Options for max days off
 

Returning from furlough soon and I’m looking for input into bidding a min schedule. I know about the 50 hour block min, but being at 25-35% from the top on the bus, guppy, or around 50% on the 75/76, realistically would a person be able to work a schedule down to 10-12 working days per month? I do have a fairly short 1 leg commute that also factors in. Also, how does this strategy compare to widebody FO? Seniority would obviously be much lower, around 80-90%, and I’m not sure how the reserve game works for widebody since I’ve been out of the loop for quite some time.
Thanks for any insight! Looking forward to coming back finally.

I believe there is an LOA that allows you to drop to zero credit hours per bid period.

Bid two-day trips. I know it’s not ideal for commuting but they are fairly easy to drop or get picked up by someone else looking for more credit.

There is no minimum. You can drop to 0 if you can get other people to pickup your trips or just drop them into open time. If you come back as a senior guppy or bus FO you should have no problem.

There is a PBS document that has a max days off strategy. Dropping trips depends on seniority and rsv coverage. I put in every trip last two months to get dropped and only one trip last month went through as a junior lineholder. Top 25% were able to drop just about every trip and pick up what they wanted. YMMV

When PBS first came out there was a complicated reason why this couldn’t just be a command. I used one of the Trip Value/Credit/Block per day commands. You could use the Award command in a single bid group starting with high values and moving to lower using all 7 of the weights (H++ through L- -). The Avoid command is less flexible and the bid group will fail if conditions not met.

Award Credit Per Day >= 7:00 H++
Award Credit Per Day >= 6:40 H+
Award Credit Per Day >= 6:20 H
Award Credit Per Day >= 6:00 N
Award Credit Per Day >= 5:40 L
Award Credit Per Day >= 5:20 L-
Award Credit Per Day >= 5:00 L - -

Something like this might give you the most productive award for your seniority. Any avoids, sets, etc may reduce the trip pools. The problem with this method is that it’s akin to a "will not fail" bid group. It’s likely to award a line, but even if it’s only 5 hr/day, whereas if you used avoid command (Avoid less than 7 hrs/day) it will fail if very trip doesn’t have it.

Lumberg823, I didn’t mean to reply to your quote. I meant to reply to sonic340. Same info though.

I dropped down to 36 hours in June ... don’t ask me how it worked .... mean while July couldn’t drop 1 single day turn ....

48 percent in base/seat FO

Strategy is base dependent. Max days off I’ve seen on the EWR 737 credits 80+ hours and only flew 10 days. All 1 day turns to the Caribbean.

The PBS gurus can tell you how to bid to maximize what you want but having realistic expectations of what you can hold is a different thing. You could be at 25% but bidding the same strategy as the people above you.

I think at 25% you could probably bid trips that are commutable at both ends and/or high credit time which MIGHT make them easier to drop.

Attachment 4555

This was an email sent out by the scheduling committee a few years back.