve. Unfortunately, they can convert you to SC with the proper notice which is between 10 and 13 hours ish notice depending on when they are notifying you of the assignment. Getting a short call just means you will need to be within 2.5 hours to report so you bring your cellphone with you wherever you go and you won't be able to have a drink whenever you want. I already bring my cellphone with me everywhere and I am trying to cut back on my day drinking, so neither of those is a big deal since I am already well within the 2.5 callout when at home.

If you are going to commute, then getting a Short Call can suck. You would need to commute in so you could make the 2.5 hour report and depending on the time of the SC, that could mean several extra nights away from home in a crash pad or at a hotel (both on your nickel) throughout the month.

You can also get your days off "rolled" for an Intl trip. The rule on that changed with the new contract so they will first have to offer the trip at 50% premium pay before moving a day off for a reserve, and then if they are going to have to move the day off of a reserve, they have to move the day of a reserve that volunteers because they are now paying the reserve a somewhat substantial premium if they move the day off. So, this will theoretically make it less likely that anybody gets their day off moved involuntarily.

All reserves can pick up open trips at 1045 am that depart the next day. The trip you pick up using the computer has to be equal to the days you have available or 1 less than the days you have available. So, if you have 4 days available, you can pick up a 3 day or a 4 day if they are unassigned. You can also pick up Short Call assignments in the same manner whenthey are built. The contract has some additional pay if they build the short calls late in the day or if you pick up an early short call on your first day of availability.

The reserve rules are obscenely complicated, so it would be impossible to cover every way in which they interrelate. Suffice it to say, reserve is not so bad as a local, but not so good as a commuter