Bidding
 

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but could someone please explain the bidding process a little bit. Thanks in advance!!

Most senior pilot gets what he wants. Most junior gets what's left over.

There is basically two major categories of bidding-

1.) Line bidding - you see a "line" you like for the month, you bid it. The line has all the trips in it for the whole month.
2.) PBS bidding - you build your own "line" by the trip. You choose individual trips and create a line.

Different airlines use different systems based on one of those two options.

Just out of curiosity, are there any regionals that still bid hard lines?

Horizon has SAP and line bidding, but we're giving that up for PBS in Feb 2017. At least I can control my schedule 'til then. :(

Why do you lose control of your schedule with PBS?

TSA is bidding hard lines.

PBS gives you a lot more control of your schedule in my opinion. I've gotten PBS to give me 20 days off in a row without taking vacation time. You can also mix trips better like doing a 3 day and a CDO every week.

There are good things and bad things about PBS but I would say that having more control is one of the upsides of it.

ExpressJet on the ERJ has hard line bidding for line holders and PBS bidding for reserves and relief/composite lines. The CRJ side is all PBS.

One of the biggest complaints (from the pilot side) and benefits (from the company side) is that the schedule building is much more efficient and leaves little, if any open time vs. hard line bidding. I know this is anecdotal, but I just switched to a PBS airline and as I build a better understanding of how PBS "thinks" I have had decent luck bidding within PBS and getting what I want even though I am very junior. My biggest complaint however, is that there is very little open time with which to improve/modify my schedule. Using next month as an example, I got all the days off I wanted (my main priority) and all my trips are commutable (second priority) except one which is not commutable on either end. There is nothing I can do about it because there are no trips to trade on those days and I would prefer not to work on the days that there are trips available.

The entity that runs PBS controls it, the creator of the pairings also controls it as well, if you don't either control both of the above or have strong contractual language that does, most will feel the burning sensation. My QOL as a junior guy was far superior with hard lines than it is as a senior guy with PBS. PBS was the single largest concession that SKYW pilots had handed to them in 40 years(but not the only).

To elaborate a little bit on what FirstClass said:

Line Bidding: First, some vocabulary. A LINE is a schedule for the month (a LINE of time). Each line is built out of individual TRIPS (or pairings, rotations, etc. depending on what your pilot group calls them). Now, imagine they hand each pilot a list of schedules (the lines) for the next month divided among base, aircraft and seat (for example ORD/ERJ/FO. This is sometimes called a category). They start with the most senior pilot for each category and let them pick the schedule they like the most. Then the next most senior guy picks and then the next and so on until they run out of schedules for the month. Now, those pilots who got to pick their line might have schedule modifications (training, vacation, schedule improvement, etc.) so a few more trips drop back into the bucket. Those "left over" trips are then used (or sometimes mixed with reserve days) to build a few more, usually less desirable lines, for pilots to bid for who didn't get a line in the first round. The pilots (typically the more junior) who were left without a line after round one and round two are on reserve for the next month and then will have a chance to bid for off days vs. on-call days, call-out times and/or other variables that vary depending on contracts and airlines.

PBS Bidding: More vocabulary. PBS = Preferential Bidding System. Think about each of those words individually. With PBS, your bid is basically a list of PREFERENCES for what you want your schedule to look like. With PBS each pilot, from the most senior to the most junior puts in a BID. Most PBS systems allow you to prioritize and organize your preferences in a number of different ways. These preferences can range from the very basic and general (weekends off) to the very specific (LAX layovers on Thursdays between 12 and 16 hours long that start between 3pm and 4pm). Obviously, the more specific you are, the lower your chances are that a schedule will match your exact preferences.

Now, after all the bids are submitted, the PBS system starts at pilot #1 and looks at his/her preferences and starts building a schedule based on that. Then it goes to pilot #2 and then #3 and so on. As the PBS system builds schedules and keeps moving down the list, obviously fewer and fewer trips are available to build each pilots schedule. Eventually you get to a point where the PBS system can build a schedule that might honor 3 out of 4 of a pilots preferences. Further down, a different pilot might only get 3 out of 5 of his preferences but he will still get a line vs. being on reserve. And so it goes until the computer runs out of trips that it can build schedules with (or reaches some contractually agreed upon minimum amount of remaining trips). The pilots that the computer could not build a schedule for are now on reserve for the month.

It is worth noting that with both PBS and line bidding, there are typically ways for more senior pilots to "opt out" of getting a line at a certain point if they think they can get a better schedule by "bidding down" to reserve. As a line bidding example, lets say only 20 out of 100 lines really work for you that month. If you are bidding #22 in your category you could submit a bid for those 20 lines that work for you then "opt out" or "bid down". If you don't get one of your choices (because the 20 pilots senior to you bid for them first), you would then bump down to reserve and be a very senior reserve bidder. In this case, you would probably have a shot (or at least a better shot) of getting the schedule you wanted since you would be more senior relative to the pilots bidding reserve with you.

The same is true for the PBS systems that I am familiar with. With PBS you could tell the computer to build you a line with the weekends off. You can then put a condition on that "weekends off" PREFERENCE that if it can't build you a schedule with trips and all of the weekends off, then to build you a reserve schedule with the weekends off. Your next layer could tell the computer that if it can't give you all the weekends off on reserve then to build you a line with as many weekend days off as it can with a minimum of say 6 of the 8 weekend days off. If it can't give you 6 of the 8 weekend days, then build a reserve schedule with a minimum of 6/8 weekend says off. Next you could tell it that at that point, your month is shot and you basically don't care; just build me any line with any trips. And obviously if none of that works, you are stuck on reserve on days you don't want to be at work.

Despite the length of this post, I am generalizing and over-simplifying for the sake of explanation. Bidding is probably one of the most complex, nuanced and aggravating thing most of us will do as pilots. But hopefully this answers some questions and serves as a decent primer.

I think the only ones are;

-PSA
-TSA
-Air Wisconsin
-Piedmont
-Legacy Expressjet
-Horizon (switching to PBS in 2017)

Everyone else has PBS