That may be partly true. We work on a 28 day month or a 35 day month, not 30 like SWA (I think).
In a 28 day month, max work is 15, with 13 off min.
For a 35 day month, max work is 19, with 16 off.
I just looked at Oct (35 days) and Sept (28 days).
For October, the average days off was 18.19.
For September, the average days off was 14.7.
So, it's about 16.48 days off average for a 31 day period.
My question is, with the SWA days off, is that an average of the bid line, or an actual average of what pilots are flying? It seems to me that talking to my SWA friends, they pick up a lot of JA (is that the right term?). It's good for them, good for the company, and pretty easy if they live in domicile. It all make the days off go down. I know at FedEx, they never call me on days off to draft me (maybe they will now that the summer of the family is over), and I never have to accept it. They can't jetbridge assign me (I think they can do that to you, right), and my days off are my days off. Not saying one is better than the other, but just want to compare apples to apples.