Unless your last line bid has an else start next, correct?

Did I read somewhere that you can bank PB days while on OE as a reserve pilot? If so, is it just golden days or any off day?

Any other smart or advantageous strategies for bidding on OE that one should consider?

Any x days. So big reserve then you have to guess which part of the month you will get OE

Don't forget to try an APD to get the holidays off. They don't have to approve it over the holidays, but I've seen more than a few pilots get Christmas off via an APD that was awarded just a week or so out.



I'm surprised at some people who use it to the extreme, like filling up 200 lines of PBS code, just to do what denial mode will do for them. For the newbs, CSSN isn't cosmic, you're telling PBS that it must honor every bid line or you want to move onto another bid group. I use it on occasion when I want a combo of trips that I need all those trips to meet my desired outcome. Pro-tip, if you're going to do this, make sure you did the math correctly and that you'll actually hit the LCW. Nothing worse than building a perfect combo of trips that is a minute short of the LCW.




Yup. To be awarded an RLL, the bid group prior to the RLL bid group must not have a ESN or CSSN. PBS won't even let you submit an RLL bid without an unconditional bid group above it.

Possibly. If you get assigned IOE over any X days (golden or not), you will get PB days. However, if you have more long call days remaining in that bid period they will go over those days, not into the bank. PB days only go into the bank when you run out of LC days in the current bid period.

Golden nugget: APD's are processed before personal drops. So you can use it to give you "super seniority" on a major holiday if the day is blue (more reserves available than required). So if there is one more reserve available than required, the plug in a category can use the APD to drop the day before the most senior pilot just PD's it. If the day is black (not enough required reserves), then the APD will be denied due to the holiday carve out, but of course the PD won't go through either.

Most people just assume that APD's are for when there isn't enough coverage, but in this case it can be a smart play even when there is coverage.

I don’t think so. PBS is saying, you must be in the LCW by the time you hit the CSSN or I’m moving to the next bid group.

for example, I bid six lines of trips. Lines 1-3 are not honored. Lines 4-6 are honored. If that puts me in the LCW, then it never hits the CSSN. 3 honored/3 not.

sure, denial would work in this instance. But, I may not want trips 5-6 if I can’t have one of the others. So, I want to bid a different way. Hence, CSSN.

You're right, poorly worded on my part. A more simple way to say it is that CSSN keeps PBS from going into denial mode. I (wrongly) assumed it was a given that I wasn't talking about award bid lines, since we can't attach ESN to them.



Ya, that's what I eluded to later in my post...it can make sense. However, you can look at some bids and realize they're afraid of denial mode. But many times you'll see someone with 25 bid groups at 4 lines a piece, they're doing the same job that denial mode would do anyway. But if it works for them, then great...it's just a lot of work. If you want to see some good examples of that, look at categories with senior, former NWA pilots...I'm guessing MSP320A is a safe bet. You'll likely see tons of CSSN and a fair amount of bids with nearly 200 bid lines.