Dont put too much stock into APA quotes.

IDK how you guys can just drop down like that, unless your very very senior and you have such great trips that people will pickup at straight time??

As a presumably very junior CA, how the hell do you just drop down to 40 hrs?

At DL it's fairly easy most months.. maybe not as easy during the busy summer months, but still possible if you're creative.

80% March NYC ER A I screwed up my bid and got a line I didn’t want instead of reserve. I got 2 five day trips and CQ. Tossed the 5 days on the pickup board when the schedules came out and they were both gone within 30 minutes. I think it’s entirely category dependent though.

To add to the above, at DL... "Bad day, worse day" is a regularly used technique. This is oversimplified, but you can drop a multi-day trip well in the future, where there is "plenty" of reserve availablity (on paper), by "swapping" into a near-term 1-day trip with almost no reserve coverage left. Basically, they gladly let you create a future problem by solving a near-term problem. In some cases, you can swap multiple long trips for a sinlge short trip that's soon. Once you know how, it's not hard at all. Lots of pilots at all seniority levels drop thier entire schedule down to 0, and rebuild back up with easy 1 or 2-day trips with one leg and a deadhead, for example.

I am less than one year in at AA. I trade down in days and value pretty easily. Trade off weekends pretty easy as long as the trade is is done earlier, later in the month, not so much. Straight drops are near impssible with 4 day trips but I ve made it happen with two and one day trips. I can't do just anything I want, but I have a pretty good schedule for being junior, I think. It does seem I spend more time on my PBS bids and trading than the senior guys I fly with.

god fangs I love you so much

Part of this is from working through the lost decade, some of us feel like frugal grandparents who lived through the Great Depression. I'll go down in hours if the pay goes down again, or when I've made enough to leave the job. There is a mentality about leaving money on the table that's hard to break.

Yeah that's a thing. Few folks have as much opportunity and flexibility to just make as much large bank whenever they want as we do. Those who have seen the lean times don't take that opportunity lightly.

I'm old enough to have experienced the lost decade from the very bottom of it. It stunk. But my rational comes from the fact I have no one in my family tree that has made it more than a frew years past 65. I want to make sure I have time off to enjoy this fine income before it's too late for me.