Reserve vs relief line: reserve is just a callout time. You dont know what you are flying but you instead know when you are phone liable. We have an aggressive pickup window which allows for reserves to pick a trip out of open time the day prior. So if you see a valuable trip or a trip with a cool overnight you can try to pick it up vs leaving your trip up to chance. That is really the only chance you have of getting what you want.

A relief line is generally for the guys that are almost holding a hard line. A hard line means you find out your next months schedule around the 10th of the month and it is able to be traded around. A relief line is built during the secondary bid held every month around the 20th of the month. They build lines out of the trips left in open time from the first bid. It is a crap shoot to say the least. You can request weekends off, maximize vacation, holidays off... but it is a gamble if you will get them. They throw trips on your schedule until they are happy and you get what you get. You can trade those trips in the SLIW (secondary line improvement window) and you do have better control over where you go, when you are off, and more protections for pay etc.

Once you hit the line there will be time to look at the ALPA New Pilots Manual. I forget the proper name for it but it is on the union website and explains a lot of the day to day stuff that never seems to get covered in ground school. Dont stress too much about bidding. On your first trip just ask the captain to go over bidding and ask as many questions as you need too. Everybody here is pretty cool and we were all new once so we understand where you are coming from. Good luck