So here at Alaska Airlines, we get a lot of
questions about being a flight attendant.
Questions from people just like you.
And now our number one most frequently asked question about being a flight attendant
is: What's my schedule going to be?
Here at Alaska Airlines, our flight attendant group has two types of schedules
based on years of seniority. They're called line holder and reserve.
The longer you're here, the better your schedule. Let's take a look at both.
I want you to meet Carole and Ronnie.
Numbers 3 and 7 out of 3,130
flight attendants. That's right numbers three and seven.
Now since Carole and Ronnie have been with Alaska Airlines
for over 47 years, they pretty much get to pick and choose what days
and trips that they want to work. As you can see from their schedule, they choose to work
during the week,
and not on the weekends or holidays.
Since Alaska Airlines has flights that operate 365 days a year
and 24 hours a day, we need other flight attendants to work those flights.
Now we want to introduce you to Bless and Josiah.
They are flight attendant numbers 3,021
and 3,022. Both are just finishing up their
eighth month of service with us. As Bless and Josiah
are pretty new, they're going to need to work what we call the reserve schedule. When
you work a reserve schedule, you know the days you'll be working
or on call, but you won't know the trips. But wait?
You now say "What's a trip?" Well, it’s pretty easy.
Each month, our computer takes all the flights that we have here
at Alaska Airlines and works with a specific set of rules
to create trips that we, the flight attendants work.
For example, we can have a trip that goes from Seattle to Maui, layover for 24
Hours,
and then the next day go from Maui back to Seattle. Make sense?
Okay, good! Now, back to Bless and Josiah.
When you work reserve, you know what days you're going to be on call, but you won't know
what trips you will be working. As you can see,
they are working the reserve on-call schedule Thursday
through Sunday. Basically, here's how it moves.
If we have an operational situation where we need a flight attendant to staff a flight,
we called Bless or Josiah to work that flight.
But you say "I don't live next to the airport!
I can't be there in five minutes!" Now
there's no need to worry about that. We'll explain all the rules when we meet up with
you
in your interview. But for now we brought in Bless and Josiah
to tell you more about their experiences and how reserve works.
And now here's Bless and Josiah talking about what it's like to be a reserve
flight attendant.
Reserve is character building.
Reserve is like having your life in a suitcase!
Reserve is definitely an adventure.
Now the best way to explain this to some one who has never heard of reserve.
It's a very sporadic schedule that's handed to you when you become a flight attendant.
Our company is built on seniority. So when you're junior, you get the most junior schedule.
And that's what entails being on reserve.
The reason we have reserve is to protect the operation. So if we have a flight attendant
who calls in sick, or delays like weather,
we need somebody available to fill in that gap.
So how reserve works: basically, they give you a time frame.
Three to five days a week, you're on call for fourteen hours. And in that fourteen hours, you keep your phone close to you.
Have your bags packed. And then you wait to answer the phone when they call.
So you'll get this call from crew scheduling, and they'll say
"Hey Josiah, how's it going?
Awesome!" "I know why you're calling!"
"You're going to Philadelphia." "You're going on
Honolulu."
Honolulu? Sure why not? Not only do we have great trips, but we have great customers as well.
"You're off to Alaska". "YES!"
You're going to have a lot of fun, but you need to be prepared for the unknown.
Anyway, reserve is really an interesting way of life, and it's a lifestyle change because
if you can do reserve, you can do anything!