Asa?

[Ganja60Heavy]

Boiler-dude,

I can't always help myself with sarcastic posts (re: my post above).....I have a modern internet-only version of Tourette's Syndrome.

So I guess I owe you a serious reply here.

Reserve blows at any airline, but especially at ASA since the scheduling department seems to pay bonuses to its personnel based on how inefficiently they utilize available pilots, compounded by how miserably they treat those airmen.

However, you might survive IF:

1) You will need a crashpad, and you will spend 20+ days a month in Atlanta. Atlanta blows, so bring lots of coloring books.

2) Commuting will likely become even more difficult due to flight cuts, and due to the likely change to S3C priority for ASA (which means a fat retired L-1011 captain and his 28-year-old 5th wife and their 6 stepkids going to Aunt Tillie's for the weekend will bump you, in uniform, from getting to work.)

3) You will get NO "give-and-take" from crew scheduling, so if they call and ask you for a "favor", and you think "great, then they'll remember me and know that I'm cool and return the favor one day".....well it ain't gonna ever happen! My advice: follow the FAR's and Contract closely from day one and learn the rules ASAP to prevent from having to explain to the FAA why you busted a reg. (and "because scheduling told me to" ain't worth squat in an FAA investigation.)

 

[ASApuppy]

Well, I only looked CR2 ATL for you. ATR is going away in 2007, so expect that list to be wierd from here on out. CR7 should not even be looked at until it pays(year 2) to go there as it will always be more senior.

Anyways
to be assured of hardline, March 7, 2005 hire date.
to be assured of relief line, May 16, 2005 hire date.

Now for my disclaimers,

This comes after a year of buying a lot of airplanes. We have 6 CR2 scheduled to be delivered by the first half of next year. Management has said that they don't even want them. They want bigger. There are more 70's coming to Skywest Inc. It has not be said where they are going, but, I would guess that the majority of 70's for Delta will go to ASA and the 70's for Yo-nited will go to Skywest. That would be close to even distribution. Both carriers need to grow to keep costs on par.

When I was hired several years ago(pre 9/11) the picture looked like this:

upgrade on Brasilia 7 months
upgrade on jet 24 months
reserve 3 months on jet, 1 month on Brasilia
attrition was 60 a month

reality for me was 18 months on reserve. Upgrade is now 4 plus years. Attrition is about 10-15 a month now. Many of those have been junior guys.
Point is, its hard to figure out. If you plan to commute on reserve, plan on only going home for your 4 golden days. Consider any extra time at home a bonus.

 

["GO AROUND"]

I think at the moment reserve is running 6 mnths to hold a relief line about a year to hold a hard line, but that can change. Reserve is not so bad if we are properly staffed. You just have no idea if you are going to be called for an assignment until they call or you just happen to see it online. Can be as little as 2 hrs to as much as a days notice. There is no seniority based reserve at ASA which is what really bites. Very poor control of your life in addition to other things.

 

[BoilerUP]

Thanks for the info fellas, once again I really appreciate it!

There is no seniority based reserve at ASA

That sucks...do you at least have the right to declare for first or last call while on reserve? If I'm gonna be down there I'd rather be flying than sitting around, but it sounds to me like that system would make it more convenient to extend somebody than call a reserve, making everybody's life miserable.

I would imagine this is a major issue for negotiations...am I wrong?

 

[fsworld]

Be aware of what you hear on here... Reserve at ASA is not bad. I came from 135 where I was oncall 24/7 with a 45 minute callout. Now thats bad. However reserve here... 2 hours call, normally the day before. 10 gareenteed days off with 4 in a row that the cant touch. Right now we have 75+ people on reserve so we dont fly. I might fly 2 days a week right now. Of course I just jinksed myself!!! As for how long, this is my first real reserve month (last month was integration) and I am 21 numbers from the first relief line. Next mnoth I could hold a line or I could be 100 numbers from the first relief line.

Zach

 

[FL000]

...do you at least have the right to declare for first or last call while on reserve? If I'm gonna be down there I'd rather be flying than sitting around...

No. General rule is, if you want to fly a lot, call scheduling every day and ask to be released. If you don't want to fly, call often and beg for flights.

 

[IFlyFL410]

Be aware of what you hear on here... Reserve at ASA is not bad. I came from 135 where I was oncall 24/7 with a 45 minute callout. Now thats bad. However reserve here... 2 hours call, normally the day before. 10 gareenteed days off with 4 in a row that the cant touch. Right now we have 75+ people on reserve so we dont fly. I might fly 2 days a week right now. Of course I just jinksed myself!!! As for how long, this is my first real reserve month (last month was integration) and I am 21 numbers from the first relief line. Next mnoth I could hold a line or I could be 100 numbers from the first relief line.

Zach

Give it time. It won't take you long and you'll be hating life on Reserve. What time I had to spend on reserve a few years ago was a nightmare. They'll switch your days off without notification, so beware of that. That landed me in the CP's office once, and I had to explain why I noshowed a trip they assigned me without notifying me of it first. You have to constatntly watch your back with these guys.....

 

[Ganja60Heavy]

No. General rule is, if you want to fly a lot, call scheduling every day and ask to be released. If you don't want to fly, call often and beg for flights.

If you want to fly: Call and tell them you have to paint your house.

If you don't wanna fly: Beg to be maxed out so you can reach 1000 hrs. by early Nov.

 

[shamrock]

The 24 hr per diem only applies if you are not ATL based. When I was hired, all us DFW guys got it, but the ATL guys only got the 8 hrs of per diem for when they were in class each day. That was back in '02.

