Tnkr

I thought this would be a good place to trade secrets for successful TTGA postings. Things I have learned so far:

- SWAPA has a trading forum by domicile. Good place for commuters to find legs.
- Put your give aways as trades as well (you can post the trip/res block both ways). CWA won't let you do a legality check on a give away trip. For example, if you have a trip in give away and I'm thinking about calling you to see if you'd be willing to trade rather than give away, I would like to check legality before I bother you. Can't do that if the trip is just posted as give away.
- If you have a trade posted put what you are looking for in the notes. Also, put the overnights. Keeps people from having to open the trip to find out.

We have A LOT of new folks around here. Please keep this thread focused so we can make it a sticky for future new hires. Thx!

Smooth at FL450

From someone starting class in 2 weeks...Thank you!!! I'm sure this will come in handy in a few months.

SlipKid

FWIW, CWA does allow you to do a legality check on straight giveaways. If you are legal, one of the many vagaries of our wonderful 1995 software is that it will say that the person you're picking up from is legal, with no mention of your name.

If you're illegal to pick up the trip, you'll get a detailed list of all the SWApA give backs, err, "gains" that made you illegal, which happens more often than not IME.

Definitely put something in the comments if you're looking for a trade. When looking for a trade, READ the friggin' comments! If a person is looking to trade for a 3 day PM, don't bother them with a trade for a 4 day AM, and especially don't get snippy when you ignore that advice, and call the person anyway, and they are not receptive to the trade (I've had that happen several times).

Also, if you change your mind about whatever trade parameters you've put in the remarks, make a new TTGA post. I can't count the number of times I've had exactly what the person specified in the remarks, and they still refused to trade.

at6d

__You can give away your last day of a reserve block. When you are released for example on day three of four, tell scheduling to break off the last day because you want to put it in giveaway. Then, go into your board and do your thing.

__Stay in touch with people that you trade with--I've been able to give away a single reserve day more than once to the same person.

__You can give away segments of a multi-day trip. For example, if you live in Dallas and commute to PHX and your last leg is DAL-PHX, maybe you want to give away the last leg and go home instead. Well, there are commuters that may want to pick up that outbound leg. It's worth a shot. Also, you can basically offer to split four days into two, etc.

__If you give away a reserve block, you can try to pick up open time or a TTGA trip in another domicile (maybe you commute from DAL to PHX because you are too junior and want to pick up a trip in DAL).

RJSAviator76

Can someone share some tips and techniques for picking up open time?

Let me see if I understand this correctly... you can bid on any open time trip for either premium or straight pay. For the first year guy, am I correct to assume that open time at "straight pay" is still paid out at second year rate if you're over your guarantee? If you get premium pay, what are you actually paid as a first year guy?

flyguy81

Premium pays 1.5 at 2nd yr rate if over line value. After 6 months I haven't been able to score premium yet. Just straight.

WIKI

RJS
It seems the most stable way to pick up SY pay rates (without having to have CWA open time alerts and worry about someone senior also deciding to bid straight and thus lose the pairing) is to bid MOT

Why MOT? Because it has lots of undesirable little turns that pay 2-3 TFP. No one wants them. You can grow each of them into a nice 3-day that pays above 20 using ELITT. So set your phone alarm each month on the 23rd. Bid all the MOT turns that you are legal for, but choose only award 1 from the drop down menu. Then take your award wherever it pops up and trade that sucker on ELITT. Boom! That /M now goes on a 3-day that pays at least 19.5 and you do not have to play open time bingo against the premium sharks.

Note: Due to 117 rules and the forward block limits, it is not worth it to try and pick up two turns in hopes of trading them up to 3-days because both of them would have to be super low block to make you legal. But if you live in domicile, you may wish to bid for all turns that you are legal...and make your second year pay "Johnny Cash" style, that is, one piece at a time.

Hope this helps. Send me a PM if it is confusing. And read the contract! Everything I just explained is in there!!

RJSAviator76

That's some good gouge right there. Please keep it coming.

SimMonkey

I have a three day block of reserve left in the month. I am 4.5 hours under guarantee. Any tricks of the trade to get paid for the full block?

WHACKMASTER

Well, that will be impossible to get rid of, but if you look at how much open time is out there you can bet your a$$ that you'll get used for all three days of that and end up crediting whatever that trip pays minus your 4.5. So let's say they give you a 19.5 three-day. You'll credit 15 tfp over your monthly guarantee.

It's summer and you're on reserve. Let us know if you can actually find a way to get rid of that. If not, might as well fly and get the overage above monthly guarantee.