Reserve is being used to massage schedules. That has become obvious in the past 2 months. The company is using Reserve to keep some pilots out of OT, break up strings of Off days and generally nullify the bidding system. It's a joke.
If they let the bidding system do its job, there would be no need for such deception. But of course the bidding system can't do its job because of the persistent manual bid entries.
I know of people who got Reserve in their top bid month, only 3 days but that should NEVER happen. And now they are allocating that idiotic 7 in 10 day VOLUNTARY reserve option, and treating it as if it was intended to be compulsory. They have even given that 7 day stretch immediately prior to the 35 days straight of Reserve. In other words, 42 days in a row of Reserve. If required days off were given in advance, it would still be horrible, but no! You only get days off on short notice and at their whim.
They come up with every excuse in the book when queried. They must have a manual with various excuses they read out whenever someone questions their resultant bid awards.
The rostering department needs a good arse kicking. So does the training rostering department by the way. If only the company realized it is actually in their best interest to run things efficiently (eg. sim training), they might actually get someone with half a brain to fix things. Unfortunately that would make pilots happy about the bidding system, so that will never happen.
Yeah yeah yeah, I know, this is thread creep, but these crazy practices are really starting to annoy people.