Do you have a Roger Dorn rookie card?

Mid 2016 hires have gotten into CLE recently.
737 only.

I’m 1Q 2017 hire and am finally able this bid...not that I’m into that or anything.

Fantastic.

As a new hire, what kind of reserve schedules can one expect on the 73 or 320? How many days a month? How many blocks are they broken into and what say would we have in that? Is that a function of seniority and PBS?

Same with lines in the junior domicile on the 73 and 320. Once we can start holding a line, what kind of trips do most of those look like? Do they very pretty significantly or can one expect a 4 on 3 off type line? Is that a PBS option that seniority can influence?

I’ve never used PBS so unfamiliar with how it pairs up the trips. As a commuter, I’m just trying to have a reasonable expectation of how many commutes a month I should expect for the first few years, or more. EWR for now, then ORD once I can get there.

Cheers!

You can bid in PBS for what you like, but seniority determines what you will get. You will get senior faster on the 737 rather than the Airbus.

Reserve schedules vary widely. You can expect 2-6 days on reserve, with probably 2-4 days off after that. Minimum days off on reserve is 12/13 (at least I think it's 13 in a 31 day month). The reserve trips are a mix of regular trips, broken trips they've put together, and short calls/field stanby's.

Junior trips are mostly destinations people don't want, redeye's, or trips with lots of legs. The trips range from 1-4 days, generally.

1. 13 days off will get you guarantee. How it’s minced up is dependent on how you bid and your relative seniority.

2. What your schedule looks like varies with how proficient you are with PBS (it’s on par with programming in FORTRAN and equally archaic), what the breakdown of 1,2,3,4-day trips are and a lot of other factors. Even as a junior lineholder, though, I never felt like I got something that I thought was terrible. I also used a PBS service when I was new to get the programming language down.

Any recommendation on a PBS service?

Not endorsing it… just what I used. Bidnav.com There’s only one other paid service I’m aware of—zensked.com. There’s also ALPA’s free service, probidplus, although I didn’t find it as useful. ALPA PBS trainers are also available when bidding is open to assist you with your bids. Lots of options, but I found that using Bidnav certainly made learning the system easier.

When you are junior, screwing up your bid really has no relative cost. you are going to get the leftovers anyway. Use the first few bid periods to learn how to bid. In the big picture, there are almost no repercussions to screwing it up. If you still don't know after that, pay someone or keep learning, but there's no use in wasting several hundred bucks as a brand new hire on a bid service for the first 6 months.

Also, it (possibly) benefits you way more to learn how to trade/pickup rather than bid as a brand new line holder. You'll have no seniority in your bid, and won't have many options. But trading in open time, depending on your fleet, can make your life way easier. Many open time trips are better than your bid pairing, and learning how to do that is valuable since you might not be competing with anyone for an open time trip. This requires learning the "run" windows, and when open time opens for lineholders and reserves each daily run and monthly calendar. How to set up crew companion for notifications and smart trades is IMHO way more important because you'll learn something you can actually affect with open time trades.

FWIW