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Reserve Responsibilities

By Stacy Jassek, MEC Reserve Chairperson
AFA UAL MEC Reserve Committee

Responsibilities at Home and On the Road (10.C.)

The only contractual way to receive a CLLR assignment is to call CATS after 1900, option 2-2-1 ; or call the crew desk. Do not use "What's In My ID?" on CATS or check your line in Unimatic. That information may or may not be your actual, correct CLLR assignment. The 1900 CLLR assignment assigns a Reserve to a specific ID or ONSB with a check-in time of 0500 the next day through 0459 the day after that; convert her/him to ready status for the following day, obligating her/him to be telephone available beginning at midnight; or release her/him for the following day, until the next evening's 1900 CLLR assignments (Section 10.C.7.a.). If the 1900 CLLR assignment system does not provide one of those three assignments, or if the system is otherwise not working properly, the CLLR must contact the crew desk (Section 10.C.7.b.). In addition, if it is after midnight , the CLLR assignment system is not normally available and the CLLR must contact the crew desk for their next day's assignment.

Ready Reserves, including CONV CLLRs, must be telephone available beginning at midnight following days off, and may receive a check-in as early as 0500 (Section 10.C.10.). The crew desk is required to contact a Reserve in a 45-minute period to all numbers listed in the FDUG screen before a Reserve is considered to be unavailable. It is important to keep your FDUG screen updated. The crew desk must make actual verbal contact with the Reserve to give an assignment. Once a Reserve has received their assignment, there is no obligation for them to remain telephone available (Section 10.E.3.).

When overlapping from a Reserve to a Lineholder month, or vice versa, special availability rules apply on the last day of the old month:

Going "on Reserve" (from Lineholder to Reserve), if you are on Ready Reserve the first day of the new month (including CONV CLLR), you must be telephone available at 2000 the evening of the last day of the current schedule month for assignment to IDs departing after midnight the first day of the new schedule month (Section 10.C.11.).

Going from Reserve to Lineholder status from one month to the next, if you are on Reserve the last day of the old schedule month and have any time left in the month, you may receive a multi-day assignment departing on that last day. This is true even if it works you into days off in your Lineholder month, or causes you to miss or be illegal for your first trip as a Lineholder in the new month (Section 10.C.11.). Any legality problems in the new month should be taken care of upon your completion of the ID.

Going from one Reserve month to another Reserve month, you should not be scheduled to work into a day off. Following days off, the Ready Reserve has the obligation of being telephone available at 0001 with an earliest check-in time of 0500. (Section 10.C.10.).

When returning from sick leave, CLLRs who call off sick leave prior to that evening's CLLR assignments being made will be given an assignment during the normal 1900 CLLR assignment process. A CLLR who calls off between 1900 and midnight will be given an assignment at the time of the call. A CLLR who calls off after midnight shall be considered on sick leave for the calendar day (Section 10.C.7.d.). A Ready Reserve who calls “off” sick leave before 0900 will not be certed ONSL for the day and will be available for assignment for the balance of the day.

If the crew desk calls a Ready Reserve for an assignment less than four hours before ***departure time*** (as opposed to check-in time), it is considered to be a "short call." There is no contractual prohibition against the crew desk making a short call. However, a Reserve should not be penalized if she/he has made a reasonable effort to make the flight, shows up at the airport, and has missed the flight anyway (Settlement, ORD 7-95).

Section 9.K. Irregular Operations, Section 12.R. Schedule Irregularities, Section 9.M. On-Time Sections and Consolidation of Flights are areas of the Contract specific to how reassignments should be made in the operation. Section 9.I Order of Assignment can also provide parameters to be followed during a reassignment. However, any changes must be made within the contractual flight time, duty time, legal rest, and day off parameters and legalities provided for in the Agreement.

Open-ended ("UNI") IDs must be initially closed within 15 hours of arrival at the layover location (Section 10.K.; or within 24 hours on an International ID, Section 12.V.5.). However, as mentioned in the above paragraph, once a Reserve's ID is initially closed, it can still later be changed. A Reserve's rest period should not be interrupted to close an open-ended ID or to change an ID, as described in Section 7.J.5. In accordance with Section 9.I.3.b, ID’s may only be left open-ended once within the ID.

