It’s also self defeating for those trying to get to a base they are not senior enough to hold.

Base A has a reduction, pilots get displaced to Base B
Pilots in base B drop trips to pick up all of the open time in base A. Base A has very little open time and reserves are used with little frequency, allowing the company to save on reserve staffing and premium pay. Because they can staff Base A with less reserves, or haven’t had it backfire with having to pay big premium pay, there is zero incentive to add more spots back to base A, which is what the pilots in Base B need to get back to base A

In the scenario, we will call base A (DFW) and base B (IAH)

I don’t blame people for dropping and picking back up in other bases, I would do it too. But the only way to make the company add positions back into a base is to stop having pilots volunteer to pick up the flying for straight pay from other bases. It’s the whole “cutting off the nose to spite one’s face” scenario.

This was an issue back in 2014 when people couldn’t hold FLL and were dropping and picking up DOT in FLL, screwing up the sun burnt senior pilots JRM opportunities, they tried to get their LEC council to pass an amendment not allowing out of base pickups, it died quickly.

Riddle is correct. This isn’t some war of senior vs junior, it’s logic and basic correlation