Originally Posted by NuGuy

FWIW, as a comparason, the "trip trading system" at Delta is broken down into different components, some of which only loosely interact with each other.

The primary system is called PCS ("pilot change schedule"), and it permits adds, drops and swaps (including reserve day drops & swaps) from the 20th of the month prior to 2 days prior (1 day prior in the case of swaps and drops). It allows you to add flying at straight pay (and soon certain premium trips), swap with open time, or straight drop trips (a couple of flavors of that as well). Drops that cannot be immediately awarded are placed into open time as "qualified drops" (able to be picked up, but some restrictions on swaping into them). Swaps and drops are controlled by the reserve availability grid, which is an automated algorithm based on the number of trips in open time and historical usage (it's more complicated than that, but there is no human intervention, its all automated). Adds at straight time ("white slips") are capped at the average line value +15 hours. PCS runs 4 times a day, and awards in seniority order, and all runs completely automated. There is no scheduler interaction. There is a sequence the system runs, but basically drops, adds then swaps are worked in that order.

Inside of 2 days, manual trip coverage comes into play. PCS allows you to enter your requests, but they are manually processed by Crew Scheduling. There is a huge complicated coverage ladder that they follow, depending on the report time of the trip. This is where all premium time, reserve assignments, straight adds and reserve trip assignments occur. This is going to change slightly when premium time becomes available in open time earlier and premium trips awarded via PBS.

In both cases, the systems deal with "open time", that is, the list that the company maintains of uncovered flying.

There is also the pilot to pilot swap board. This runs outside of the other system, and the pool of trips is not the same as open time. The PTP board runs in real time, and allows you to pick up, swap or drop trips directly with another pilot, and the transactions happen instantanously and not seniority based. Pilots must be the same base (no out of base PTP transactions). They are not subject to other restrictions such as the pick up limit. While a separate system, it does update your schedule and will modify your PCS requests as trips fall off your schedule. It does have a "trip parking" restriction, preventing people from gaming the system with their buddies.