If that lengthy of a post is what you write when you're just on your iPad and you don't have the patience, I'd hate to see it when you do have time and are on a regular keyboard...

As always, great post. Cheers brother.

BK

 

Really? I haven't been here that long and already have had this make a difference.

I tried two days ago to get a trip in open time and waited...4 hours! Now, during that time I was locked into that trade and guess what? All of the other trips that were available went from 0 to at least 10 others lined up by the time I got my 1 crew notification of earlier time stamp. If I would have known immediately that I couldn't get the trip I would have gone to choice number 2 and so on...as it turns out I got zilch and spent a day at the crashpad twiddling my thumbs. I've had other similar instances...for those of us who are "active traders" (I'd say typically junior) and spend a fair amount of time trading to make our lives/schedules better this can make a huge difference!

 

gasnhaul, I'm confused at how you could be locked into a trade. Why couldn't you just input all your trades in the order that you wanted them? Why did you have to wait to input them?

 

Bus,

It actually was a swap. Pretty sure the system won't let you do more than one trip against the one you are swapping so I had to wait for the approval/denial before trying again. I was under the impression trip pickup worked the same...is this incorrect? Thought I remembered the system not allowing me to put in for more than one pickup during the same timeframe say Friday morning. Something to do with a request already in the same date/time. Again I'm somewhat new and this is only open time I'm talking about so it's entirely possible I'm wrong about some/all of it😁

 

Gas,

I've put in multiple trade requests for the same trip as well as drop requests. I just make sure that I enter them in my order of preference. Maybe it's changed, but give it a try next time.

 

Nope.

You have Trip A on your schedule, and there are 8 trips in open time that fit the same footprint and you'd prefer any of them over the one you have. (Maybe it's a location you abhor, or maybe it's got a D/H and you would rather poke your eyeballs with a red hot needle than take the 4:59, 2-leg D/H in an RJ.) You submit 8 swap requests, listing them in the order you prefer.
And then you start waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

Finally, hours later, you get 3 Notifications at once. They could be:
Yeah, you won!

More likely, they will be:
So, you figure the first 3 SWAP requests were a waste of your time, but you still have to wait for the others to be processed. You research and learn that Trips B, C, and D have been assigned to someone else, but Trips E, F, G, H, and I are still listed as OPEN.

Finally, you get lucky. You have 7 new notifications.

In this small example, that's 4 requests that are made and have to be processed because we don't have Real Time Trip Trading. With RTTT, the pilot would have stopped as soon as he got a SWAP approved.

Multiply that by a few more schedule tweaks per pilot, and then thousands of pilots, and it's easy to see why a computer should be doing this and not a scheduler.


(Same thing goes for picking up trips. Make as many individual requests as you like, and if one of them is approved, the rest will be disapproved because you're already on a trip for that time.)






.

 

Pin and Tony,

Thanks guys! I'll definitely have to revisit. Don't remember what it was that I was doing that the system wouldn't let me put in multiple variations on the theme...or maybe that never happened (I tend to confuse easily&#128523. Either way knowing one's fate/immediate future in seconds rather than hours later is still a good thing!

Gas

 

Wow, glad you posted about this and got it straightened out, gasnhaul. You can put in a thousand different combinations of drop/swap/makeup if you wanted, no limit. Maybe what you accidentally did was put in the same thing twice, now that, you can't do again until they processed it.

 

It's been suggested that there'd be More open time if only our system wasn't so antiquated...that's something I just can't buy in to. I tend to think most guys fly BLG, some fly a bit more. (Some fly a lot more). On any given day, there's about 40sh trips per cycle. A decent chunk of those are folks who're laying over at home. A bigger chunk are guys for whom an TYS or CHS or ICT or TUL are good enough. They're not going to drop the 1 leg flight for a 2 leg flight that pays an extra 10-30 minutes.

