Originally Posted by
halls120
Well, I know of at least one airline that does have pilots "sitting around all day and night" - Delta. My brother is a DL 767/757 captain, and in the winter when schedules aren't so tight, he typically spends part of his monthly duty sitting in a hotel near LAX on reserve. When a captain is ill, or stuck somewhere else with a broken plane, my brother gets the call and he reports for duty.
DL also has some reserve FAs sitting at major/hub airports in case they are needed. IIRC even some of the more senior FAs take their turns to do a bit of this, although it falls more on the new hires. Since DL FAs are trained on all of the aircraft types that DL operates (unlike the situation at some foreign carriers, where FAs are only trained and certified on a subset of the fleet), any FA sitting reserve can be called to immediately work any flight. IIRC in addition to the FAs sitting reserve at the airport, there are some additional DL FAs that can be called up and told to report to the airport within a certain time period.
Since pilots are trained and certified on particular aircraft types, it would make less sense to keep them sitting at an airport. Also, their union contract might forbid that practice.