flightmedic01

Thanks to all who responded! I appreciate it!!

Scrappy

I was a PBS SME…if you have some general questions, just shoot me a PM.

Regularguy

I would like to see the final trip pool of this bid. It seems to violate the bidding process I've personally seen.

This should be the logic:

Award work L-- puts all he trips into the trip pool at L--
Avoid 1... All of these will be ignored because this bidder has already moved all the trips into his/her trip pool.
.
.
Award work L- These trip are already in pool at L-- can they be changed to L-- from L-?

Personally what I have found and many other "bid gurus" have said the same:

Rule 1 - Put all you avoids before awarding work.
Rule 2 - Put all you sets before awarding work.
Rule 3 - Begin awarding work with H++ and such. If you want something make it a H++.

The problem with putting something like avoid bunky in your bid line after awarding work is this; it's already in your trip pool and you will be assigned it if the solver needs to.

Rule 4 - After building your "dream" bid group start building new bid groups by copying it to a new group and adding progressively the trips you would prefer to not fly to the pool in the new group. Example if you really don't want to fly bunky but will, don't add them until the final bid group. If the trip is in your group's pool it can be used no matter how many times you put "avoid."

But in the end the solver can award stuff you really wanted to make lines for those jr. to you. This is why it is essential to use the H++ for the trips you really want. If you put a trip L-- and the jr pilot put put it H++ you can be assigned another L-- trip while that jr pilot got the H++ one even though you really wanted it.

Scrappy

Kinda...but not really. There are some flaws to your statements. And using limits is a very useful tool a lot of people don't understand and take advantage of. PBS works just fine if you manipulate it in conjunction with what your seniority can hold. Your expectations have to be realistic. That is/was the biggest fail I saw when helping people.

CousinEddie

Again, this is a final bid group example we are talking about here. Perhaps I made it appear too complex by having an example of a picky bidder with 10 Avoids. So I'll break it down a bit.

Remember that the Award = Move while Avoid = Freeze.

With the first command being Award Work L--, every trip in the base is moved from the supply pool to the L-- bucket. If you are above the G-line, the bid group will not fail. Ultimately, PBS has access to whatever it needs to finish building your line. However, that does not mean you can't still layer out your preferences. That is where freezing and moving things between buckets comes into play.

Let's say that the one thing you hate the most is all night flying. You want to tell the system that giving you an all night trip is the last thing PBS should look for to build the line. Also, if they can't be avoided all together all nighters should be minimized as much as possible. So, you want to use an Avoid to Freeze the all night flying in the bottom (L--) bucket. Once you freeze all nighters there, you then use another Award command to move all the rest of the flying into a higher bucket:

Award Work L--
Avoid All Night Flying
Award Work L-

If you now clicked on the yellow highlighted number to view the trip pools, you would see nothing but all night flying in L--, and everything else in L-.

Now lets suppose that the next thing on your list of Avoids is early showtimes. You would then Freeze early report times in the L- bucket with an Avoid statement, and Move all the rest of the flying up to the next highest bucket. So you have this:

Award Work L--
Avoid All Night Flying
Award Work L-
Avoid Report time before 0700
Award Work L

If you now click on the yellow trip pool number you will see the three buckets. L-- will be nothing but all nighters, L- will be any trips that show before 0700, and L will be everything else.

Compare the above to this:

Award Work L--
Avoid All Flying
Avoid Report Time before 0700
Award Work L-

The difference between the two is that all nighters and early shows are now both frozen in the same L-- bucket. Let's say that PBS finds 3 decent trips for you in the L- bucket and now goes to the L-- to get one more. In this case, you would have told the system that you don't care if that last trip is an all nighter or an early show. So the system will pick for you. In the previous bid group, you told the system that if there is a choice between an all nighter and an early show, please give me the early show.

Sorry to be long winded, but I hate to see guys let PBS choose at random when they could have ordered their choices and possibly made life a little better. I shake my head at the thought of someone putting Award Work L-- or something not much beyond that as their final bid group.

steve0617

I do the bidding for the missus. The best way I've found is instead of creating these intricate bid groups that I always lose track of what they're actually doing, is just to simplify them but make more of them.

I don't even bother with pools. I just create a new bid group. The only downside I can see is I've told her is it eliminates the 'if I get this trip, I don't want that trip' requests. That mean the 'I only want to end up with one intratrip red eye' trip (or the like) the entire month goes away. Or 'I only want to work this 2nd weekend if I get the first weekend off'. There may be a way to do that kind of request without creating the bunches of pools, but I haven't taken the time to figure it out.

Eliminating the 'if I get this, I don't want that' makes bidding easier.

So, try creating something like this as the first bid group:

1 AVOID Work Fri 0000 - Sun 2359 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
2 AVOID Trip Report Time < 0900 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
3 AVOID Trip Report Time >= 2100 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
4 AVOID Layover Any , Length <= 12:00 h 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
5 AVOID Trip Length <= 1 day(s) 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
6 AWARD Work 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59 [L--]

Yes, it's picky as hell. So what? Gotta ask for the moon the first time right? Also, no pools. It does eliminate everything first, then with the trips left over, it attempts an award. So instead of freezing/throwing out all kinds of trips, it just dumps everything first that she doesn't want to fly.

