You believe everything you hear? Not making it up, just repeating a rumor, ... Same thing.

Yes I do feel strongly that something benefiting pilots for a couple three decades is suddenly taken away ,over some vague philosophical ideal.

The rumor you heard about Newark had nothing to do with selling trips. It was about a software program a select group had access to for trading.

I would be interested to know what Alpa claims to have gained for giving this up.... Maybe our new vacation bid system?

There were five or six pilots who were picking up high value trips in a remarkably quick fashion after they became open, and then trading them just amongst themselves. There was an investigation and they could find no back room deals to get them these trips. The pilots said they used a variety of different cell phone providers so that the CCS open time alert would be sure to get to one or the other first, depending on nearness cell phone tower locations. Also may have used automated screen refresh alert programs, going through the scheduling phone tree until the last prompt then leaving the line open so and pressing just the final prompt when a trip opened up, and other technical geekery. No one believed it but the company could do nothing about it. This is also rumor.

They were known as the EWR mafia. Supposedly they had to pay $10,000 to buy into the program once they were chosen. They kept it small. Had cell phone providers change some settings that allowed quicker-talking seconds-data signal. Had schedulers call them in advance to premium trips coming open (part of the $10,000 bought schedulers and/or there were kickbacks). Had spouses/friends trading for them while they were flying. Wrote script for a hidden program that could see into CCS and see/grab trips before they even appeared in open time. These are all the accusations, rumours. I can't say they were true. It was amazing to see the same group get all the good trips month after month for years. Many were outraged and suspected illegal activities.

Now I do know a few who would drop almost all their lines and then pick up like crazy. Little bit of gambling here but 9 out of 10 times it paid off. We had one get busted for having spouse trip trade for him while he was flying. Got month off without pay. It was too hard to prove the above accusations legally.

+1
It's that same Commie philosophy that has caused us to lose Bad Day Worse Day and all the other flexibilty that we had for decades. Funny how no one ever complained about seniority violation in the past. Now these so called Crusaders are fighting to protect the "seniority" of the few while literally screwing the entire pilot group.