Originally Posted by FTv3

SDF perspective:
That really depends on how one commutes. If they can just catch a ups tail into base fairly easily then they will bid trips that work with that. Usually this means something that starts and ends sometime between Tuesday am thru sat am. And by am I mean flights coming into the sort around midnight and leaving around 3-5am. Not too hard getting lines with some of these on them, once you can hold a line. Getting them consistently for every commute AND having a good line composition obviously goes senior in most fleets. You can trade around with opentime to get more commutable trips too.

However, if the commuter takes the pax carriers to work and/or has to 2 leg it, he/she might opt for lines that offer CML deadheads to alleviate the pain. You can get lines with some CmLs on them being fairly junior, fleet depending, but to get the good ones where you have commercials for every commute, you’d have to be fairly senior for that and it usually occurs in week on week off night sort lines. Most often the lines like this only have 1 CML per trip.

To give you an idea of seniority progression, those hired in 2014 & early 2015 are sitting around the top third to top quarter in every fleet in SDF on the FO side (and pretty similar throughout the rest of the system AFAIK). I’ve found that I can start getting close to what I want, play with conflict bidding, and hold summer vacations (whole month off option) at this seniority level. I think life starts getting really good when you break the top 15%.

All that being said, at least for me, I don’t necessarily bid for specific line types. I do start with getting rid of stuff I don’t like or refuse to do: reserve, turns, etc. Then I filter for needed days off and see what’s left over, what’s commutable, sorting it all accordingly. If the options are slim I might look into snaking some of the trips that work from the line types I don’t like or sacrifice a day or two from my pref’d days off to build up my list. Usually by this point I have enough line choices to be safe (fleet seniority number plus a few) but when I didn’t I would just keep going down adding in more and more sacrifices. The guys that do bid for specific line types usually do so more for the flying type than the commutability; some guys love sort flying, others the 2 week on/off schedule. For the bidding, I’m referring to our line sorting software - we don’t have pbs here.

Hope this info helps…