Originally Posted by CLazarus

While seniority helps for trip drops, how you bid in PBS is a big factor as well. Senior guys get awarded better trips out the gate… and thus don’t drop as much of what they are awarded. PBS ‘over awards’ trips during monthly schedule preferencing. So when monthly trip trading opens on the 24th, the Seniority Trip Trade system allows a modest amount of trip dropping out the gate to grease the trade skids. Trick is, the STT system is more likely to let 1-2 day trips drop into open time than 3-4 day trips. So if you are super junior but bid for blah 1-2 day trips, odds are you’ll have decent success dropping them when trading opens. But four day domestic trips hang on like boogers. Another reason to bid shorter trips is that it is easy to trade a 1-2 day trip for a longer one (seniority permitting). YMMV.