My understanding is that the TWA folks loved pref bidding. Perhaps there's someone who worked there and can elaborate. The ones that I've talked to say that it takes solid contractual language to make sure it's done right, and I would be opposed to pref bidding without that.

By "virtual domicile", I mean that pref bidding could allow you to say that you want your trips to start in, say, LAS, or even that you want a trip that starts on the 20th in LAS. Pref Bid would look for other people who wanted something complementary to your request, and build whatever trips it could to begin and end in LAS by having other pilots with the same request meet you when you finished your trip there.

Honest question here: Is the sole reason that airline management wants pref bid so that they can avoid paying for trips that are dropped for conflicts, or is there more to it than that?

I agree - TTN would be a nightmare to staff when the weather went down and nobody could get there.