For what it’s worth, I’m at UPS and my wife is at AA. She can get 75 hours working 10 days in a calendar month. They have 12 bid periods.

UPS will get 14 days out of you no matter how they do it. Airport hot, reserve, a line. And they have 13 bid periods in a year.

a lot of our guys don’t get how different it is, but I see it and live it. Hopefully we improve our soft time in this next contract cycle, but I’m not holding my breath

she can easily drop trips and change her schedule. We can’t.

both great companies and I hope you find what fits best for you. Good luck!

I am not at UPS but I used to JS from BFI to SDF all of the time on UPS and it was easy peasy

Like everyone else has mentioned commuting on us is pretty easy. ANC could be problematic in the summer. Also take into consideration once you get a line that you’ll possibly be able to hold lines that start and/or end in SEA (or BFI for us). In ONT they’re hit or miss but I’m usually starting or ending up there once a month. Same goes for PDX. I think SDF has some lines that start or end in GEG. Seems to be mostly turns in other bases.

Do your research and enjoy the process. There’s so much more than just the commute. Both places are good shops and has pros and cons.

I always read the benefits of conflict bidding out of ANC, but I’m not sure what that is.

Could you expand on what conflict bidding is, and why it’s exclusive to ANC and not other bases, please?

Conflict bidding is an artifact of line bidding. For instance, you bid a line featuring two long round the world type trips of 12 and 14 days. You then bid short term training (CQ6) that conflicts with one of those long trips. They will now drop that long trip (pay protected) and either you can make up the credit deficit by picking up stuff from open time, opt not to but allow them to try, or lock-in the credit drop by choosing to not let scheduling try to put stuff in. In ANC, there are fewer short trips available for them to put into your line so you frequently can conflict two days of training for a full pay period’s worth of flying pay. There are more ins and outs, but that’s the gist of it.

I’m pretty sure locking in the credit drop is only an ocv option.

that is correct. For a training deficit you only have the option to restore yourself or let the company do it. If you do a “bad” job, the company will help you out lol

oh with the optimizer they have it easy to restore. Tons of ICN, HKG, SDF, etc etc out and backs. The days of conflict bidding are long gone my friend. You can get something out of it but not much anymore.

Conflict bidding is a system where you will most likely get backfilled with the very trips people don't like to fly for all the reasons you can imagine.
I also learned people on Long call reserve get called up to sit airport stand by for a week. This place doesn't stop surpising me.

Only allowed if those hots were published in the bid package...adoc hots may not be assigned to LCO.