“Where are you headed today. Are you with us to Perth?
“Oh nowhere at the moment, I’m on the couch. So thanks for showing up, I really DON’T want to go to Perth. Crewing told me to pack a bag so we’ll see what happens.”
Being on reserve is a fact of life and part of the monthly roster of most cabin crew. Mostly these are home reserve days, where you have to answer the phone and be available for a duty, but every now and then, home reserve changes to airport reserve where you physically have to standby at the terminal.
More often than not though, a reserve day is essentially a stipend for sitting on your arse. Sometimes though you actually have to get off your rump when, these home reserve days get converted into an airport reserve duty. This is to cover last minute crew going sick or other unforeseen circumstances such as network disruptions (think bad weather or aircraft mechanical issue) It’s actually good money for watching your arse grow though – ok enough about derrieres soon I promise. Airport reserve is paid at an hourly rate and you just have to sit in the crew lounge until the end of the standby or if you get allocated a duty.
Usually, you can expect to sit for a few hours and then go home. It can often feel a little pointless, and you can feel a little foolish and redundant just sitting there like a chump waiting for a duty that most often doesn’t come. But…. It’s a great chance to see crew coming and going for their flights and catch up on a little goss. Sometimes though, you don’t really fancy seeing anyone and making small talk (AKA CHIT CHAT), least the base managers, so you go and hide in the quiet room and read a book, or do some other work.
It’s really a pretty sweet deal. It makes sense that someone needs to be ready right away to operate a flight in case a crew member doesn’t turn up or they have their car breakdown on the motorway. Stuff like that. Sometimes you’ll be asked to board passengers at the gate lounges, or do what is known as a check and load – checking the plane before passenger boarding begins.
Compared to home reserve though it’s an hourly rate of pay, instead of being paid 1 hour for every 4 spent at home, so it’s a plum gig for not doing any work, and if you get assigned a duty, you’ll get paid the time you were on call at home, the time spent on airport reserve, as well as the length of the duty. It’s possible to make some serious bank. The worst part is getting ready in the uniform, and it can be quite boring so four hours on reserve can really drag on. But really, bring something to read. Your laptop to watch something. I tend to eat a lot in the airport food court, which can be dangerous. Sometimes its fun to walk around the terminal to stretch the legs, but generally that means you as you are a uniformed employee, you become a target for a million different questions about all different airlines, most of which you won’t be able to answer.
Airport Reserve is an inevitable fact of life for many flight attendants on many carriers, with good, bad and yes, ugly, aspects.
In summary here they are:
The Good
- Get paid for sitting on your rear end. Chances are very high that you won’t get a flying duty, so you are essentially being paid for doing nothing.
- Its a good chance to chit chat with other crew arriving for their duties, which can be fun especially if its folks you haven’t got to work with for ages.
- You don’t have to stay in the cabin crew base. You can walk around the terminal and spend your money on stuff you don’t need.
- If you are motivated you can use the time to be productive in other areas of your life by doing work on the computer, answering emails, or doing something worthwhile.
The Bad
- My god does it get boring. As much as you can chill, its not your own environment so its not free time like it would be at home, and you still feel like you are at work.
- You technically can be on airport reserve for hours, and begin to believe you’ll be safe from a duty, only to be allocated a multiple sector trip in the last hour, making for a potentially VERY long day. The good thing, is that you’ll get the hours on the couch as well as the duty, making it a long but profitable exercise.
- You feel a little bit lame sitting there with your only purpose being final resort back up for a flight. Sometimes you’d just rather work.
The Ugly
- Sometimes you’ll get allocated an AR duty and you won’t have a bag packed. That means you could be overnighting somewhere with just your uniform. Better hope there’s a target nearby that is still open so you can pick up some fresh knickers.
- It’s bad for the booty. Sitting and doing nothing with the temptation to eat from terminal take away outlets can be dangerous.
