You can always find open time to pickup. The question is can you pick it up in advance or are you willing to pick it up the day prior or day off. When a category runs short of open time then you will have to put a blank pickup request in. There are parameters you can program into the request to insure you get the type trip you want. There are always people calling in sick so you you can normally get a trip that way if there is no open time. Another thing to keep in mind is that there are no time limits on swaps. You can be at 84 hours and swap a 1 day trip for a 4 day trip. and have 100 hours. I know many NWA pilots are concerned about not being able to fly as much at Delta however on average a Delta pilot gets more credit hours per month then a NWA pilot so you should see a additional increase in pay. In many categories especially in the summer you can pick up greenslip flying at will which will pay double pay after 1 Jan. I don't work a lot of over time and I normally see 180-190k yearly in a category where the hourly rate was 160k. I know copilots who make the same getting 115 an hour however they are very senior and use rolling thunder and other options to boost their pay.