Pale, I apprecaite the open arms for us in ATL. As far as i have heard its just a rumor right now. And i'm sure you know how rumors come and go.
As far as reserve goes i'll try and explain....
Being on reserve, and with our PBS bidding system, mainly all we can bid are days off or types of days off (i.e. weekends, or certain days of the week or month, consecutive days off, etc.)
Once that is complete the company will publish the days for the month, which will be marked as just (RS).
After we know that, we have what is called a "SAW" window where we can "bid to fly" and also pick our "reserve windows"
Since we are called out by the most junior person to the most senior, what bid to fly does is it allows someone to be put on a "first call" notice. Basically if you bid to fly and are the most senior on reserve you will be called out first rather than last.
They will also try and fill your line up with left over trips sometimes that were either in open time or open check airman time for new hires for example. Also when you bid to fly you'll almost always get 6 ready reserves that month. I'll explain more on that later.
The reserve windows we can bid go from A1- A8 and basically they are blocks of time that you are on call. A1 is from 0000-1400 and A8 is the latest which is from 2000-2400. The others begin at various other times throughout the day.
Once the SAW closes, we know now what days we have off as well as what times we will be on call and, if we bid to fly, what ready reserve pairings we have as well as trips.
Continuing on with ready reserve, it will show up as a pairing on our schedule and will be for a 6 hour block of time. It begins with your show time and ends when you duty off 6 hours later. Ready Reserve periods pay 4:20 worth of pay or whatever you fly IF it is greater than 4:20. So as long as you start your ready, you are going to get paid a min of 4:20 for that day. We are provded with a pager while on reserve so its nice not to have to worry about scheds calling me on my phone MOST of the time. <G>
I hope this answers some of the questions you had even though i may have said more than i needed. PM me if you need any more info. I hope all goes well with you guys and negotions. Too many others in this industry seem to forget where they came from and what it took to get here, for the most part, and lower the bar for many of us. Give em hell.
Later,
Hammer