United pilots please help

[Gemboy75]

Our assitant DO, a United furloughy, is planning a ready reserve policy at our small regional airline. The airline will remain nameless as they like to search these boards to catch the latest company gossip.

The policy plainly allows them to have us sit airport reserve in our crappy little crewroom that has people coming in and out all day long, in earshot of all the latest and greatest TSA code orange announcements and all the pages for lost passengers, last call, final boarding...! There is no crew rest area, no private place for a ready reservist to relax in peace and quite.

I wonder if our United furloughy might be more helpfull with this matter if he were reminded of the agrement that he knew at United, if of course United actually has such a policy. Please help with this matter, any information would be greatly appreciated. If any other crewmembers would like to post thier companies policy with respect to airport ready reserve we, our pilot group, would greatly appreciate it.

 

[L'il J.Seinfeld]

WTF? If you don't like it quit, or take a stand with your union brothers.

 

[hoover]

The fact this fellow is a United furloughee means nothing in the context of his current employment. As a fellow pilot he may share your point of view, but as a D.O. he has a responsibility to his employer (the people signing his paycheck, and yours) to manage flight operations in the safest and most efficient manner that his budget and resources allow. Although you may not agree, he is not doing the pilot group any favors if "pilot friendly" management practices lead to poor operations and/or financial loss for the company.

 

[crashpad]

Ready reserve is punishment, not a plan.

 

[Yuppyguppy]

Besides he won't be a furloughee in about 2 months...new hires in September

 

[Andy]

Gemboy, when I was furloughed from United, we used to have to sit airport reserve. They were only four hours unless you got an assignment. You were required to be in the crew room or if you left the crew room, you would have to sign out and leave your cell phone number at the flight ops desk.
Since I was about to get furloughed, I never looked into this, but one Captain had a membership with Continental's lounge and sat there during his airport reserve time.
I'm now a 1K at United and have access to United's Red Carpet lounges on all of my international flights. It's a bit of hit and miss as to the comfort level, but you may want to consider joining an airline lounge if you are allowed to wander around the airport. If you don't like the airline lounge idea, there may be somewhere else close that is more comfortable than your crew room.

I don't know if United still has airport reserve; I think that it's been dumped now that we have long and short call.

Rather than assume that he's going to make the ready reserve policy onerous, take the time to consider how the policy could be shaped to make it a bit better for pilots while achieving your company's objective - have reserve pilots available to fly within __ minutes. Then make suggestions to the guy writing the policy. He may not incorporate the suggestions, but you may be able to help shape the policy positively.

 

[Powda5]

I have been at an airline that put every reserve on ready reserve on some days. Good intentions turned into bad implementation and abuse of the system. In fact, calling a scheduler to ask why so many ready reserves resulted in this answer, "Fine--you don't like it? Then you're ALL on ready reserve tomorrow, too!" To which I notified the chief pilot who then told me not to question a 'manager', and then "how many years of management do you have?" (irrelevant question) and, "I'll talk to him, but his decision is based on things you just can't see---as a junior captain you shouldn't be questioning these things. Lay low or you're going to work yourself into trouble at this company".

It was the crappiest duty I ever filled, ready reserve. An hour and a half should be pretty reasonable notice, and that's a pretty standard callout time. Then again, trends at the regionals are to.....understaff the airline, overwork the pilots, and get 30/7 problems--only if the pilots catch it--otherwise just change the OOOI times so they're legal. In my experience, ready reserve was too often used as a bandaid for poor planning.

The case is likely better elsewhere, but if you have one of those airlines, you know what it can turn into. Put a cap on the number of rrsvs that can be assigned, and don't allow them to put long shifts--the airport is an amazing fatigue instrument. Definitely get your pilots together and show that 'reasonable accomodations' do not exist for that assignment.

 

[D-Bo]

Our assitant DO, a United furloughy, is planning a ready reserve policy at our small regional airline. The airline will remain nameless as they like to search these boards to catch the latest company gossip.

The policy plainly allows them to have us sit airport reserve in our crappy little crewroom that has people coming in and out all day long, in earshot of all the latest and greatest TSA code orange announcements and all the pages for lost passengers, last call, final boarding...! There is no crew rest area, no private place for a ready reservist to relax in peace and quite.

I wonder if our United furloughy might be more helpfull with this matter if he were reminded of the agrement that he knew at United, if of course United actually has such a policy. Please help with this matter, any information would be greatly appreciated. If any other crewmembers would like to post thier companies policy with respect to airport ready reserve we, our pilot group, would greatly appreciate it.

We had field standby at UAL a few years back. It worked like this. You would be assigned a four hour period but if I remember correctly, it paid at least 5 hours regardless if you were used or not. They built FSB lines so that what you did all month but the line paid about 90 hours credit and was commutable on each side of the string meaning the first of a few fsb's didn't start until like 6pm and by the end of the string I think it was a 7-11am window. The strings were usually about 4 or 5 days straight and occasionally 3. It was actually a pretty good deal back then and were rarely forced to do them if you were a reserve who didn't want to bid a fsb line since they were all included in inclusive lines.

That was then. We no longer have them now. I don't think so anyway. If we do I haven't seen them since coming back from furlough.

 

[Gemboy75]

I absolutely understand the hardships of trying to manage a eb and flow type industry. I appreciate all of the insite I have been given up to this point. I am absolutely trying to arm myself with the most amount of information possible to try and help my fellow pilots to get a fair deal out of this. Certainly a 4 hour or 5 hour duty period would be fair.

The main reason this policy is being implemented here is because of a early am sick call that caused a flight to cancel. AT this point our company can NOT afford to make mistakes like that. So I understand the policy implementaion. However, as someone else has already stated, it has been implented due to poor planning for attrition and to a lesser extent moderate growth, and now with the policy being implemented we will see how long until the abuses of policy will take place, ie. sitting in the crew room for 10-14 hours, as they already keep us on regular reserve for.

We aren't unionized, and as a result we have no collective bargaining power and in fact I think most people don't really care, a shame!

My guess is our asst. DO wil bypass and not go back to United, his goals in my humble opinion are set on DO, and I will further speculate that he'll be that guy by this time next year. I will go even furhter out on a limb to say that even though I think this policy is a mistake I believe he is the best one for the job, so I hope he doesn't go back.

Thanks again for everyones opinions. Please feel free to make more suggestions. I'm still trying to figure out if anyone's company is required to provide a place for genuine rest, ie. a room of bunk beds or something similar.

Oh and to MR. grumpy UPS FO sorry to bother you with trying to help out other pilots. I LOVE WHAT I DO, yah jerk!

 

[Powda5]

4-5 hrs is reasonable, I think. I know some are 10-12. None I know of have bunks...just lazyboy chairs (make sure there are more than 5). Good Luck.