Originally Posted by
iaflyer
From my experience, it's pretty low by seeing how many of my FOs stay on the trip from PBS award to flying.
First, by doing that you're pretty much putting yourself on short call reserve the entire month. I've got too many things to do with the family to do that. Second, in smaller categories there just isn't that much open time to work with. Third, in my category we don't do a lot of "last flight in, first flight out" from the base, so there isn't very little of that "fly to outstation and DH back" stuff that works so well in ATL on the NB that pays 10.5 for very little work.
In the end, I put my time into a excellent PBS bid and call it good.
I hate to be the guy to point this out, but in my category I consistently see trips with the same handful of captains in open time. There's a good reason for that, and it's not because the FOs are dropping their schedules to surf open time.