Friday, August 12, 2005

Whipping Boy No Longer!

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm off reserve next bid. Crew schedulers take note: You won't have me to kick around anymore!

This current bid, I'm doing the "AM split line," which is half airport reserve and half home reserve. This line used to result mostly in day trips, with few overnights, since they want to keep you around for your airport reserve days. This bid, though, I've only sat airport reserve twice...they're so short of reserves that they've had no choice but to take me off airport reserve to assign me 3 and 4 day trips. Worse yet, they keep switching me from AM to PM...so my body is used to getting up at 5am, and then I end up flying until midnight. It's maddening.

My buddy who jumped ship for Skywest is going through sim training right now. It looks like after IOE, he'll be on reserve for one or two months maximum. I've been reserve for 14 months. Greener grass, sour milk, and all that.

Actually, until lately, I haven't minded reserve that much. I was actually toying with the idea of intentionally staying on reserve so I'd be home more often, and so I had enough flight time left over to fly for Ameriflight occasionally. But like I said, neither is very true anymore with how much they're flying us. I might as well take a regular line and know when I'll be gone, and have a few more days off.

1 comments:

GC said...

Congratulations, and welcome to the world of junior-manning!

Or do they not do that much at QX?

I get to START being the whipping boy over here in September. I was lucky and finished IOE in time to have them build me a schedule to fly for July, and I was awarded my consolidation-of-skills line in August. September will be my first month on reserve with my new company.

Wish me luck. It'll only last a few months, I'm told.