[PilotMan]

Ahhhh so it's been a week. I told you things would be boring for a bit. I've taken some extra time off from work. The Mrs is taking longer to get better than we had thought, but all in all she is doing well. So this month really isn't indicative of my typical schedule.

The window for making schedule trades opened this week. After all the scheduled flying has been awarded each month there is a mix of open (flying with no pilot assigned to it; keep in mind that Captains (left seat) and First Officers (right seat) are totally separate and individual. So in this mix of trips is everything from 1 to 4 day trips. Most are not great trips, but what they do allow is some option for manipulating your schedule. The biggest issue I had is the tightness of my schedule and the fact that 2 of my 3 trips originate and terminate in LGA. I submitted a request to have both of my LGA starting 4-day trips dropped on the hopes that it would open up my month and give me a lot of flexibility. The drawback is that if I can't find flying to replace it with then I end up with cash flow issues. The last request that I made was to replace my last 4 day with a trip that started a day later, giving me a little more breathing room in my scheduled.

So once the company starts processing requests is takes the most senior guy and goes down from there. If for some reason someone ahead of me has requested something I wanted I'm SOL. The company then processes requests about every 4 hours. So what did I get?

Nada.

I was told that the company didn't have enough reserve coverage on the days that I wanted to drop trips and even that last trip that I wanted to swap for one a day later? Yeah that one too, no coverage. So they rejected everything that I had hoped I would get.

Off I went to plan B, and that was to look for any EWR trip to replace my LGA trips with over the same days. Luckily there was exactly 1 trip for each day that I could request. Not much to choose from but the chance to dump the LGA for the EWR had to be done. I was also lucky that there wasn't anyone ahead of me making the same request so I was able to get those swaps approved. Not having to worry about having to deal with LGA takes a bit of pressure off if I can't get anything else approved.

I put one last request in to swap my final trip with another trip that was commutable on the front end. That would give me a few more hours at home in between trips. It would cost me on the back end and it would cost me a St. Maarten layover but again, home comes first. This trade was approved as well.

I've gone back in and resubmitted a request to drop my middle 4 day trip. My schedule still doesn't look doable as it is. Again I was rejected. No coverage. I'll leave that request in there. If they do end up with coverage it'll get dropped later. I might even place a call into my Chief Pilot and see if they agree and have them override Scheduling.

That's what's coming up for this week. As it stands right now. I won't be flying for a few more days. More time at home is never a bad thing.