Originally Posted by
Roadkill
Can anyone tell me what days in Dec end up being "unstacked"? I assume the 25th, and maybe the 24th and 26th... Does anyone remember from previous years what other days have issues? Maybe the 31st?
In Nov, I was surprised that only 24th (Thanksgiving) and 25th got unstacked in my category, and the furthest the unstack went was 9% up the line-holders list. I had expected maybe 40%, and a lot more days around the holiday.
Thanks for any thoughts on this!
Unstacking is directly related to how many available reserves you have in your category, ie. the manning of your category. There is a "manning formula" and some categorys are well above that number, some are not, so it really depends which one you are in, as to how big the stacks are allowed to grow, before the computer starts to unstack trips and put them on lines.
Right now in my category (ATL 777 A) we have about 3x the amount of reserves required, every day. Require about 8 per day, but we have about 24-30 depending on which days. Nearly every trip in the bid package was left over in open time, over Thanksgiving, I don't know if anyone got unstacked. It might be the same for Christmas, depending on how many reserves there are by then.
All those Thanksgivig day trips in open time will be assigned to those 24 reserves. Same for Christmas. But if your category is thin on manning, it will start unstacking from the bottom line holders going up, until they get the stack down to the amount of reserves available for those days.
If you are on the bubble, you may want to bid a reserve line or a RRL, with Xmas off, then pick and choose from what's left in open time. You should at least call the PBS help line before you submit your bids, they will have lots of strategy to be home for Xmas...like bid trips that goes out late on Xmas day, etc.