Really this is just two different approaches. You see Avoids as "all or nothing." Give me weekends off, period. If you are senior enough to do that, it works great. However, if I am a more junior guy I might be thrilled just to get one or two weekends off. What happens if all of your bid groups fail that lock out weekends in the supply pool? You may not get ANY weekends off, period. What I am proposing is eventually putting weekends into play in later bid groups, but placing all weekend trips in L--. That way the system at least attempts to minimize any weekend flying that it gives you. You don't want the system to look at a later bid group and think "well, he's expanding the trip pool and did not lock out weekends in this bid group, and he apparently does not care now if he flies on a weekend of weekday." Why not tell the system that weekends still matter to you by placing them in the L-- pool, instead of the same pool as the rest of the flying you could be lined up for?

By all means, use the H pools too if you want. I would reserve them for individual trips on specific days. If you don't get any or enough of those trips from the H pools, then the system goes through the lower pools (L-- last of course) that you have set up the way you want.

 

Cousin;
My understanding (could be wrong) of how the system works within a bid group is "top down". That is why I don't understand why you would put L-- first, and then H++ at the bottom. If it works top down, won't it actually award some L-- if it can, and then never actually get to the trips you really want?

Within a single bid group, I do Set, Avoid, and then Awards. No mixing of them. My first bid group is my "dream" with H++ trips at the top of the awards, and less desirable trips down from there., and then I relax my avoids as I go down the list of bid groups. It works for me, but my base is relatively small, with not a lot of variety in flying. Because of this I might be learning bad habits in bidding should I bid 737 IAH with 500 pilots in each seat.

And, thanks for the help.

 

Is that the same as "denial mode 3"??

 

GREAT - right when I bid A320 in IAH you are thinking Guppy IAH

LoL

 

Hypothetical only. I would rather rub glass shards in my eyes. I will be knocking back a cold one in #5 first.

Remember when schedule bidding meant getting your sched on Saturday night???

 

Medic:

It's about paying more pilots less.

 

Definitely not how it works. Here's my normal monthly bid:

AWARD 2 day trips L--
AWARD 1 day trips L-
AWARD PUJ L
AVOID 752
AVOID 753
AWARD IRO N
AVOID IRO
AWARD FRA H++
AWARD ZUR H+
AWARD MUC H+
AWARD 764 H


I get mostly Frankfurt flying pilot trips and usually one IRO maybe a PUJ rarely a 1 day and never a 2 day.

The PBS logic doesn't go top down in a bid it looks at your 7 pools. Putting L-- first followed by an AVOID "FREEZES" those trips in that pool. PBS then goes through your bid and uses the highest pool trip it can to complete your line. If you look at the reason report you can really see how the logic is working. In my case my pools look like this:

H++ = FRA flying
H+ = ZUR and MUC flying
H = other 764 flying
N = 764 IRO
L = PUJ
L- = 1 day trips
L-- = 2 day trips


A key element to the logic is to use the AWARD followed by AVOID to FREEZE trips in the desired pool.


Did that answer your question or did I misinterpret what you were asking?


P.S. I fancied myself pretty good with PBS, but this month I got a COMPLETION MODE award because I had too high an opinion of my seniority. For the last two months I had no trouble building a purely 764 line so I bid with AVOID all 75 flying and PBS couldn't make it happen so I got hosed big time . . . ah well c'est la vie

 

Yup......and then that schedule that you got was never what you actually flew !

Barbershop run !!

 

Anybody want to post up how to bid reserve for a commuter? At least a general idea for 756

 

I was much happier receiving my schedule on Saturday night, than spending every Saturday night on APC and CCS, trying to figure out how to bid for the next month.

Schedule changes didn't bother me at all. I like life to be a surprise.

I have a layover there in about 10 days.