If the senior folks don’t need to do this as they usually get what they want, doesn’t that just strengthen the argument in favor of just having instant trip trading?

At my previous company, we had instant trip trading. Having it that way, everyone could change their schedule, junior and senior. But it gave the junior pilot hope to improve QOL. The senior pilots were able to improve their QOL even more, if they wanted to. But they were now on equal footing with the junior pilots. So everyone was happy. Senior pilots benefited by bidding with their seniority. And junior pilots were still able to increase QOL. And if the senior pilot still wanted to increase theirs as well, then they could too...with everyone else.