Wednesday, March 30, 2011

One last reserve day

Tomorrow is the last day of the month....also my last day of reserve for a while.

It's an interesting situation.

I'm on airport standby tomorrow. I sit at the airport all afternoon. I'm off on April 1st. On April 2nd I have a 6 hour overtime trip. On April 3rd I start a 4 day trip at my new domicile finishing on April 6th. Got it so far?

Tomorrow I am covering the afternoon/evening shift which is supposed to cover overnight trips. If I get forced into an overnight a few things happen.

First I will be Junior Manned as I have April 1st off. Junior Man means forced to work on a day off. I will get paid the greater of actual flying for the day or 5 hours, whichever is greater. Additionally I get another day off next month OR another 5 hours of pay. I would likely pick another 5 hours of pay, thus if I fly just 1 hour on a Junior Man day it could be worth as much as 10 hours of pay. Not bad.

Second if I am Junior Manned I will be forced into a 7 day conflict since April 1st would connect March 31st to both my overtime trip and my 4 day trip. I would be removed from at least one day of flying....at full pay.

So add 10 hours of pay + another day of flying off + that days flying pay.....suddenly things look kinda nice. I'm almost hoping I get Junior Manned. Day care is covered for Friday so the only inconveniences would be my wife taking my daughter to daycare and not me.

Assuming I don't get Junior Manned I've built up my schedule to almost cover to amount of flying I will be out due to my vacation.

I previously stated I told scheduling to remove me from all flying that touches my vacation week. That was 40 hours of flying dropped. Of that 40 hours, about 20 hours was to be flown during my vacation, so I will be paid for it. For the other 20....it's too bad...no money.

To help I added on 8 hours of flying to my first trip and picked up the overtime trip on April 2nd. Total of 14 hours of pay. I think I can pick up another 6-8 hours of flying sometime during the month. If I do it will be a very nice month.

When looking at airline pay scales it's really hard to get a good number on what pilots REALLY earn. The best is to simply take the hourly rate X the reserve guarantee. That's bare minimum. Of course if you pick up a few hours of overtime, it can greatly increase your pay. Picking up just 10 hours of extra flying a month for me, each month, over a year is more than $5500 due to the overtime pay rate.

One more day.....

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