Originally Posted by
iaflyer
It's not that you want only one day off (because that is allowed) but it sounds like you are trying to create a new "Day off block" in the March bid period. You could move a whole block of days from another part of your schedule (say you have Mar 5-6 off) - you can move Mar 5-6 to Mar 2-3. That would work (depending on your max days on for your aircraft).
Or, if you had a single day off elsewhere in Mar (which would be a day off block) you could move that to Mar 2.
But, trying to move 1 day from a group to Mar 2 would make a new block of days off, which isn't allowed.
The scheduling ALPA committee puts out "Moving X Days" which describes all that goes on.
I haven't been on reserve for a while, but I do remember wanting to punch my fist through the screen everytime I heard the little "rrrrringggg" that announced my attempt was foiled again. Sometimes you couldn't shift a block of four days off one day earlier, but it would let you take the last day, and move it just before the first day. Sometimes, the reverse was true. Sometimes you wanted to, say, move your first two blocks of days off a little earlier in the month. You would try to ask for both blocks to be moved simultaneously, but "rrrrrinngggg", you couldn't. So you had to move the second block of days off first, so as not to have seven days on in a row, and THEN you could move the first block back.
Here is my suggestion:
think in steps. I think the program is poorly designed, and as a result it often prevents you from making a perfectly legal schedule. But if you list four or five choices that get you close, then you can move things around for the next PCS run. I had great luck with the system, but only when I thought in steps. It's pretty easy. All you have to do is live on the computer, trying for four or five hours to force choices into the computer that it could recognize, then bite your nails through the PCS run. You'd get your fourth choice, and a single day would move. And you'd plot your strategy again.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
By the 29th of the preceding month, I usually had my perfect schedule. I had, of course, become a sunlight-averse, vitamin defficient wreck. My skin was pale, my gums bled, and I trembled violently as I tried in vain to drag my myself up the stairs for a shower and a meal. But, hey, I lost 75 pounds that way once! True, there was a little marital tension, but my sixth wife finally installed a computer in the basement, near the furnace, and she would kindly send the pool-boy to uncuff me and give me leftovers once in a while.
Oh, I miss reserve so!