Yes. And now you have 2 days less flying.
If that’s what you want, great. Or you can now pickup another easy 2-day to get back to where you were pay wise.

 

Obviously it depends on each individual circumstance. The same can be said of some non commuters/trips as well. 3+ (as much as 5+) in heavy traffic pothole ridden snow covered roads for some "non commuters" who are somehow able to get 8 solid hours sleep starting at 6-7PM (LOL!) while pretending it doesn't matter when trips report/release is every bit as subjective.

What would be nice is a bidding function where one could add parameters such as "award trips that report at late as possible/release as early as possible" (in conjunction with integrating it with other biddable parameters) instead of trying to pick arbitrary times that PBS is incapabile of contextualizing. "Award trips after 12 Noon" for example means 12:01PM is identical in every way to 5PM, etc.

As for what DALPA or the company use to define it, I suspect its somewhat arbitrary but possibly based on average assumed commuter flight/frequency to make the 2 flight cutoff parameters. BOS-LGA commuters would have a radically different definition of commutable trip than a low frequency 2 legger a little further away.

 

Now if only we could get PBS and iCrew to show... say... a 3day as a 3day. Every trip with a check-out after midnight (block-in at 2331) shows up as a 4day. It also throws off the "credit per day" calculation, so asking for avg daily credit >6 would eliminate 18+ hour 3days checking out after midnight.

 

One way to eliminate those trips is to use the following line in your bid:
Avoid Pairings If Pairing Check-Out < 02:00

That will eliminate any trip that doesn't reach the ADG trigger on the last day. Of course if you're fairly junior this line can still be ignored in Denial.

If you use Average Daily Credit in your Awards after this Avoid (presuming it is honored), the calculations won't be messed up.

 

You can sort of do that, but it’s just a manual process. And I usually do it based on the departure times of my commute flight home. So if I have flights at noon, 1500, and 1700 I’ll have a bid line for trips releasing before 1630, a line for 1430, and one for 1130.

 

Wouldn't that still eliminate the 18 hour 3day that ends after midnight?

The way I do it now is manually search for trips with Avg Daily Credit LESS than 5:15 and pick out the ones I want before the generic ADC request.

 

Yes, it can definitely be a drawback for trips like that. It depends on your fleet. Many fleets don't have those types of trips and the 4-day that pays 15:45 bites a fair number of pilots. That Avoid is just one potential technique to simplify bidding in certain instances. If you're a commuter on a narrow body fleet and you're using trip length for Awards (as many do) then the 00:01 check-out is a nasty surprise...

 

Lol I did something similar to that literally the first month I ever held a line here. Bid for trips that released before like 1700. Turns out 0001 is before 1700. Saw that on my award and was like “oooohhhhhhhhh, crap!” Lesson learned!

 

Right, but it takes numerous lines of blocky, semi arbitrary cutoffs. What you suggested is one of the better strategies we have available. But in your instance, it views a 16:29 release the same as a 16:00 release etc. In order to pref trips based off just the parameter of release time would require hundreds of lines of bidding versus one line of "award trips with release as early as possible" or something like that.

 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but can’t we sort trips in a certain order? Whittle your trips down to the ones you want then sort them in descending order of release time, or check in time, or total credit, or whatever. When you then create a bid line with all those numbered trips, doesn’t the PBS logic go left to right, which have been listed in the order you sorted? So you’d have first chance at the earliest release time.