Originally Posted by
BigHitterLlama
In IQ my captain said (and several times in this thread it’s been mentioned) that if you bid a trip (over days you request off in the shadow period) that scheduling will put a trip on those days and say you bid for it even though you requested it off. This runs counter to my understanding that bidding in the shadow period is independent of your training schedule. I mean I understand they want to get your training done in that footprint but I also thought you could request days off in that period and that was a separate entity from your shadow bid in PBS. Just curious. I ended up flying on most of the days I requested off for OE but I smoked my 15 day shadow period bid with max credit and had my best month at delta pay wise.
Shadow bidding is solely for pay determination. No other reason, no matter what anyone tells you. You are never awarded shadow trips (look below you on the Wide report and you'll see they either went to someone junior to you or into open time). They were never on your schedule. They were never dropped. PBS is just saying "if not for the shadow designation, here's how your bid would have played out."
OE schedulers know your shadow bid is not relevant to them, only the shadow period itself (that you don't control). It behooves them to get you complete ASAP, as their performance is measured by such metrics. You'll notice and experience (fleet dependent) that your quality of life is of little to no concern for them. For that reason, it would be nice to have IQ and OE golden days in the next contract. That being said, there could be a penalty paid for OE golden days depending on how/if we allowed them to affect shadow bidding.