As far as crashpads in Houston go, a couple of my friends have used this place before and enjoyed it. Take a look at the website and you'll probably see it's one of the nicer places you could stay when in IAH:

FuseLodge : Houston IAH Crash Pad!

If you commute, A reserve probably won't do much for you sorry to say. Nine hours just isn't enough. So, bid B reserve and start off with 4 more hours of pay (76 hours) for the month. In the PBS bid screen, start with "SET RESERVE LINE B" as the first statement.

After that, you can "bid" your schedule to look how you want it to in the first couple of groups. Sit down and figure out how many days off you will be entitled to for the month and how many movable/immovable days. Let's assume you are available the entire month for discussion.

First, your immovable days MUST be two blocks. It will say a maximum of two blocks so you would think that means one block is also OK. Negative on that. If you have 8 immovable days the most you could have is a block of 6 in your bid with the other two being somewhere else.

So you want to do as few as possible in IAH? Build 6 on, 2 off, 6 on, 2 off, etc, or whatever legally works (to include looking at the days you worked at the end of the previous month).

Then enter your schedule how you'd like it to look: AWARD Reserve days Dated 2 DEC to 7 DEC (as an example) followed by AVOID RESERVE DAYS 8 DEC to 13 DEC (this is how you bid for IMMOVABLE days...AVOID statement). Then at some point in your bid group you will have to bid for your movable days and that is AWARD MOVABLE DAYS DATED XX to XX. Helps to put these after your 6 reserve day request. Less likely to be moved or rolled that way.

You can get this specific if you want. It had worked in the past for me 50/50. Or you can just lay out your calendar and skip bidding for reserve days and just bid for the immovable and movable days. Then each other bid group maybe shift those days forward or back. Want the most days off at home? Def use your first couple of reserve bid groups to bid for those 6 immovable in a row on various different days. Then with subsequent bid groups go from 6/2 immovables to 5/3 then eventually to 4/4.

Hope that helps. May not be crystal clear what I wrote without you having used our system or see it in front of you.

If your CAL contract did not come with KY, get some!

I stayed there one month. It is No good. I would not recommend it. The other CAL guys staying there at the same time did not like it either.

that about sums it up.

You might not like it, but it's not totally made up. Section 25 Part 10.10 states that "trip trades or trip drops for the current or subsequent day will be subject to crew scheduling approval". This is specifically because the trip being dropped or traded might not match the call out periods which have already been assigned to the reserves.

Good point. What you've quoted "subject to crew scheduling approval" and phrases like that throughout the contract are so broad they can pretty much do anything they want. As such, policies are made along the way.

Just out of curiosity, what did people not like about it? Hard to tell by just a website, but it looks way nicer than any crashpad I ever stayed at.

Well Thanks, EWRflyer. Good stuff.

Although your immovable days must be in two blocks. You can only bid for 1 block of immovable days. If you have 2 "Avoid Work..." bid lines, the bid group will fail.