LunkerHunter

To get a commuting bank (aka travel bank, aka deviation bank)
you first have to be scheduled for a trip where the operating leg either begins or ends away from domicile (or both). The trip includes a commerical pax ticket to/from the operating cities and your domicile.
That ticket has an assigned $ value that is magically created in some black box computer that may or may not be located in Memphis. When there are issues with the $ amount that the black box spits out, the employees responsible for interacting with the black box either can’t be contacted or they swear up and down that they just ‘don’t know why’ it’s coming up with the numbers that it does. It’s like a Dilbert cartoon, except it’s real and it usually creates a problem that you’ll have to waste a lot of time on in order to un-**** it. Because if you don’t fix it, it usually means the company will be deducting money from your paycheck. Sorry, I’ve digressed a bit... Anyways, an example of one of these trips would be like this, assume you’re mem based:

operate MEM-LAX
hotel for 11 hours
Delta ticket LAX-MEM established fare $400

Whether or not you live in Memphis, you have the option to “deviate”
from the return flight giving you $400 to buy a ticket straight back to CID on pretty much any airline. 2 of the benefits here are that you can go straight back to Iowa and depending on available flights you can bypass the hotel and get gome early (this does not affect your credit pay for the trip). You can even ride FDX back to MEM and use the $400 for another plane ticket that month as long as it’s within 3 days of a trip. The flexibility is nice, but that $400 turns into $200 if you don’t use it in that bid month. And if you don’t spend that $200 next month, then it continues to decay by 50% each subsequent month.
Make no mistake, the company makes out like a bandit here to the tune of ~ $20 million in annual savings (allegedly). It’s nice to have options though if you’re commuting. Hope this helps shed some light on the process for you.

sorry for some of the repeat info, I was slow on the keyboard I guess