This is me also. Some months I unexpectedly fall into a bunch of premium, drop other trips because I’m ahead of the credit curve, and end up called for more premium. The next month I did one very cushy four day and spent the rest of the month floating around in my pool. Still averaged 85 hours between the two months. Even when I don’t have the premium assist I’ll take a mental health month and play hookey. At some point in life the bills are paid and the big checks just change the digits on your account screen, but that time spent home beats all.

 

That's a strange technique. I just tell PBS what days I want to work in the first place, saves a lot of hassle.

 

A little, but it works out. I’m not senior enough to hold all weekends from an award standpoint, so this works great

 

I think many at Spirit feel this way. So would that mean drop to zero saves the company money? Why would they want it gone?

 

We can only guess, but I think IF they want it gone then it would be because of how they want to run an operation. I think that’s what it boils down to tbh

 

Many of your own have said that dropping on the weekends is much harder. But if you can't hold "all" weekends, it means you can hold some weekends (off I presume), so if you have some trips on the days you want, why drop EVERYTHING?

At JB the good trips, if there are any, go out of FLICA so fast they often don't generate an alert, or you have seconds, or less, after an alert goes off. I have stalked FLICA for limited periods of time in the past, and it's a miserable existence. So to drop ALL your trips, even the ones on the days you already want to work, and rebuild with the trips that aren't gone in fractions of a second, assuming you aren't flying, sounds miserable. Or, what kind of BOT do you have? Is it the latest version with all the add-ons and features? 1.21 Gigawatts?

 

Whether a weekend is green or red on the grid is base and seat dependent. I believe CAs are usually red on the weekends since we’re short CAs, but FOs in several bases are green. My particular base is green all month long for the FOs. Keep in mind that if a day goes red, it doesn’t mean it’ll stay red for the remainder of the month. As trips are picked up on that day, the net reserves go up changing the grid from red to green.

The day Daily Open Time DOT opens, everyone is putting their drop requests in. There a ton of trips to choose from to manipulate your schedule. There also seems to have a bunch of trip in OT when the DOT opens as well. Either remnants of trips dropped in IOT or whatever wasn’t awarded. So no bot for me, I do play the game and camp Flica all day the day DOT opens up.

Not everyone drops to zero, but I do. I tend to get awarded a 15 hour 4 day because it ends on a redeye or they threw in a redeye in the middle of the pairing. I don’t do redeyes, so I drop to zero and rebuild. Additionally, our 4 GDO days gives us a weekend or two off so even junior folks get some weekends. Every weekend off, that’s a bit more senior to be awarded, but can be accomplished by dropping trips.

Schedule flexibility is the name of the game with DTZ and game changer for the pilot group

 

Nothing requires you to drop if you have the trips you want. It's an option.

The ease with which we can drop and pickup trips creates an ecosystem where really good trips are surprisingly common in open time. No bot needed.

 

I just looked at the first Officer grid for Fort Lauderdale, besides today and tomorrow, the entire month is green by a lot. I could go in and drop the other two weekends right now, if I wanted to, with no hassle. And so could many others. The grid is very green, and that’s the normal not the exception.

 

I guess I'm used to this weird alternative universe where dudes drop the bad trips and pick up the good ones. This new Spirit universe where all the good trips just sit in open time, where you can just stroll in and grab them whenever you want almost sounds too good to be true.