I do it exactly the same and usually it works out.

Every time I have tried to put an "avoid" after an "award" the system doesn't take it and tells me I can't do it.

CousinEddie;

I have no earthly clue about how your bidding logic works. All that being said, maybe I (and others) can learn something if you explain it a bit better. I saw your explanation earlier but I didn't understand it. Your explanation was either a bit too generic, or my feeble mind isn't good enough to understand it (probably a contributing factor).

What are you trying to bid for, and how does your logic make it work?

Your bidding logic mostly made my head hurt.

The system works top down. You must have an award below an avoid, otherwise their is no work requested for that Avoid to "avoid."

Alway watch your trip pool on the right column and how it is affected by each line.

"The system works top down."
Mostly.

The UAL PBS is all about three things:

1. The trips in your pool
2. The priority of the trips in the pool.
3. And the whims of the management for the bid period.

Loading/moving trips into the pool does start top down as the poster wrote.

AVOID WORK, WORK, WORK....

;)

Geeze my head hurts! I can't figure this PBS bidding out. Luckily I'm SOLID reserve. Has anybody designed a trip bidding program that you tell it what you have to have and it spits out the bid group

No problem, this isn't easy to pick up on. Let's say you Probe have just 3 things you want to Avoid. #1 is weekends, #2 is all nighters, and #3 is early show times. That's all you care about, so you could start out with bid group 1 by doing:

Bid Group 1:

Avoid SA-SU
Avoid All Nighters
Avoid Early Show times
Award Work L--

Let's say this bid puts a total of 30 trips (the yellow highlighted number) in your L-- pool.

The above can only be awarded if the system can honor all three of your Avoids. All the trips described by those Avoids are locked in the supply pool. As far as PBS knows, those trips don't even exist. Of course, you need to start loosening up your next bid group since there is a good chance that first bid group could fail (unless you are super senior) since there are only 30 trips in the pool. So let's say of your three Avoids, the first one you are willing to compromise on is the early show times:

Bid Group 2:

Avoid SA-SU
Avoid All Nighters
Award Work L--
Avoid Early Show times
Award Work L-

Let's say now that the trip pool (yellow number) shows 70 trips.

What you have done now is put Early show times "in play." Before, Early shows were totally locked out like SA-SU and all nighters. Now, they are availiable BUT they are frozen in the L-- pool. That means that even though you have made Early Shows available to the system now, they are stuck in the L-- pool which is the last place PBS will go looking for trips. If you looked at your trip pools, you see L-- and L-. L-- has the early shows, and L- has the stuff you like to do. By doing this, you are hoping that if PBS has to give you Early Shows, it will minimize the number of times it will do it. So, maybe you only get one Early show all month, instead of several.

Now you need to keep loosening up your bids in order to keep expanding your trip pool. So the next thing you say that you will give in on is All nighters. So repeat the above process like this:

Avoid SA-SU
Award Work L--
Avoid Early Show times
Avoid All Nighters
Award Work L-

Let's say now the total trips (yellow number) is up to 100.

Again, you have now put All nighters "in play". Up until now, they were totally locked away in the supply pool and therefore unavailable to PBS. Now they are available to be assigned to you. However, you have frozen them in the L-- pool along with the Early show times. Remember, as PBS attempts to process this bid, it will build as much of your line from L- as it can FIRST. Your L- pool has no All-nighters, No Early Shows, and no SA-SU. You want the system to build as much of your line as possible from L- before it dips down into the L-- pool where the stuff you would rather not do resides.

Now you can do your final bid group, which puts every trip in the base in play, but again keeps the stuff you really don't want to do in the L-- pool:

Final Bid Group:

Award Work L--
Avoid SA-SU
Avoid All Nighters
Avoid Early Shows
Award Work L-

Total trips available in pool let's say is now 150 (yellow number), which is every trip in the base.

This bid group can not fail. If you click on the yellow number and view your two pools (L- and L--), you would see the trips described by your 3 Avoids in L--, and all the rest of trips (what you prefer) in the L- pool. That way you are telling the system to give you the stuff that you prefer first before you try and give me any of the stuff I don't want to do.

As you can see, by simply dropping one Avoid at a time from the top of the list down to between L-- and L- with each bid group, you slowly expand the trip pool. That way, it is a negotiation with the system where you put Avoids "in play" one at a time to gradually expand the trip pool. Also, as you put those Avoids in play they always reside in the L-- bucket, so the system knows those are your last choice trips.

