Originally Posted by GoCats67

Many many years ago in my class they had very limited ORD slots as a 727 Second Officer, but many in Denver. So, I was "forced" into a DEN S/O slot. Since "normally" getting DEN initially was rare, I was able to trade that with an engineer in the prior class and never had to actually commute to DEN.

I think you would have the exact same experience in trying to get to SFO if you for some reason were not able to get that inititally in class. The current base trade process works, plus we are having vacancy bids about every 4-6 weeks, so in the unlikely event you can't get SFO as your initial assignment, you will get a trade/bid to SFO practically immediately.