Lose landing currency and have trips dropped with pay while waiting for a class. Throw in vacation and moving vacation around so they can't put the class on any days off touching vacation and it limits their ability to assign a class to you. There is some luck involved as they may be able to get you in on days that you were originally going to fly anyway, but it works out well for quite a few.

This is for the 777 base. Can't speak about the 787.


As an example, a while back I lost currency. They had to buy about 48hrs worth of flying off my line after I went non current to get me into a landing class. That month I flew 38hrs and was paid about 93 while having 21 days off. No vacation moving was used in that. Just a regular month.

Some people will take the extra time off. Others will pick up more trips since their 117 clock has been reset.

Do that three times a year (one time you have regular recurrent) and it adds up to a lot of extra time off or $.