Next time the bid window is open, try messing around with it like this. It is easier to see what it is doing when you have it right in front of you.

cousin:

"The above can only be awarded if the system can give you all three of your Avoids."

You make it too hard to understand, this is what you should have said:

"The above can only be awarded if there are enough trips left in your pool to build a line."



All that avoid and award stuff does just one thing, puts trips into the pool for the solver to build a potential line. The reason why a line couldn't be built is really basic.

1. The trips already went to a pilot senior to you.
2. There aren't enough trips left in your bid group pool to make a "legal" line

Definition of "legal" is to meet FARs, contractual requirements and company whims.

It all comes down to what's in the trip pool of a given bid group for the solver to work with. Simple, not enough trips - no line.

You all have to get a hold of the idea, "what did you put into your trip pool?"


"Award Work L--
Avoid SA-SU
Avoid All Nighters
Avoid Early Shows
Award Work L-"

This is a bad idea:

The avoids here really do nothing because you already awarded all work.

If you want to prioritize the trips then award in priority order the types of trips you want to fly.

Award work day trips H++
Award work with check-in times H+
Award work SA-SU L--
...


Remember avoids only prevent work from being pulled from the potential pool of trips into you trip pool.

Is there a way to just bid reserve.

You are right, I changed that sentence to "honor" so it is more clear.

You are wrong though about that final bid group. A final bid group should put every trip in the base in play, especially for a more junior pilot. The first line, Award Work L-- dumps every trip in the base into the L-- bucket. You would only start a bid group with Award Work if it was a FINAL bid group. The Avoids after that do have an effect. What they do is Freeze the trips you would prefer NOT to do in the L-- bucket, while MOVING the trips you would prefer to do into a HIGHER (L-) bucket. Again, the system picks as many trips from L- as it can before going to L--. By doing this, you are telling the system what you want first, rather than making it a completely random event.

For any bid group to pass, it has to be FAR legal, contract legal, meet the minimum credit time, and it can't prevent the system from being able to build lines all the way down to the G-line. That last factor is what is referred to as the "constraint line", which we can't see.

Cousin:

Ok what we have here is a failure to communicate.

Agreed:

1. If a jr., near g-line, pilot wants a flying line then eventually the last bid group has to have all the trips in it. I think that has been made clear. But, even then prioritizing the trips based on H++ - L-- is essential. The solver will give a pilot more Jr a trip a more sr pilot may have wanted if that more sr. pilot did not make it a high priority in his or her trip pool.

The best example is with international F/Os who want flying positions and not bunky. I have seen a more jr. pilot get the flying seat because of how they both prioritized the trip in their own pools.

2. We disagree on how to use the avoid in a big way. Here's what avoid does, it prevents any trips from being pulled from the available pool to a pilot's trip pool, it's that simple. If the trip is already in the pull via an award then use another AWARD to change the priority not an AVOID.

Why? Because bidding is about what I want to fly, not what I want to avoid and the process of building a bid group of trips should reflect that. If I don't want to fly something an AVOID used first will prevent it from ever entering my trip pool in that bid group.

Here's my example:

Bid group 1; I don't want to fly any weekend trips, either starting or touching a Sat or Sunday.

First bid line:

AVOID WORK SAT 00:00 - SUN 23:59

Now not a single weekend trip will move from the available pool to my pool when I award trips no matter what I AWARD.

Next line:

AWARD WORK

Result all trips which do not start or touch a weekend will move into my trip pool.

Now, if I want, I can start prioritizing via H++ - L-- the trips in my pool which I desire to fly over the others. I can do this on on a trip number basis, a station, as bunky or flying (F/Os only) and so on. I only AWARD what I want to fly and in the order I want it to fly them.

But what if I didn't want to fly any trip that goes through ORD? Then I do this right below the first AVOID for weekends, AVOID STATION ORD. The result is no ORD trips will be awarded ever in that bid group.

Of course as I add bid groups I start to remove the AVOIDS until I get to the essential all trips in more order of desire, H++ - L--, there are available at my base.

The only rub is this:

At bases with huge trip pools, like IAH 737, one has to pay more attention to hat shows up in their pool.

When I first got hired a very wise pilot told me this philosophy; "Only bid what your want and are willing to fly." I use and recommend using AVOIDS because I don't ever want to fly that, and AWARDS because this is what I want and am willing to fly.