Originally Posted by
Tee1Up
Looking at the March reasons report, I was given a "coverage award" for a pairing that I had on bid line 37. I had a trip on bid line 8 that conflicted with the coverage award and then that pairing from my line 8 bid went to a junior guy. I'm not clear on what the "coverage award" was and why it was awarded prior to a pairing that was way up my preference list that ultimately got awarded to a junior guy. Out of the country right now or I'd call ALPA. Just hoping to tap the wealth of knowledge on here. Thanks in advance for any insight.
Here's what I know - PBS uses coverage awards when it determines that after the bids are processed, there will be too many unawarded trips. So, reduce the level of unawarded trips, it will assign trips to people prior to working through the bid. It's also called "unstacking" because the "stack" of trips was too high.
So, PBS does try to give you something that you wanted, even if it's on a day that you don't want to work. So it looks through your bid, looks at the trips that were unassigned and tries to match them up. So when the coverage award system worked it's way though it's pile, it had no idea whether or not someone else would get a conflicting trip. It just knew that the trip you were assigned wasn't covered, and you had some interest in it (even at line 37).