We only do that the day prior. Once your reserve block starts there is no leash. You have to answer the phone. Even to the point where I would call them if I was "away from my phone" commuting. You do not want an "unable to contact." That's an insta trip to CPO. Maybe things have changed with the new Long Call lines. But certainly when on short call.

There are a few different ways of doing this. Say it's Monday, and you want to fly on Tuesday. Use CCS on Monday morning to see what's in open time for Tuesday. If you go to trading>seniority trip trades you can enter either the pairing number that you want, or specific criteria, like a four day signing on after 12:00, e.g. You can also can set multiple bids and rearrange them as you like. At 10:45, all of those requests are compiled and assigned by seniority (at this point you are competing with line holders as well). At or after 11:00, the trips left over can be picked up on the Reserve Aggressive Pickup page, first come, first served. It is preferable to use criteria instead of specific pairing numbers, because there might be a trip that someone more senior to you drops, in order to get that trip that was in open time, and then you would be assigned their old trip if it meets your criteria. As long as everything's legal and contract compliant, crew scheduling doesn't get involved. Crew Companion makes this all a lot easier, and you can also see there if anyone else wants that trip by clicking on "desired." Don't forget to check the box that prevents line holders from stealing it.

This is great info! Three questions:

1) Does the 1045 run immediately let you know if you got the trip?

2) So if you don't get a trip in the 1045 run, you just hop over to the Realtime page (or the Reserve Aggressive Pickup page??) and try again from what's left?

3) What's Crew Companion? I haven't heard of it before...

Thank you!

1. Not instantly, but within 5 - 20 mins or so.
2. yes, but I think that reserves need to use the aggressive pick-up page and line Holders use the realtime page.
3 CCS - Trading - Crew companion : it is an easier- to- read interface with the CCS system. A previous post referred to it; it is valuable because only there can you display the reserve availability list ordered by silo length.
4 You're welcome.

All of the above is correct and great info, but honestly, don't waste your time messing with the trading and pickup pages in CCS. They are ancient, they're hard to read, they're not user friendly, and they actually work worse than Crew Companion does in that some types of trades or pickups are blocked if you have certain codes like VSRM on your schedule.

Use Crew Companion for everything (get there via CCS -> Trading -> Crew Companion). It is, like Long Haul said, essentially just an interface that interacts with CCS for you, but it is infinitely easier to use and read.

To try to APU an assignment, go to the Trade Board within Crew Companion. Check at the top that your filters are set correctly. If you're on reserve, make sure all of the "non-flying assignment" boxes are checked so that things like short calls show up on the list. I'd also recommend showing open trips, open trips owned by reserves, and potentially open trips, but you don't need to worry about showing lineholders' pickup requests, drop requests, or trades. To try to pick something up, you can use the buttons at the top or just click on an assignment and hit "shop trip" or "shop assignment" or something like that on the right, and it'll automatically take you into the screen to create a pickup request (which, again, can be created either for a specific assignment or using criteria like "give me a short call but only if it starts between 1300-1600"). After the system gives out assignments in the 1045 LBT run, which takes no more than 5 minutes, those assignments will disappear from the Trade Board and anything left (or anything that pops up after that) is up for grabs to whoever has the fastest fingers (and meets silo criteria, legality criteria, etc).

Absolutely true, all of that. Crew companion is way better.

I have a buddy who had 7 backup flights to base his second month on on the line at UAL and missed a trip because of Wx delays, cancels, getting bumped from all flights etc... CPO said too bad, commuter clause doesn't apply on probation, got a missed assignment... if he got 2-3 more on probation and he was toast.

Thank you for the reply. I am somewhat surprised the leash for phone contact is not longer. By requiring immediate contact the company insures under FAR117 that you are not at rest on long call. I assume your system releases you to rest after a notification for a period of time to generate the required rest prior to report.

That is correct, you are not at rest on Long Call. On rare occasions it causes the company some headaches for the required 30hr prospective rest requirement. For individual trips you don’t have issues because the long call out time gives you required rest between callout and show time.

This is super helpful! Thank you so much for this, and to everyone else who's provided tips here. Now if only I could actually get SFO on the next vacancy bid (I'm not having any luck with base trades because nobody in SFO wants IAH). LAX or LAS, the same issue.applies...it would appear that SFO is no longer the junior narrow body base at this time. In the meantime, yeah, I'm just going to plan on using a bunch of miles to get on one of the three red-eyes to IAH the evening before my first reserve days, and try APU'ing stuff as best I can. I really appreciate everyone's advice!