Completion Mode
 

How on earth did I get my first choice on my March bid and go to completion mode 3 in April when I put in the exact same bid?!? I'm even more senior this month.

Honest question: regardless of senority, why do you not have at least one bid group with every trip in the pool ranked highest to lowest priority? This should be everyone's final bid group IMO. Sorry that happened man.

Yeah, Ill do that from now on. What does your final bid group look like? Maybe I'm not doing this bidding right. Thanks.

Award work L--

Wish I could help you. Not a fan of a competitive bidding system for schedules that awards the best programmer.

Try adding avoid flying with ( your own employee number), and see what you get. I heard that in the first month of PBS anyone doing that got zero trips and guarantee.:p

Ha, good idea!! I think I might try that!

Just make your final bid group one with no avoids or sets or anything. Just awards. Award work H++, then H+, then H, ect. Rank your preferences from top to bottom (most important through least). Once all of your preferences are ranked, make the last line award work L--. That will put every trip that doesn't have at least one of your preferences at the bottom, theoretically awarding you the least amount of them (if at all). This is a good fail safe if all of your other bid groups fail. Hope it helps.

Let's say there are 10 things you want to avoid. Start a FINAL bid group by dumping every trip in the base into play with Award Work L--. Don't ever start a bid group prior to the final one with Award Work L--.

Final Bid Group:

Award Work L-- ====> Every trip in play, bid group can't fail above G-line.
Avoid 1
Avoid 2
Avoid 3 -----> Avoids 1-3 are locked in the lowest (L--) bucket (stuff you hate the most).
Award Work L-
Avoid 4
Avoid 5
Avoid 6 ----> Avoids 4-6 are locked the 2nd lowest (L-) bucket
Award Work L
Avoid 7
Avoid 8
Avoid 9
Avoid 10 -----> Avoids 7-10 are locked in the "L" bucket
Award Work (N) ----> Best trips that respect all Avoids are here.

When PBS runs, it starts by looking at your N bucket which has what for you is the best flying since all your Avoids are respected there. Let's say PBS finds one trip in the N bucket that would work. PBS needs more trips of course so it goes next to the L bucket where it finds one more trip. The trip in the L bucket would not respect Avoids 7-10, but it would respect Avoids 1-6. Now PBS goes to your L- bucket. Let's suppose it finds two more trips in the L- bucket that would work. With 4 trips now, PBS has enough trips to build a legal line that hits the required credit time so it builds a line. Since PBS never had to dip into the L-- bucket, Avoids 1-3 would be respected in your line construction in this case. By doing it this way, you submit a FINAL bid group that will not fail but still allows you to negotiate with the system. If you are super junior and there are just a few trips left, the system may very well find nothing for you in N, L, and L-. In that case, the entire thing will be built from L--. You can't fix being that junior, but all you can do is try.

CHEESE and RICE dude....

Could they make this any more user unfriendly? :rolleyes:

Way too cerebral for me too. Easier to just bid reserve, and let God and the crew desk sort it all out.

Thanks to all who responded! I appreciate it!!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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 :mad:

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 :rolleyes:

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.