Absolutely, this is pretty much a "non argument" point, and most everyone would agree with you, commuter and non alike. What I'd guess keeps your normal desire to wake up for a long day at work at a decent normal hour from depleting all the "commutable trips" via assignment to in-base senior folks before any less-senior commuters can see them, is this: trips departing in the 0600-1000 banks tend to be worth 2-6 hours more pay.

I think that most folks will ALSO make the decision, "If I can work 2 days less this month by showing up to work 3 hours early, I'll make that trade-off." I look at the reasons report to see how everyone senior to me bids, and my general impression is that total credit and Avg. credit per day take priority over report times. Whenever I see report time listed, I almost always see the additional restrictions that indicate bidder is a commuter.

I always do a sort by total credit, and also credit/day, and look at all the high-value trips to see if there is anything I'd like to bid that I can commute to. Again, general impression stats here, the top 20% of total credit trips all report too early (0600-1000) for a commuter. A much smaller group of trips is commutable yet still has top-tier credit/day.

As a commuter who looks at this religiously, I can tell you that roughly 40% of my bid pkg trips are all non-commutable (which of course makes sense--you can sqeeze more DAL flying into a trip if you don't have to include 2 non-rev legs at the ends.) I think that's a reasonable thing.

You can BET that I am very aware of this HUGE advantage non-commuters have over me: 40% or so of the trips I can't even bid on! There are a bunch of in-base folks junior to me, and they have access to 40% of the bid package UNSKIMMED by commuters! It always amazes me how blind those in-base are to this enormous benefit they already get. So long as there are commutable (and less total value) trips out there, those in base get a free-pass on 40% of the package by (in my category) 36% of the seniority list--and it's the highest $$ 40% of the trips!

But if schedulers reduce commutable trips, then commuters automatic PBS algorithm will just say, "fine, if I can't get a commutable trip, then give me one with the highest value of $$/work-time", and there goes your in-base free-pass. How that would affect those in-base depends on a zillion population-of-interest statistics different at each category involving how commuters are spread across the category. But in NO case would it be good for non-commuters. I say a better game-plan is this: have your cake, eat it too... then don't complain about how the crumbs are being given to the poor, less the baker say "fine, everyone gets crumbs then".

ps--no argument with your thoughts at all, just felt like typing and getting some use out of all that bid package study last night