When reporting for stand-by (ONSB), a Reserve must check in with the crew desk or Onboard Services Coordinator (as determined by local procedures) upon arriving at the airport. The stand-by Reserve can be given a flight assignment that is scheduled to depart within five hours of the beginning of the ONSB period. As an example, a Reserve assigned ONSB at 1600 can be assigned to a flight that is scheduled to depart at 2100 or sooner). If that flight is delayed past the five hours, the stand-by Reserve is obligated to stay with the delayed flight (within duty time limitations). If the stand-by Reserve does not receive a flight assignment within four hours of reporting for ONSB she/he should block out with the crew desk to be released. As an example, a Reserve assigned 1600 ONSB is not given an assignment by 2000, should contact the crew desk for release. Stand-by Reserves not given a flying assignment receive five hours flight pay and credit. (Sections 10.C.9, & 10.G).

If a delayed ID works a Reserve into a scheduled day off, the crew desk should be contacted upon arrival. The Reserve may elect to remain on Reserve for the rest of that day in exchange for another day off later in the month (Section 10.D.1.b.). At their option the Reserve may also elect to block in at the completion of their ID, taking the remainder of the day off, and forgo having the day replaced.

Completion of an Assignment (10.D.3.b.)

Upon completion of an ID or ONSB, all Reserves are to block out with the crew desk. (Section 10.D.3.b). The Reserve may be given:

1. Another flight assignment that departs within 15 hours, upon completion of legal rest.
2. Another flight assignment in the same duty period if it is to prevent drafting.
3. Released from duty to start her legal rest. 

If the Reserve is a CLLR, she/he is released from duty until they call the 1900 CLLR tape for the next day's assignment. If she/he is a Ready Reserve, she/he must receive eight hours free from telephone contact upon the start of her/his legal rest (Section 10.D.4.c.). If this eight-hour period is interrupted, it starts over from the point of interruption (System Board of Award Decision, ORD 23-96).

Trading Reserve Days

Reserves may trade for days of availability either with days in their own line or with other Reserves. These trades must meet the provisions defined in Section 10.D.4.

When trading with another Flight Attendant, only the day will be traded, not the call-in or Ready Reserve status of the Flight Attendants involved. The Flight Attendants involved in the trade will retain their original status.

• Self-trade requests are normally looked at 2 days in advance of the first day involved for Domestic and 5 days out for International. However, they may be looked at well in advance of the first day involved in the trade, especially at the beginning of the new month (and sometimes at the end of the old month for trades in the new month).
• Requests are looked at in seniority order among the requests on file at the time.
• Requests are looked at daily within the time frame used by each location. Contact your respective crew desk for their specific time frame.
• All crew desks will either award or reject all of the requests on file by the two-day (Domestic locations) / five-day (International locations) period unless it is not clear at that point if the trade can be awarded. That is, if Reserve coverage needs are not yet clear for the date in question, but there is a chance the trade may be able to be awarded at a later time, no decision may be made at the two-day / five-day point.
• If a definite award / reject decision cannot be made at the two-day / five-day point, the request will be looked at again the next day (that is, one day before the first day involved in the trade for Domestic, and four days out for International).
• Flight Attendants are responsible for checking their LOFs to see if they received a trade until the one- / four-day deadline. That is, for a request to trade into Monday the 15th, Domestically a trade may be awarded as late as Sunday the 14th (at the times listed above); Internationally, the trade may be awarded as late as the Thursday the 11th. After those dates and the times shown above, if the trade has not been awarded, the Flight Attendant can safely assume that s/he has not been awarded the trade, unless notified otherwise via a telephone call from the crew desk.
• Flight Attendants should delete Reserve self-trade requests they no longer want.

Currently self-trade requests are automatically rejected if a Reserve is out on an ID at the time the requests are processed, consequently leaving less than three consecutive "CLLR" or "RSV" days showing in the line of flying. Management agrees with AFA that this should not be happening, and it is on the automation list to be fixed at some point in the future. Until this fix is made, in this situation contact the crew desk and have them look at the trade manually.

PTO

If a PTO day (i.e., WOP, GWOP, etc.) would cause an inability for a Reserve to be assigned on the remaining days of availability, the remaining Reserve days may be considered as non-disciplinary DNF days. For example, if the shortest trip assigned to a domicile is three days, and the Reserve takes any type of PTO for Day #3 of a block of five days on, Days #4 and #5 may show as CNF since there is no one or two day trips assigned to the domicile. The Reserve's 75:00 MIN will be reduced accordingly (by 3:45/3:57 per day for a 31/30 day schedule month, respectively).