Old 06-12-2025 | 04:57 PM
  #8165  
tennisguru
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Originally Posted by Viper25
Just out of curiosity, does anybody have any theories (anecdotally based I'm sure) how what % of pilots just flies bid packet trips, as opposed to try to clear much of their schedule to fly OT?
I'd say it's well under 10% or less on the 717 who actually clear out their schedule and fly only/mostly broken trips. It trends more senior on the A side than the B side for whatever reason. You do basically have to live in base or have some sort of super easy commute with lots of flights because you're shut out of the last minute stuff, which also tends to be the easiest trips. If you do the rolling WS request game you're either going to get a ton of ARCOS calls every day or you're going to spend some time crafting specific PCS parameters each bid period.

I'd guess that roughly half of line holders do at least one trip swap for different bid packet trips per month. Some people can snipe a good swap out of a long crappy trip for an easy trip that reports second day before scheduling can manually cover it but you have to stalk OT right before each PCS run to try to grab that SWP.

It's totally anecdotal, and not 100% accurate, but generally I see the older CA's that I fly with just flying their bid packet trips while younger ones seem to be more willing to play the PCS hustle. Part of that is that the older pilots are normally more senior as well and get better trips from PBS anyways.
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