“How’s your reserve been so far?”
“Oh apart from not sleeping well because I keep expecting a phone call each morning, it’s been great. No-one seems to be going sick, so I’ve barely worked!”
Home reserve, standby, reserve block, on call, available span – whatever name you call it, all flighties have to do their time on reserve. It might be for just a couple of days a month, or at the other end of the spectrum, you might have a full 8 weeks each year. Either way, avoiding reserve is pretty much out of the question. There are actually flight attendants in the US are hired to be purely reserve flight attendants – those poor sods.
Most flighties bitch about reserve – myself included. I felt a sense of dread when I saw my roster with no pre-allocated duties, just days that I would essentially be on tenterhooks waiting with baited breath. Not only does it make it difficult to plan your life for the period since you never know when you’ll be working or if you’ll be away, it also makes it a bit hard to fully relax.
Many fellow flighties will give you a sympathetic knowing look when you tell them you are on reserve, however some crewmembers actually bid for reserve periods. Currently, I’m on week 2 of a 7-week reserve block that will cover the Christmas as New Year period. Here’s why some flighties actually don’t mind – and some even like doing their time on call.
Trips You Normally Would Never Get
If you’re a junior cabin crew, often the only chance you’ve get on going to somewhere exotic with a long layover and an especially lucrative cash allowance is when you’re on reserve and you get called out for it. You might even get a trip out of a different port than your home base. There’s definitely the chance of variety on reserve – but it’s still not guaranteed. In fact there are no guarantees on reserve. You are just as likely to get the unpopular trips because these are the ones where more crew tend to go sick for. Even so, there’s an element of excitement and the thrill to be called out for a different destination, or a multi day trip with different overnights.
One of the best trips I ever had at short haul was a three day trip with a night and morning in Adelaide, flight to Alice Springs and almost 24 hours in Canberra. It was a lot of flying hours so financially worthwhile and needless to say, I would have never been rostered this kind of trip.
Potentially More Time Off
So far the last two weeks I’ve only worked two days – pretty awesome when you think about it. The thing about reserve is, there’s always a few of you on reserve at any given time, and if people work their rostered duties you’ll essentially be having a lot more time off than you normally would. Reserve really is a good chance to catch up on projects at home, go to the gym – even do a bit of extra blogging.
While I’m not sure of the exact numbers there seems to be extra crew on reserve over the Christmas and New Year period just for back up. This means that instead of working Christmas like I normally would, I may even end up with Christmas Day off – of course I won’t be able to plan either way though as I won’t until about midday on the day itself.
Paid to Be At Home
Unless it’s an airport reserve duty (which has it’s own good and bad aspects), reserve is mostly at home – and if you’re not called out, you’re still getting paid. If you’ve been on call and then you get called out about half way through the period where you are available, then you’ll get paid for the duty, plus the period you were on call. Pretty good when you consider you could be watching Netflix, going to the beach, or somewhere else and being paid for the privilege.
Basically do what you want, as long as you can get to the airport within the allocated 90-120 minutes.
Different Work Positions
When you’re on reserve, not only could you be called to cover flights out of a different city, you can also be asked to work ‘out of category,’ which means that if you’re normally a business or first class flight attendant you might be covering a main cabin position, or vice versa.
For those that like a change, this can be a benefit and if you get called out to work in a higher position – such as a cabin manager or supervisor you’ll get paid for higher duties – something that is definitely worthwhile.
So am I one of those flighties who enjoys being on reserve? Depending on the day you ask, will depend on my answer. While there are definitely many frustrations and drawbacks to being available on short notice to work a flight, there are benefits as well. Let’s focus on these to keep me sane for the next 7 weeks…
“There’s so many of us on reserve. Crewing said there were 8 people on standby yesterday and only one flight that has a vacancy on it. I never thought I’d say this but I want to get called!”
