IF one could drop their entire month AND still receive pay for it, does one really believe such a line would go junior?

Never did I say the contrary. I never said you would not lose (note the correct spelling) pay. I was speaking to the question if he would be able to drop reserve for the entire first year on reserve, which there is zero way that will happen.

If you think you can, or that dropping an entire month of reserve is just that simple, thats as foolish as dropping your entire reserve line and then thinking you could go and pick up trips...and then calling scheduling asking for them to please give you your reserve days back

The way to "pick up" flying on reserve is to answer the phone when scheduling calls you offering a trip last minute. There are rules governing the order in which scheduling is supposed to call people, and of course there are always rumors that those rules aren't always followed. If you can prove you got skipped over an NCC may result in getting credit for the trip, but it's difficult to prove without a lot of snooping around on flica and crewtrac. A new guy with low hours is fairly close to the front of the line to get called, once the standing available list has been gone through.

As for dropping an entire month of reserve and still flying... It's a silly thing to argue over :) If you're really that new and drop too much, just answer your phone when scheduling calls.

With max 2 JRMS a month you still wont get back to 72hrs a month

Not necessarily,... an 18hr credit 4 day trip at JRM pay equals 36hrs. Do this twice and you have 72 hours and the end result you have a 72 hour paycheck and 23 days off a month! I’m not condoning this practice but it drives Team Bendo bat$hit and they REALLY want to take away your ability to do it. BTW only a retard uses up their JRM bank on anything less than a 3 day trip. Just some simple math and my 2 cents.

Anything that drives Team Bendo bat$hit crazy should not only be condoned but strongly encouraged.

Contract limits JRM to 5 per calendar year. However there's always WDO and Move Up Pay after your limit is reached and that should be used for 1 and 2 day low time trips also.

In theory you are correct, however I've never been offered a 4 day at JRM pay in the 6 months I've been on the line. In my experience they only offer that for one and two day trips.

And of course, take-home pay changes depending on if the company can get the payroll right. Not the first time, won't be the last time, but a couple hundred pilots apparently got shorted Oct pay. So even though the payscale is set per contract, actual results may vary.

You don't have to limit yourself to JRM pickups. A few times they called offering JRM for 2-day trips and I asked for (and got) straight time plus move-up, instead of wasting a JRM on a 2-day.

Why pick up a 2-day then? Sometimes to fly more so I don't suck, but mostly because the offered trip worked with my fam schedule better than the ones I dropped. Remember, this is first-year schedule management, not how to get rich on $38 x 72. I usually didn't GAF whether or not I got back up to or over 72 hrs, because again I could make more doing a secondary job and if I'm not getting paid much, I'd rather spend time with my kids.

Beyond 1st year pay, now that's a different story where getting as many hours as possible both helps pay the bills and helps with applications to other airlines with a current contract. If you can't afford to sit out that first year with respect to building hours, at some regionals you can get close to 1000 hrs/year and with the bonus that is becoming fairly common, make about double what spirit pays first year while building hours for your legacy application.