Originally Posted by BunkerF16

Fair enough.

I bid CKA about 90% of my line, the other 10% I bid trips with soft time (SAN, SEA, AUA, CUN, etc).

I get 50-60% of my CKA trips bought. So on a month that I had an original bid of say 85 hours, with 18-19 days off, if I chose not to fly, that would end up being 3-4 days of flying with up to 25-26 days off. I then "double-dip" and pick up trips that fall into open time...usually the IROP-type pairings that have high credit and lots of DH attached to them. (No, I'm not attached to FLICA, don't have multiple phones, I don't have a BOT, and I'm not part of a cartel, so no need to reply BD.)

I sell back my PTO so that's a little over $30,000 all by itself, I can bid around the days I want off to take vacation, or even bid to fly down/back to the location we're going.

This past year was a little higher than the previous 2. I had in the past averaged 65-70 hrs of block, 18 days off (this number is my baseline--one that drives the rest of my schedule), and around 130 hrs of credit. Selling back PTO drives that to 145 hrs of pay each month. This past year I had quite a few IROP-heavy months, so I was able to average the 66/145 (160 in pay)/18 I mentioned before.

Again, I'm not on an island by myself. I have a good buddy of mine who gets more trips bought than I do (his CKA are more desirable), but because his commute distance, he choose to take the time off. He parlays his trips bought into straight time off. He had to use his recurrent landings as his currency or he would have turned into a pumpkin.

The bottom line is, as you said, this is not a d1ck measuring contest, but just to see what guys can accomplish at different locations on different equipment.

Everyone will have the chance to be senior (at some level) where ever they may be--especially as an FO. I don't think it's a bad thing to put all information out there, no matter where data point sits on the diagram.