The ATL guys in my class (myself included) didn't get any per diem during training in '02. We even had the company contract guy in during ops mod "confirming" that we weren't going to get it.

 

[IFlyFL410]

Interesting.....I'll have to have a buddy of mie who was ATL during training and see what the final outcome was. I remember it being a big fiasco back then.

 

[sweptback]

There are a few "rules" you need to know of while being on reserve. If you abide by these rules, you should have a somewhat decent reserve life. The guys that complain about scheduling are the ones that don't follow them, or are too stupid to educate themselves. I was on reserve for many months and aside from never knowing what my days off were, it wasn't terrible.

Don't act like an ass to scheduling. They will put you on their list and make your life miserable. Even if they give you the worst screwjob ever (assuming it's legal), say "yes master" and take your punishment with a grin.

Don't be afraid to stand your ground if they give you something that's not legal per the FARs or the contract. Know the contract forward and backwards, and be prepared to offer references to prove your point. Don't hesitate to get a scheduling supervisor or chief pilot involved if necessary.

Don't show in less than 2 hours. I don't care if you live on Camp Creek Pkwy. next to the crackhouses and are only safe from getting shot while you're at the airport. You have to risk it, as if you play by the rules, they won't call you for future short-calls because they know you won't bust your ass to get there.

Don't answer the phone on your days off, and even more importantly, don't answer the phone outside of your availability window. If they even call 5 minutes before your reserve period starts and leave a threatening message, you have no responsibility to call them back.

Always ask for a pairing (or print one out at the airport now that we have crewtrac), and always get the name of the scheduler who assigned you the trip, in case you need documentation later. Compare your pairing to that of your crew to make sure scheduling hasn't tryed to fudge the times to make you legal.

And finally, don't make plans on your "fake" off days that you can't break. They will move your days, and you will be screwed.

 

[Rotorhead1]

Don't walk run away from any opportunity you have to fly for ASA. Commuting to and from work will not work. Scheduling will break you down like a double barrel shotgun and put it too you. Find another flying job anywhere but ASA.

 

[shamrock]

Be aware of what you hear on here... Reserve at ASA is not bad. I came from 135 where I was oncall 24/7 with a 45 minute callout. Now thats bad. However reserve here... 2 hours call, normally the day before. 10 gareenteed days off with 4 in a row that the cant touch. Right now we have 75+ people on reserve so we dont fly. I might fly 2 days a week right now. Of course I just jinksed myself!!! As for how long, this is my first real reserve month (last month was integration) and I am 21 numbers from the first relief line. Next mnoth I could hold a line or I could be 100 numbers from the first relief line.

Zach

No offense intended here, but you haven't lived the nightmare that reserve can be at ASA.

After being on reserve for my first 8 months I moved up to relief line then a hard line for 2 months, at which point the Brasilias were retired and I was pushed back to reserve. In that time scheduling made several attempts to assign me illegal trips and I was also forced to spend a lot of quality time in the CP's office reversing 3 "Unavailable on Reserve" occurances that I received when scheduling assigned me trips on my days off without bothering to notify me. (I wouldn't answer the phone on my days off. Is that wrong?)

Now this isn't meant as an "oh, poor me" story, it was my choice to come here after all, but things have moved pretty quickly at ASA and for many hired in the past year there hasn't been much of a wait to move on to a relief or hard line. Thats great, and I'm glad that people are having relatively good luck on reserve (I had some OK times myself), but there haven't been any meaningful changes in the way scheduling operates that would prevent them from reverting right back to their old tricks when the need arises, which is pretty much any time they get in a pinch. I might change my tune about scheduling and reserve if I saw some effort to abide by the contract, but my opinions are based on what I've seen and experienced and I haven't seen anything significant that would lead me to believe anything has changed. For the sake of everyone on reserve I hope I'm wrong.

Right now we have 75+ people on reserve so we dont fly.

This is the key phrase. As long as there is coverage reserve can be OK. It's when they are short and/or too lazy to do their jobs that they get really creative. You have to stay on your toes and know the contract at that point because they will push the envelope when they need to.

Again, I'm happy that things are going well on reserve, I hope they continue that way, and I realize that coming from a 24 hour/45 minute callout to ASA is a step up. Just understand that many people have experienced superior reserve systems as well and can see that with a bit of effort things could run much smoother at ASA. It's just nobody in the Company seems to care.

 

[Plug]

Reserve is what you make it! If you live in ATL and have internet access it ain't so bad. That being said, I am ready to be a line holder again. It is painful to go from being the #3 CR7 FO DFW and only sitting 3 months reserve in 4+ years to going on my 9th month of reserve as a CA. I bid it and the paycheck is better, but I do look forward to holding a line and soon I hope.

Something that hasn't been said that sucks about reserve are the pay credits that reserves don't get with the exception of underblock. Over the last 8 months on reserve I have broken 75 hours barely but if the credits would count I would be closer to 100 almost every single month. To put it in perspective I had a relief line in August and credited over 120 hours for 76 hours of actual flying. For those who don't understand, that 120 hours was well earned and there is a reason we have credits, like time and a half for an extension, CNX pay, etc. there is nothing worse than telling your wife after 4 days of being gone that you'll be home 6 hours later because you were extended. Credits are everything and reserves don't get'em that is why I want a line!

 

[Ganja60Heavy]

.....there is nothing worse than telling your wife after 4 days of being gone that you'll be home 6 hours later because you were extended.

But you got to admit it....at least the stews are HOT