At the risk of giving advice to someone who may be senior to me, you don't need to be 40% to have a life outside of Delta. As a 12yr FO, I've been to Europe, Asia and South America more than ATL. It's not because I prefer international, it's because a junior WB FO has a better schedule than a senior NB FO. Life can be pretty good at 80% on a WB. I've also been to countless events for band, football, birthdays, holidays, etc... I've eaten Turkey on Thanksgiving day and opened presents with my children on 12/25 for most of the last decade. We even have several great NYE memories combined with great summer vacations. Proper staffing and minimal optimizer impact, combined with above average PBS and PCS skills will give you plenty of options.


When your daily average credit is 6+ hours instead of 5:15, you work less days for the same hours. An 80 hour month is 13 days vs 15, so you are already two days ahead. That one week of summer vacation you paid for with 40% seniority comes for free when you are working 2-3 days less every month of the summer. When your pay rate is 10-20% higher, you can cut back on the number of hours. The WB fleets are staffed so that you can generally drop trips. If that isn't an option, the P2P drops work well. Keeping a buffer in the FSB can even out the cashflow if that is a concern.