Originally Posted by The Chow

Fred,

There's always a trade off here. If you want more days off, you'll have to work a lot of 4 leg days. The company builds the lines where everyone who holds a line has to hit XX hours.

Let's say you're SFB base and you're in the top 1/3 of FO's. December's bid just opened and you want 13+ days off. In the December bid the average line value will be 98 hours, with high lines being 103 and low lines say 88. If you want maximum days off you'll have to choose High, Medium, or Low for line value. Then you need to get to that specified number as soon as possible. So you can either bid for 4 leg days and hope you get them, or you can bid long trips like SFB-OMA.

This is how the system works regardless of your seniority. Now just for fun, we have 100% days which means no one in base will have that day off. The "system" will solve those days first, and then look at your bid. The only way to get a weekend off that isn't vacation, is to create a legality issue, such as 100 hours in 28 days.

Sorry for the long answer, but that's how it works here. Operational needs always come first. The company absolutely will not hire enough folks to cover the flying and increase the QOL.