Reserve in JFK

flymeorion

Member
Dec 20, 2005
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Just curious if NYC is a junior base like our at DAL. That's the only place where you may have a chance to fly international or only be on reserve for 5-6 years. Every other base is 10-15.

We are always so envious of AA because we hear how great it is over there. I guess it's bad everywhere. Good luck to us all.
 
Just curious if NYC is a junior base like our at DAL. That's the only place where you may have a chance to fly international or only be on reserve for 5-6 years. Every other base is 10-15.

We are always so envious of AA because we hear how great it is over there. I guess it's bad everywhere. Good luck to us all.

The reserve system at AA is different from almost every other airline. From the very beginning, you are on reserve every other month for the first 3 years. Then you only have to serve reserve 3 times/year until you have enough seniority to be completely off reserve.

Also, bear in mind that AA still keeps separate Domestic and International f/a corps. There is a Domestic base in New York which is called LGA even though the f/as there have to cover domestic trips out of all 3 airports. There is an International base at JFK which flies strictly International trips at JFK.

At one time, Domestic flight attendants at LGA were completely off reserve by 4 or 5 years. I don't know if that is still true or not because the most junior flight attendant in the system not on furlough has almost 4 years seniority.

It's still not as bad as DFW domestic base. I was talking the other day to a DFW flight attendant who is on reserve this month. She has 18 years seniority! But then, there is almost no one in DFW with less than 10 years right now.
 
Just curious if NYC is a junior base like our at DAL. That's the only place where you may have a chance to fly international or only be on reserve for 5-6 years. Every other base is 10-15.

We are always so envious of AA because we hear how great it is over there. I guess it's bad everywhere. Good luck to us all.

Currently, LGA domestic reserve is at 8 years and JFK international is about 15-16 years.

As Jim has pointed out we only serve reserve every other month for the first 5 years and then 1 out of every 4 months after that until you can hold off.

Everyone, or almost everyone, is over 5 years so the reserve list has gone up because we are only serving 1 out of every 4.

The thing is that most other airlines have figured out how to make reserve more bearable. We have the nice feature of not serving it every month but the months we serve purely suck. We are the company's b8tch.
 
JFK international flight attendants are required to fly out of all three airports also.
 
The thing is that most other airlines have figured out how to make reserve more bearable. We have the nice feature of not serving it every month but the months we serve purely suck.
I only served a couple of months on reserve while flying AA/TWA LLC but I have to say some improvements could be made. It is ridiculous to have everyone sitting around 24 hrs a day waiting for the phone to ring. At TWA we had call-in periods AM and PM when you would call and get your assignment, if any. If none, you were released until the next call-in.

Another by-product of the "on call all the time" philosophy is that since you must have 24 hrs free from duty every seven days, AA doesn't offer any more than three or four consecutive days off at a time. At TWA we had 12 day reserve spreads, with 18 or 19 days on duty, but not really, since you regularly got released if you weren't needed soon.

Lots of room for improvement here...

MK
 
I only served a couple of months on reserve while flying AA/TWA LLC but I have to say some improvements could be made. It is ridiculous to have everyone sitting around 24 hrs a day waiting for the phone to ring. At TWA we had call-in periods AM and PM when you would call and get your assignment, if any. If none, you were released until the next call-in.

Another by-product of the "on call all the time" philosophy is that since you must have 24 hrs free from duty every seven days, AA doesn't offer any more than three or four consecutive days off at a time. At TWA we had 12 day reserve spreads, with 18 or 19 days on duty, but not really, since you regularly got released if you weren't needed soon.

Lots of room for improvement here...



MK

Sounds interesting. But I have a question from a crew skd POV. If I have a trip that comes open right now that leaves in 3 hours, how do I fill it? Are the call in times stagered so that I always have a certain number of FA's on "call".
 
Sounds interesting. But I have a question from a crew skd POV. If I have a trip that comes open right now that leaves in 3 hours, how do I fill it? Are the call in times stagered so that I always have a certain number of FA's on "call".

We had a daily morning call in period and an evening call in period. We recieved one of three things when we called in, a trip, released to the next call in period or the specific assignment of "24 hour standby" which meant you had to be available during that 24 hour period only. I think that this assignment could be assigned up to three times per month only.
We could bid for 2 spreads of 6 days off, 1 spread of 12 days off at the beginning, middle or end of the month, or four days on three days off. It was very flexible.
 
