Originally Posted by
Chimpy
‘lol that easy huh? Unless you’ve been here 20 years and hold 10hr day trips it isn’t easy to dump stuff. United is great but the reserve grid and how they come up with their minimum staffing level is a weak spot in the UPA. It’s been impossible to straight drop anything here and Bad Day/ Worse Day isn’t much better when the numbers are constantly manipulated.
It all depends on your BES. I’m 75% as an FO in a large hub on the 73. Since April I have cleared 90–95% of my schedule every month. It’s not EASY. It takes work and requires you to watch the reserve pool very frequently. But it is absolutely doable.
I get awarded all weekend 3/4 days and generally just end up working weekday trips I choose. I leave the weekends open for premium but that’s just my technique. That being said, the CA seat in my base is way overstaffed and this probably wouldn’t work because there is almost no open time. But the notion that you have to be senior to drop your schedule is completely wrong. You just have to work a lot harder to do it when you’re junior. There are several other techniques that make it easier, you’ve just got to find someone that will help you figure it out.