Vacation Bidding?

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02-14-2021 | 02:11 AM

#11

sourdough44

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Joined: Sep 2013

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I’m looking forward to some serious vacation time, don’t forget to use the GDO bid coming up.

02-14-2021 | 08:00 AM

#12

C11DCA

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Joined: Dec 2008

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From: 320 Captain

Quote:

Originally Posted by CousinEddie

Agree with your critique. However, I assume the Comany pushes hard for this system in contact negotiations because they want to be as close to having an accurate idea as possible about peak season flying levels before awarding vacation bids.

the dates for vacation bidding are a holdover from the days of vacation bid books in flight ops from legacy United. Pilots would literally fill in their requests on super sized index cards (think Jepp approach plate sized) in a binder. Then someone in ops would have to go through them to award the vacations requested. Since this was done manually, it took lots of time and not done at the end of the calendar year so as not to conflict with the holidays.

from the vacation bidding guide:

Quote:

Each Vacation Year runs from May 1 – April 30. The reasoning is often thought to be lost in the mists of history but it’s actually because at pre-merger United the company wanted to keep the manual awarding process in use at that time away from the holiday period and also wanted to avoid issues with having the transition from one year to the next occur at the same time as the most desirable vacation during the last week of December. The current automated process is a hybrid built from the United contract and the legacy Continental computer system.