Originally Posted by
Macjet
Premium, X list, and Y list flying are unpredictable at best. You can't drop 72 hours of trips and then pickup 72 hours of premium. That just isn't how it works. If you drop trips and then add trips out of open time the pay is 100%. If the company lists Premium Flying in open time, which I've seen twice, then that is 200%. X and Y list flying, sporadic at best, are on a revolving weight basis to always call the guy who has flown the least. If you drop to anything less than guarantee there is no guarantee that you'll get back to that with X/Y.
If we want 150% for open time I'm wondering how we're going to maintain the same amount of such. I'd love to drop my PBS award and rebuild at 150% but I don't see that as realistic.
Thanks for the info, from the other side of the fence it seemed like everyone just dropped their whole month and rebuilt it with premium as the month went along.
Not to get down another DTZ rabbit hole, but what is the difference between DTZ and a permissive reserve grid that allows trip swap flexibility? Do many guys really drop everything to zero and just take the month off from flying? Or is the main attraction the ability to pick up straight pay trips that you'd prefer to fly (essentially swapping your old pairings for new ones)