There should be no question. You should bid a relief line hands down. As soon as the SLIW opens you can trade all month long to try to get a weekend off or two. Having a line will increase your QOL 10 fold. :cool:

Done and done. Bid nothing but relief lines. Now just waiting to see how far down the list I ended up. But I won't see my actual schedule for the next month til the 27th, or something, right?

No, it will be before the 27th because thats when the SLIW opens. Expect to see your schedule within the next couple of days. Oh and congrats on your first relief line enjoy it !

Thanks man I'm excited. Commuting has been a Bi**h on reserve, and I'm not in my 20's anymore ;). I'm hoping to find a way to get a few key days off, and then I'll be a much happier camper.

Now I just need someone to teach me how to use the SLIW and I'll be set ;).

AHHA ! Well I am in my 20's :cool:, but I am right there with you on commuting on reserve. I was IAH based commuting from MCO it was terrible. I gave up.... switched to Chicago and made the move. Send me a PM if you want I can give you a quick crash course on it, there really isn't much to it !

Full disclosure though, the pool numbers on weekends are almost always worse than weekdays. That's because the greedy lineholders like me trade those trips in the initial. You may be able to do a bad for worse and get a weekend off but odds are definitely against it.

If you're considering a relief line, my advice was always to take a look at what's left in open time first. If you're a commuter, how useful are day trips and short 4-day trips that start at 5am on day one and end at 11pm on day four to you? I bid long call when I was on reserve and was a commuter and it worked better for me. You have to be able to get to base on 12 hours notice but if you live in a big city with a lot of flights, you can almost always make that work.

Good idea. My only issue with long call is that oddly enough, the long calls lines had little to no weekend time off. I would think that, being more senior, they would have more weekends off. But what do I know? ;). This whole thing is like a giant experiment now, and I'm flailing around on a petri dish..

See, this is why I dont see why you guys enjoy line bidding. On our side, we bid once, we get what we want and thats it. No constant shuffling around. If you get a reserve line then you just bid again for what days off you want. If you are one of those guys thats likes the constant trying to make a "better" line, the. Theres open time or trading you can always do. I am not going to knock you guys for enjoying what you have, just wish you were willing to do trial runs with what we have to see what you can do with it.

And here we go again ;).

Vertisch, I'm happy to look at and evaluate anything on its merits. I think most of the people I know on the ERJ side, at least those that frequent the forums, seem to have their minds made up.

That being said, we in fact WILL BE using PBS for our phase II bidding, probably within a few months. So all of the mess that is the building of our relief lines and reserve will probably start to look a lot like yours soon. But I don't think you are going to have much luck with the primary lineholders.

The answer to that questions is easy. As a junior line holder with line bidding last month I was able to get 18 days off with a 94 credit line all within about 45min.