Originally Posted by
togaflaps
Idk what you're talking about. At my ULCC I could drop and swap numerous pairings to other days. At UAL, I'm stuck only being able to trade into the same trip footprint as most days are normally red. I've talked to numerous of my friends that have come from the same ULCC to UAL and everyone is just as mad as I am about it. Can someone explain to me why when there are 0 open pairings and 18 reserves, why is the min reserves 23+ and the day red? Also there is very little open time in my very junior base on a NB. Over the next 4 days, there are 3 pairings, 2 of them having 5 AM shows at a satellite base. Maybe if you set up notifications and watch open time like a hawk you can see immediately when someone calls in sick and the trip is dropped into OT and can swap, if the days match up. It seems to me you might need to lay off the koolaid a bit.
EDIT: Want to add that I bid low 40% in my base as well and still can't do much in terms of drops or swaps.
This is exactly what I'm curious of and what I'm most afraid of about re: making the jump to UAL. The drop/swap/trade rules at my LCC are similar to what you describe. My primary goal is this kind of QOL so that I can rearrange my schedule as necessary to spend time with my family especially as my soon to be first born shows up. From what I'm seeing here, it sounds like the ULCC's may offer superior flexibility in terms of being able to completely rearrange your schedule outside of the footprint of your bid award. Is it correct to say that you can only trade into trips which match your original award's footprint? If so that's not necessarily the kind of "flexible" I'm hoping for if I'm trying to trade into a weekday tip in order to get out of a weekend trip for example or vice versa (this is relatively easy to do at my current airline).