Originally Posted by Herkflyr (Post 3280953)

It doesn't have to be that labor intensive. Reading this thread, I am guessing that most of you haven't learned the "Award Pairings if Pairing Number if Depart On" preference very well. This preference will allow dozens, if not hundreds, of pairings to be placed on one bid line, and you can even rank order--or not--your preferences. It can also be done fairly quickly with the Pairings search option, and you can even sort by "lowest to highest/earliest to latest/least to most"...or the other way round, in about ten different ways!

It is an unwieldy process, and not intuitive at all. The various PBS publications out there (very good most of the time) don't explain it very well either. Nevertheless it is a great feature of the WebApp. I'll add more info here if anyone is interested, dumbed down to a "pilot-friendly" level, which is the level that works for me.

Originally Posted by Bert Sampson (Post 3280840)

1. that sucks
2. I’ve experienced worse regional schedules

Originally Posted by freezingflyboy (Post 3280964)

"Award pairing number if departing on (ordered)" works great if you want to take the time to sharpshoot the bid pack. But without some decent seniority it can be a lot of effort for little reward.

Sorting dates, least to highest, earliest to latest, etc is easy enough while using the search pairings function. Entering those into a bid is where it becomes labor intensive. Depending on priorities in a month, one is sometimes left to sort through 100+ pairings and then order those in some way that works best for them and then entering those ordered pairings one at a time into a bid line. I'd be interested if you had any tips on streamlining that process.

Originally Posted by freezingflyboy (Post 3280971)

Ouch! What mean spirited regional was that!?
At my regional we had strong union input in trip construction. 5 leg days were out there but they were avoidable and usually only on the first or the last day of a trip. 4 leg days were common but only rarely were they back to back to back and almost never with min rest in between. That's where I start feeling brutalized. It seems like more and more of the NB trips are being built this way and it's really starting to harsh my vibe.

Originally Posted by freezingflyboy (Post 3280964)

"Award pairing number if departing on (ordered)" works great if you want to take the time to sharpshoot the bid pack. But without some decent seniority it can be a lot of effort for little reward.

Sorting dates, least to highest, earliest to latest, etc is easy enough while using the search pairings function. Entering those into a bid is where it becomes labor intensive. Depending on priorities in a month, one is sometimes left to sort through 100+ pairings and then order those in some way that works best for them and then entering those ordered pairings one at a time into a bid line. I'd be interested if you had any tips on streamlining that process.

Originally Posted by flyforever1970 (Post 3280988)

Must have been nice! At Pinnacle (of the 2000's) most pairings were 4 day: 5 legs/8 hour overnight...4 legs/12 hour comp rest...4 legs/8 hour overnight...5 legs release. We had ALPA, they were useless.

Originally Posted by LumberJack (Post 3281020)

If you go to the DALPA website and click on the PBS committee, they have a video posted from last week's webinars on the webapp. It's all explained nicely on that, skip ahead about 30 minutes I think.

My problem is it only works for one sort criteria. You can't rank by multiple parameters like in Excel, so you still end up having to closely examine and manually sort trips.

What would be easier is doing what we suggested earlier in this thread.

Originally Posted by WakeWash (Post 3281031)

I don’t think enough pilots are writing their reps and chief pilots cause it’s getting worse. I’d wager that 90% just complain online about it but don’t voice their discontent through the right channels to actually be heard. This job isn’t fun right now and most guys I fly with are rock bottom in regards to morale.

Originally Posted by freezingflyboy (Post 3281036)

I'll have to check it out. I guess that's what I was getting at. Let's say I want trips that finish as early as possible with the highest ADC, I don't know of a way to do that without either combing through the trips using the search function and manually ordering them most desirable to least desirable or by entering multiple bid lines with iterations of "award if ends before XXX and ADC greater than YYY".