And, I didn't start on the 72. The NB, smaller cities, is still somewhat new to me. I started on the WB, lived through the Intl flying dwindling and then becoming a SIBA system on the 10, and then moved to the Airbus. I will confess my abject ignorance to how things are working now on the 777 and the MD, but it was my experience that those sweet INTL trips just don't get dropped into open time. And, at least on the FO side, they rarely dropped into open time as a result of someone calling in sick.
What did drop into open time was the occasional sweet X-pairing, and the odd charter pairing. And the race was on.

And if the race is On, it's nice to have a Trump card. At least for people who Aren't abusing the system.

OTP is a nice option. Over the years I've had more than one friend whose bid months been decimated by a late breaking equipment change. Kind of sucks when 75% of your bid month gets put into Substitution a few days prior to the beginning of the bid month.
As the system sits now, if you see a trip, the only adjustment category you're competing with is other people with OTP.
Go to RTTT, and it's a purely first come first served. And there are benefits to a RTTT. But, if I can go for a day or two (or longer) between internet visits. I can easily wait the 4 hours gasnhaul described on his trip trade request. (Gasnhaul, how many hours prior to show did the dreaded earlier time stamp message show)

The extra work load our antiquated system places on our schedulers doesn't bug me either, nor do the multiple VIPS notifications I tend to get during the Open Time Derby. It is what it is.

And yes, I'm envious of at least American's pilot interface. Less envious of their pseudo reserve system if a trip cancels (day prior and each subsequent day if I have their system correct) But I'd also venture a guess that equipment changes don't tend to drive a lot of their cancellations. At least my experience with the airlines has been outright cancellations for weather or mx issues versus the delay or "transload" FedEx does in similar situations.

I'd be fine with either path my fellow freightdawgs choose in the future.

My main point is that there's not 100% consensus on a pure RTTT system. And if you only have Priority Some of the time, it's not really Priority.

What if the system changed to a specific processing time? Maybe a process every 15 minutes automatically. That would speed things up, while retaining the current ability to utilize OTP.

 

Bus,

Yeah, I'd like to say thanks again to you guys for setting me straight on this! HUGE thanks!

Kronan,

On first glance it seems pretty innocuous right? OK so I have to wait 4 hours to find out if a trip I put in for was awarded or not. No biggie. Actually...it depends.

Scenario 1) Say the trip I'm on ends Thursday night. I have a JS booked to go home that night. A much nicer trip pops into open time and it ends on Friday. The JS I'll need for the trip home only has one opening. Cool, I'll just book that now in case. Nope...can't have 2 in the system within 24 hours. I wait the 4 hours and get the trip. Great! Only problem is now I recheck and the JS is gone and the flights to get me home don't run on the weekend. Crap!

Scenario 2) I put in for the trip mentioned above. 20 minutes or so later an even better trip pops into open time. As mentioned I can have multiple trades (thanks again guys!) in the system. Unfortunately they have to been in priority order. The new trip is a 4 day with a backend DH so don't even need to worry about the JS. Awesome! The original trip already shows 5 in the que. So do I dump the original trip in hopes of getting the new one? I decide to put in for the new one and see there are 5 folks in the que. After 4 hours I find that I was awarded the first trip so the second one was automatically purged. Would I have been awarded it? Can't say...so I lost out on picking up a stellar trip that would have paid X more hours because I didn't want to chance losing the first one on a gamble.

Scenario 3) AVA. Basically paint scenario 2 the same but without a trade (can't AVA on days you've dropped anything). So I don't dump the first trip that paid 12 hours (18 at 1.5) to pick up the second that paid 24 (36 at 1.5). And since AVA doesn't come out of my bank this is a big deal...

So if I'm trading a 1 day to Montreal for a one day to Austin does the 4 hours waiting really matter. Nope, not really. BUT...if any of the other scenarios are what is driving me to make the trade then the 4 hours is absolutely critical. As they say...timing is everything

Gas