True, to a degree. Greenslips as a Regular line-holder does directly make the pilot more productive (and that individual does get the direct pay benefit, and the commensurate workload toll) while directly reducing the number of pilots needed to fly that number of block hours.

A Greenslip while on Reserve, however, is much more complicated and has greatly reduced correlation to lower manning requirements: (as a refresher, and for noobs) A Reserve Greenslip is for premium flying on your xx days or ** days off, which pays straight pay, not double, added to your full reserve pay, AND gives you payback days for every xx or ** day that had even a portion of it violated, PLUS 10 more hours of recovery time beyond that. These payback days and recovery time are added to your next "on call" days that month, or if you have no more on call days left, fall off the end of the month and become payback days. If a portion of the recovery time also falls off the month, even just a couple of minutes, it gets counted as a full payback day, too, and will be reflected on the very bottom of your card under "payback days".

The recovery time is very important, as it means you no longer start on-call status at midnight - it might start your on-call day at 0534 or 0903, for example, and becomes very hard for schedulers to track and make plans for you as you literally fall off their radar screens on their midnight and early morning sweeps, and essentially become invisible.

The payback days are also very important. If they get placed on your next on-call days in the month, and its more than a few days out (3? I think?), you can move them around just like your other xx and ** days, which gives you more flexibility to get the days off you actually need. Alternately, payback days that fall off the end of the month are truly an Ace up your sleeve, ready to be deployed during any Reserve or Regular month for the rest of that calendar year (whereupon they drop out of your payback bank and become supplemental vacation days, but only paying 3:15 vacay pay). Use PCS, Payback days menu to drop a number of reserve days, or regular trips (provided there is coverage), and get pay (and credit, I believe) for either the full pro-rata reserve day, or the value of the trip.

As you can see, it is indeed possible to take 1:21 of recovery time that flows into the next day and falls off the end of the month, and becomes a full payback day, then use it to get paid to drop an 8:06 AUS turn. Which scheduling now has to cover, (or someone gladly picks up) thereby increasing manning requirements.

So the Reserve Greenslip is actually scheduling's version of buying you for today with a high-interest, variable-rate credit card. For which you control the rate. And when they have to pay you back.