Originally Posted by
Roadkill
2. At some point the trip goes up for GS coverage and someone IN BASE gets the chance to make more $$. No matter WHERE or HOW it is done, allowing ANOTHER group of pilots to offer to fly that trip, which the company currently does not have the ability to access or with reduced restrictions (!), will reduce the pressure on the company in that base for coverage and will reduce the number of trips put out for GS. The END EFFECT is to reduce the number of pilots needed to fly the entire Delta schedule. All of that is negative.
If you want to fly trips out of a base, bid the base. Or bid OOB White Slips like Dalad does above, which are already in the coverage matrix.
When someone at that base doesn't want to fly a trip and puts it on the swap board--it's THOSE GUY's TRIP, Guys at THAT BASE. To take or to let fall into the coverage ladder, and maybe go to GS IN THAT BASE. I can just imagine the bidding cabals that would emerge if we were foolish enough to ever let this camel get it's nose in the tent...
SWA guy here....so take all the following FWIW:
It's your airline, your contract, and your collective mindset, so ultimately do what you believe to be in your own collective best interest. Having said that, you should talk-up the next SWA pilot you meet (or know) because we are living the "bidding cabal" you fear. On balance, I think most of our pilots appreciate the flexibility of picking up trips in other bases. If a pilot posts a trip on our give-away board, it goes to the first-comer...regardless of domicile. The pilot trying to get rid of his trip really doesn't care who takes it....he just wants it gone. Common sense and seems to work well. For all company open time, in-domicile pilots have priority over all out-of-domicile pilots, regardless of system seniority. Common-sense and seems to work well. The only thing these rules do not promote is more bodies on the seniority list, but then our dogma has always been running lean and striving for more productive trips, not less (though if you really want an unproductive trip, there are no shortage of pilots willing to trade with you
).
We've run our own experiments with adding more restrictions to open time awards, trip trading, etc....but I think the emerging consensus for us is that more restrictions on what we can do (kind of like more gov't regulations) in the aggregate penalizes us as a whole more than it protects us. YMMV.