IAH reserve survival guide
 

New guy here...I live in SFO but will be commuting to RSV in Houston on the 737 until I can get into SFO (looks like it might take a while). The new reserve rules will make life easier in August, but it's been a decade since I commuted to reserve and I know pretty much nothing about the IAH area.

I'd deeply appreciate any tips, from smarter bidding strategies to tips on hotels with good crew rates. (I'm not into the idea of doing a crashpad again). Looking at the flight schedule in August I think I'll be ok to sit rsv from home in SFO (there are 8-9 nonstops a day) but obviously I'll play it conservatively since I'm a noob. Any tips on Houston or reserve life in general would be much appreciated 🙏

Oh, HELL no.

If you’re on probation don’t even think about trying to sit IAH reserve in SFO! The SFO-IAH flights are oversold in both directions year round and a lot of guys (many of them very senior) have to do the two-leg hop thru AUS (or wherever else) to get to IAH.

(I know some guys will reply that the commute isn’t that bad but you’re better off ignoring them, especially during probation.)

Can’t help with much else but the importance of being in position and ready for anything while on probation can’t be overstated. Once you’re done with being a probie then you can add the additional stress of trying to get a seat to and from SFO.

isnt there the option of being 18 hour call out now? I commuted to ewr from sfo and sat at home when they left me on long call. I would say you could sit at home but you have to be highly aware of where you are on the list (takes some work learning how the list works) and what the loads are, along with weather, delays etc. you might be able to stay at home the first day of your block fairly often, since you are at the bottom of the list.

Lots of CPOs like to say contract doesn't apply on probation...Not sure if IAH is one of those but I wouldn't count on repeated use of the commuter clause to keep your employment safe on probation.

Fair points to be sure! With an 18 hour callout starting in August, I've run the numbers and there's never a time of day (when CS calls) when there would be less than 3 nonstops that I could make, that would get me in on time. I also have a truly ludicrous number of miles (well north of a million UA miles) and the one way awards are approx 13-25K miles per ticket. I'll play it safe to be sure, but given that I will essentially be buying tickets, I feel a bit more relaxed about that. Without that option, I agree, I'd just go sit in IAH on my RSV days.

With that said... Any tips on the Houston area would be great. Or reserve tips...a buddy suggested trying to APU trips that start late the next day, giving me 24+ hours to get to IAH. I also have no clue how the FIFO order works so any tips there would be amazing...

Would love to learn more about how the list order works.. I've read the contract and the reserve guide and I'm still flummoxed.
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Getting the reserve gouge would probably help you a lot. It’s probably available on the NH FB page or ask your NH mentor.

6-C
“Nothing in this Agreement shall be construed to prevent the Company from ending a Pilot’s
employment during his period of probation regardless of his position on the Seniority List.”

If you are on probation and you use the commute clause too many times you can and will be fired. It’s happened before in more desperate hiring times, it damn well will happen again during slower hiring periods. But you do you!!!

Go to CCS ~~> Trading ~~> Crew Companion. Go to your account settings/profile in the top right and make sure your category is set correctly (you'll only have to do this once... I just can't remember if the system is smart enough to automatically figure out your BES the first time you use it). Then go to the home screen and click on "reserves available" or go to the IAH 737 F/O tab and hit "reserves available" from there.

At the top of the reserves screen, obviously check that you're looking at the right base and then you can set the number of days shown to the maximum of 6, but the most important thing is to make sure the button for "Silo/FIFO" is selected. This is the way the schedulers look at the list and is the only way that really matters or is even useful, unless you're trying to figure out some specific data point.

Now, for each day of reserve (differentiated by background color), you've got "the list" sorted first by number of days available (aka "silo"), and then by FIFO (first in, first out) order within each silo. Simply put, FIFO order means that whoever did something most recently gets reset to the bottom of the list (caveat: people on their first day of reserve are generally on the bottom, even below recent workers). By "doing something," I mean any assignment, whether that's a trip, unused short call, field standby, or whatever. Lots of local reserves will pick up SCs in hopes of not being used, and then they'd be reset to the bottom of the list even though they just sat at their house all day.

The important thing to understand about the list is how many people you have above you who would protect/shield you from receiving an assignment you don't want. This can be a tricky game that's played with incomplete information. Realistically, though, you'll be looking at trips and SCs while trying to decide whether or not to pick something up. Trips might be in open time days in advance... but they might also pop up at the last second. SCs generally remain at the same time from day to day (see the short call matrix here), but the silo they're built for can and will change.

As an example, say there are 4 people available in a 1-day silo, and you're #3 on the list out of 5 in the 2-day silo. If there are no open trips that need to be covered, you might get away with going unused on long call that day, because they're probably not going to build 3+ SCs in the 2-day silo (for IAH, they'll probably build 10, but they'll be spread out across all 6 different silos). Different example though: say there's only 1 guy in the 1-day silo and you're #3/5 on the 2-day list, and in open time there are 3 1-day trips and 2 2-day trips. If no lineholders pick anything up, scheduling is going to use the 1-day guy to cover one of the 1-day trips, but then they're going to have to move to people in the 2-day silo to cover those remaining 1-day trips that are open. There are a lot of different ways it can play out, but the idea is to predict the future by matching available reserves to open assignments in order to judge what you might get stuck with, if anything. If it looks like you're definitely going to get something no matter what, then you might as well APU the most desirable one and call it a day. You'll start to recognize the patterns and get pretty good at this pretty quick if you pay even a little attention to it.

Houston area: its in texas. that should tell you all you need to know.