Originally Posted by CaptainDooley

so I talked with a senior friend of mine and he explained it to me this way. (i'll use this bids dates)

The bid awards came out on the 20th.
If you were awarded a few trips and your credit falls below 75hrs, you participate in the SCP, which is the 20th to the 22. That is when you can try to add trips from open time to get your line above 75hrs. or you can swap trips your were awarded with open time. Only pilots with lines we credit less than 75 can participate in SCP. This is your chance to get your line up to 75hrs.
Now, when SCP closes if your still have less than 75hrs of credit, the company will add reserve days to bring your line up to 75. For this purpose the reserve day will count as 4 hrs.
All this is explained in sec 25 G-13

After the SCP closes, then SAP opens, this month it was 24 &25th.
now line holders can participate and buildup line holders can too. Reserve lines and CDO lines can not participate in SAP. During SAP you can swap or add trips but you can not go below 75 or over the monthly max. No partial swaps or adds are allowed during SAP.

THE BAD NEWS:
sec 25 N-2a(2) says for Buildup line holders, reserve days can NOT be modified.
So that means, if after SCP you still had less than 75hrs and they added reserve days to your schedule, you can not drop them.

Seems a little weird to me, lets say you end up with a few trips and they added 5 reserve days to bring you up to 75hrs. Then during SAP you are allowed to add a trip of say 15 hrs credit, that would make your line at 90hrs, but you can't drop the reserve days.

So my friend said what he has seen some people do...
they get a line with less than 75hrs at the award time. During SCP they just add anything they can to bring their line up to 75hrs. Now no reserve days are added and now after SAP closes, they can drop or swap however they like. Some people drop the trips they don't like and then pick up stuff during the month to bring them back to 75 or they drop and accept that they will not get guarantee that month.

one other thing he said. if you get a line with less than 75hrs, and during SCP it looks like you will not be able to add enough trips to get you to 75hrs, you can reject the buildup line as long as you do it before SCP closes. then you will get a straight reserve line, but since you are at the top of the reserves you are guaranteed to get LCR if really want to avoid short call.

I asked how come everyone told us buildup lines can drop the reserve days and then add trips?
He said, probably people meant they avoided reserve days being added by doing the above process. or could be like stated above that FLICA allowed you to do it.

sounds like you guys with reserve days in May are stuck now.
but you can always try to convince scheduling to let you drop them so you can pick up open time. They have many that don't know the rules so you may get away with it.