Originally Posted by
Baradium
As someone already mentioned. You can bid all your reserve days at once at Delta with no off days interspersed. If you go with a more junior airframe than 765 (maybe with it but don't know reserve patterns on it) you can eventually alternate months if you really want to (2nd half one month to 1st half of the next).
In the past when the ATL 765 was almost all vacation Europe destinations, in the summer reserve actually went Senior most of the time as the ALV was high and senior pilots would take 80hrs on the chance that they may get used once. As a middling seniority pilot I often could not get my preference of reserve and was handed a line. During the winter on some years 1/3 of the category was on reserve with line holders getting lines of 65-69 hrs. During those months you'd get 72hrs with little chance of getting used as line holders would suck up any open time. It was often 12req/50avail on the reserve list. Obviously during the non-summer months you could manipulate your schedule quite easily. Hope the Europe comes back to that level soon.
It was really a very seasonal bidding plane.