I can see Garfield's concern from this standpoint...

Last month, I was on reserve. One day I was
#4 of 14 ready reserves and didn't get called at all. They only used 2 reserves that day. Another day last month, I was #13 of 14 ready reserves and got assigned a trip at 1000 for a 1400 departure. And, weirdly, as far as I know, #14 did NOT get used that day!

If you have released your ready reserves, how do you cope with a rash of last minute MICs, sick calls, etc?
 
How exactly does reserve work?

Are you paid a minimum amount of hours even if you are not called?
 
I can see Garfield's concern from this standpoint...
If you have released your ready reserves, how do you cope with a rash of last minute MICs, sick calls, etc?
There were always people on residence standby to take care of last minute things. The company also used the same tactics used by AA; that is, inversing seniority, pulling people off one trip and moving them up to another, making you go "non-routine" by adding legs in the middle of a trip or making you work when you were supposed to be deadheading, etc.

Towards the end we actually had a provision for airport standby, but I don't think it was ever implemented. I actually LIKE AA's airport standby procedure, and consider five hours pay for six hours of sitting to be fair compensation.

The bottom line is, the company covers itself by having enough people available, but it simply isn't necessary to have every poor soul on reserve sitting by the phone 24 hrs a day.

MK
 
Wow, I guess from my point of view our reserve system isn't that bad. Reserve used to be you were on it until you were on it. Then I guess a year and a half ago we went to preferential bidding and based on your years you have 3, 6 or 9 days on reserve. We don't have call in any more. In NYC which is our most junior base at 15 years I don't have any "access days" which is what we call reserve days but I can't hold International at all any more.

It's funny because the rumor on the line is that AA is so junior in NYC and at two years you can hold LGW or any short INT'l trip. I never would have thought reserve would be 15 years in NYC. So what is your junior base?
 
When AA bought TWA in 2001 I believe reserve went to about two years on domestic and five or six on international. Languages could help; I know Portuguese speakers were holding Brazil virtually right out of training.

What's happened at AA is that when you were on reserve and had less than three years, you served every other month. Now that there is no one left with under three years, reserves only serve one month on and then three off, therefore it takes twice as many people to serve reserve as it used to. I had a girlfriend at AA in 1991, and she was off reserve forever at eight months.

This will change when AA starts hiring again, which will happen before people realize. I predict FA hiring by 2007 the way things are going.

MK
 
We had a daily morning call in period and an evening call in period. We recieved one of three things when we called in, a trip, released to the next call in period or the specific assignment of "24 hour standby" which meant you had to be available during that 24 hour period only. I think that this assignment could be assigned up to three times per month only.
We could bid for 2 spreads of 6 days off, 1 spread of 12 days off at the beginning, middle or end of the month, or four days on three days off. It was very flexible.


Sounds like it is a good idea but I'd have to know more of the details. I am guessing that the current routine if rsv is so ingrained that to change it would be a next to impposible. Maybe if presented to the right people it may get the ball rolling. Just an idea.
 
There have been many variations in the reserve system in my career at TWA, but the basic way it worked was this: flights leaving between 1700 and 0459 were assigned in the morning call-in, 1000-1300. Flights leaving between 0500 and 1649 were assigned in the evening call-in, 2200-0100. Standby assignments were made during the call-ins so there was always someone to cover last minute situations. In later years there was an automated phone system where you could retrieve and OK your assignment with a touch tone phone, and you could do it by computer if you had access to one.

In the "olden days" in the seventies before beepers, cellphones and home computers, we had on international a single period from 2000-2200 when certain reserves would be required to be by their phones for assignment. This was possible because all international flights departed between 1800 and 2200, except the occasional morning LHR. We would call a recording where they would read off a list of names to be available. If I wasn't on the list I knew I had the entire next day off, since even if I was on the next day's list I couldn't be sent out until the following day.

How things have changed!

MK
 
The only problem I see with this is last minute or unforeseen circumstances that could create a major disruption. A winter storm blows in and dumps ice instead of rain. An airport closure... etc. As a crew skd I like the comfort of having a fairly large pool of people to access should the need arise. From what you are describing that may not be the case. Hard to tell without numbers.