Isn't there some SWA trip-trading thing where you can drop a line, then pick up someone else's line at a better pay rate because it is "open time"?
I overheard a SWA FO talking to someone else about it at a bar, but never heard the details.
He sounded like it was something a lot of guys did to offset 1st year pay.
ELITT is our web based program for trading trips with the company. You can only trade, not drop, and certain productivity measures apply to make sure that it's usually more productive for the company for the trade. It's good for trading up for better paying trips or slipping your schedule to try to get a certain day off but still work the same number of days. ELITT operates on 1st come 1st served and has nothing to do with seniority.
1st year dudes get the good deal of getting paid 2nd year pay for anything they pick up in open time (does not include ELITT). Open time bids and awards are done daily and are subject to seniority. In the past it wasn't too hard for a 1st year guy to pick up some open time if his schedule allowed it. Right now it's almost impossible as the senior guys are the only ones with a chance of getting open time.
There's also some more complicated ways of bidding monthly open time and then trading up on ELITT to make you trips pay more....but it's way too complicated for this discussion.
A good friend of mine made over 70k (according to him) his first year by very clever use of open time pick up and ELITT. I'm sure you could even make more if you sat at the computer all day plotting out your trips and if we weren't so overmanned currently.