Relief Lines

[Chi829]

Hi Ladies-
I have a question. When DH bid last week for March. He was actually up for a relief line, but bid reserve to get our wedding off. We hear that releif lines arent all that anyway. Some say reserve is actually better than a relief line and then I hear some say that ANYTHING is better than reserve. What is everyone's opinion here? Keep in mind he commutes from MCO to ATL, if that is important in what he bids. Right now, the most important thing to him is more time at home since he is only getting 10 days a month right now. THANKS LADIES!!

[lucky81698]

Jo,

I think Bill would be better off asking those he flys with about this. Unless you are at the same company, the information would more than likely be irrelevant. How one airline does it may be totally different than how ASA does. So basing your decision on opinions from those at other airlines might not be such a good idea.

For instance, my DH's (Bill too) company just recently started using relief lines. First they just had reserve conversion lines and now I think they have both. Even though I do all of his bidding, I don't know too much about how they work because he is pretty senior.

Good luck and congratulations on your upcoming wedding [img]images/graemlins/arms.gif[/img]

Jan

[Kristie]

I'm not sure how they work at all!

but if you two aren't too sure how they play out, just to stay on the safe side, i'd suggest not playing with them at all this month since you have the wedding to think about and you don't want to compromise that date...next month, you'll have some room around to play with them

but definately have dh ask his other co-workers on how they work so he can play with it at a later date.

[MQAAord]

Relief lines vary company to company.

At Eagle relief lines were lines one bid 'blind' in the monthly bidding process, not knowing what that line would eventually be composed of. We could send crew planning a message asking for certain things to be considered in building said relief line (certain days off, commutability, etc), but there was no guarantee they would give us what we asked for. The relief lines were then made up of time left over from the main bids, such as people who were on vacation, training events and so forth. It could be a great line, it could really suck. There was NO way to know. However, in my opinion, having a schedule, any schedule, is better than reserve. Being a line-holder allowed us to trip-trade, and have more days off than being on reserve.

It depends on how your company builds & distributes its relief lines. It may or may not be a good thing.

But if you absolutly must have a certain day off, bid for it, keep your mouth shut, and hack up a furball if you don't get it!

[fly-girl]

MQAAord, your explanation on relief lines is very helpful. In my opinion, any line and an actual schedule is better than reserve but everyone is right in that it could vary company to company.

DH's company has relief lines and you can trip trade and ask for certain days off, etc. The relief lines used to be OK, especially because you used to be able to trade during the initial line improvement window. Now his company has changed things to where the relief lines aren't even built until initial trip trading is over so the relief lines are a lot worse than they used to be and are now made up of trips that nobody else wanted.

But it has been my experience that even if a particular four day trip is not commutable or not that great, something usually pops into open time a day or two before hand so you can always trade (at DH''s company at least).

Have a great day everybody!