Just wait until you are married! The Fun begins all over again! Good luck my friend!

 

haha thanks brotha

 

At least you'll be around for Hoboken's St. Patrick's Day

 

Now wait a minute, wait a minute hear....there is no such thing as a weekend or holiday here in this airline world...eh?

 

If the weekends are that important, then keep bidding the reserve. Because more than likely as a bottom relief line holder it's going to be working weekends. Wait till you are a little closer to the top of the pile of relief line holders. You are more likely to get what you want. Key word being likely.

Relief requets are just that, requests. There is nothing in the contract that says they have to honor anything you ask for or use any kind of senority based method for who gets what.

Sometimes a "senior" relief line holder can do better than a junior hard line holder. The only benefit of the hardline is the ILIW. But good lluck shiftintg your days off around. You might be able to get a few, but not rearrange your enitire line. In the relief requests box, just keep it simple. Something like "4 day trips, weekends off" or day trips, 2 days back to back, ect.

One guy told me that when he was the number 1 or number 2 relief line holder, he would look in the open time and just request which trips he wanted to fly. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

 

Someone mind giving a real quick rundown on how bidding works?

You bid for the whole month at once, then can opt to drop / pickup trips?

 

You generally bid for one calendar month (some airlines use 4-week bid periods). Your bid must usually be submitted around the middle of the previous month, and you find out the results around the 20th.

There are two systems:

1) Hard Line: The company constructs schedules (called lines), and organizes them by quality, ie the number one line will probably have 18 days off, weekends off, short trips with good layovers in SAN, SFO, SEA, etc. The number 390 line will have 10 days off (Tuesdays & Thursdays), crappy trips with redeye flying and short layovers in places like DTW, TUS, BFL. Everybody submits a preference for which lines they want in priority order. The number one guy in domicile simply bids one line, and he gets it. The number two guy only has to bid for two lines, etc. The number 290 guy will probably bid the bottom 100 lines, cuz he knows he will never get anything higher than that anyway.

2) PBS: This is a computer program. It has a lot of options, and you tell it what you want (days off, credit, layovers, etc). It then will attempt to build you a custom line using trips that company has already built...the senior guys get dibs on the best trips, but PBS will usually give you at least some of what you want even if you are junior. It is NOT going to give a junior guy a 30 hour layover in SAN, but it will give you your wife's b-day off. Some folks complain about PBS since it gives the senior guys EVERYTHING they want, but it has always given me the days off I need, and I care a lot more about that then where I layover when I'm working. All airlines will be using this system in the near future anyway.

 

I will do you one better, try married with kids.

 

With all due respect - how the HELL would we know?

Because of my wife's work schedule I want Thursdays and Fridays off, but you have no idea how MUCH I want those days, maybe I don't like my wife much so I sort of want those days, but I'm not bothered if I don't get them. Maybe I just want to tell her I bid for those days off but no way in hell I actually want them?

How much do you want weekends off? That's an emotional response, and the one thing I can tell you is I have no idea about your emotions, why you cry at night when you're alone, why you're scared of one-legged elephants or why you slurp your milkshakes with a straw but take the straw out and crunch the ice of your drinks......

 

Man my score for pbs is always like -200000! it does usually give me the specific days off i want, but other than that its a crap shoot. how long did it take for you to start to get a schedule you could live with (not necassarily longevity, but learing how to really use the system). a bud of mine at skywest is just now starting to like it and he has been there almost 2 years.