Originally Posted by
hockeypilot44
I'm going on a decade and a half as an fo at an airline that supposedly has 1 year upgrades (it does in New York). I'm a commuter so I'm on a fleet that flies to where I live. I don't chase layovers at home, but I do chase trips that start or end with a deadhead to where I live. It cuts off a commute on one end and pays me for the other end. That's my trick.
In general, staying an FO on a junior fleet will get you schedule flexibility, and your choice of vacay... whether that's better QOL than say being more junior on international ops is up to you. A lot of this is in the eye of the beholder, and obviously geography matters.