Thus, the remaining trips to even choose from have no weekends, no early shows, no late shows, no intratrip 12 hour day layovers, and nothing less than 2 day trips. Now, this only produces a pool of maybe 15-20 total trips remaining out of all trips, and because she's senior enough on her seat/fleet/domicile, there tends to be enough of the trips left after the senior bidders that she can get her line. Sometimes.

But if not, the next bid group is identical but relaxes one criteria. The next bid group was:

1 AVOID Work Fri 0000 - Sun 2359 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
2 AVOID Trip Report Time < 0900 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
3 AVOID Trip Report Time >= 2100 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
4 AVOID Layover Any , Length <= 12:00 h 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
5 AWARD Work 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59 [L--]

She added one day trips (she lives in her domicile).

That was the only change. It increased her pool by a handful.

The next group was:

1 AVOID Work Fri 0000 - Sun 2359 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
2 AVOID Trip Report Time < 0800 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
3 AVOID Trip Report Time >= 2100 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
4 AVOID Layover Any , Length <= 12:00 h 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
5 AWARD Work 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59 [L--]

That simply relaxed the show time by an hour. That increased the pool by a few more.

We kept going giving little things up each group until we ended up with:

1 AVOID Work Sat 0000 - Sun 2359 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
2 AWARD Work 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59 [L-]

That was bid group 14. Weekends off. That's it. But it's better than completion mode.

And if she wasn't senior to get all weekends off, it would have been only Saturday's off. Or only Sunday's. Or whatever.

Keep going letting each group get a little crappier/less desirable and eventually, you'll get an award you can live with. Is it as picky as nailing each trip you actually want? No, not at all. If you want to do that, you can try an all 'AWARD Trip Number XXXX 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59 [H++]' bid group with only award statements. It'll work if you have enough trips (I think you can have 25 statements per bid group) and they're still there by the time PBS gets to you. More work on the front end, but allows you some measure of control of the outcome.

The way we bid with using AVOID statements of course requires your avoid statements to be realistic based on what your seniority can actually hold.

Three other VERY important things:

1. Be VERY careful with SET commands when relating to volume of work e.g. 'SET Line Credit Range to HIGH.' Since contractually, every single person below you but above the G line *must* get a line (even if it's nothing that they actually want). The system, even after it could have awarded you your desired bid group, will look to see if every single pilot 'below you but above the G line' can still get any line. If not, your group will fail and you'll be told 'Requested Award prevents solution completion.' That means 'even though you bid just fine, if UAL gives you your award, there is at least one person above the G line who won't have enough of ANY trips still available to be awarded ANY line. Your good bid group fails. Tough luck.'

To avoid that, copy the exact bid group with the SET statement as your next bid group but then eliminate the 'SET Line credit...'. Can't promise you it'll work, but you may end up with a 75 hour month rather than the 89 you want, but unexpectedly can't get. This exact thing happened to us in Jan 15.

2. Whatever the last bid group is, make sure it ends with L-, not L--. I was told by a PBS trainer that for some reason you'll still have a chance to avoid completion mode if you somehow get all the way down to your last bid group.

3. Prefbid.com is a great site to ask these questions or snoop around other's people problems to help show why your month got pooched.

Hope this helps at least a little.

CousinEddie

You realize that you can do some simple things with the pools and not diminish the chances of the bid passing, right? Here is what I mean. Suppose she takes a quick scan of the trips in that lone L-- pool you created. Suppose she says, ya know, there are a bunch of LGA layovers showing up. And I would rather not layover in LGA if there was another choice. Also, I really would prefer the trips that have 3 legs or less per day, if they are available. So do this:


1 AVOID Work Fri 0000 - Sun 2359 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
2 AVOID Trip Report Time < 0900 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
3 AVOID Trip Report Time >= 2100 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
4 AVOID Layover Any , Length <= 12:00 h 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59
5 AWARD Work 01Apr 00:00 - 30Apr 23:59 [L--]
6 AVOID layovers city LGA
7 AVOID legs per day greater than 3
8 AWARD Work L-

Now LGA layovers and trips that have more than 3 legs in a day are frozen in the L-- bucket. Everything else moves up to the higher L- bucket. Does this guarantee no LGA layovers or no trips with more than 3 legs a day? No, but the system will try to honor that or at least minimize it. Doing this little maneuver does not change the odds of the bid group passing as the total number of trips available (yellow number) does not change. You are simply ordering choices rather than making it random.

steve0617

Totally agree. And I've done something like this once before.

But I was trying to offer up some help for the guys that get overwhelmed at all the possibilities PBS can create. Doing AVOID statements alone can get guys much closer to what they desire without confusing them with the demands of the hierarchy of pool programming.

I think for lots of guys the pain of learning the programming needs of PBS outweighs the award they could otherwise receive.

LivinTheDream28

It really doesn't have to be this complicated. You can have one bid group that has only award statements and accomplish the exact same thing. Simply put every trip you absolutely want in the H++ group, then trips you would want after that in H+, then trips after that in H, and so on and so forth. Simply doing that in a single bid group will give you as much of what you want that your senority can hold (and it also can't fail).

Knotcher

Yes, but if you are also trying to minimize the amount of work you are given this is not the right strategy. You are telling PBS to give you as many trips possible.