January '10 Bid's Award and Reason Report

The lines have been published. They came out for COS the morning of the 19th. Hopefully you got what you had hoped for. My award was fair but not exactly what I had hoped.

Notice that I have a huge stretch of days off the first half of the month. That isn't cool. Especially since I had a two pairings removed from my award in my reason report.

I bid a target credit range of 84-100 hours and the bid package was a 'B' package. It was supposed to give me a minimum of 82 hours. But PBS removed my pairings. Of course, "line constraints" is the reasoning. Jeeze Louis! I cannot escape line constraints. I still don't understand how to prevent them. I believe that it was essentially the PBS system trying to spread out the flying since it didn't actually replace these trips with anything else. 

Well, I'm going to keep looking it over and I'll call the PBS help line when it opens. 

January '10 Bid's Strategy in Bidding and The Christmas Tree

Good morning!

Each month I journal my PBS bid. I bring a Christmas tree each month. Or, at least, the "Christmas tree" you always hope to create in the prioritize layers section of PBS. December was obviously unique as Christmas Day is approaching I'll take this opportunity to wish everyone a merry Christmas. If you'll be flying over the holiday, you're not alone. Last month I was so unfortunate to have bid just right to be wrong. That is what I hope to accomplish on this blog. I need to learn from my mistakes and bid better. I hope this blog helps you. It is certainly a steep learning curve for me.

This month, for the January '10 bid, I didn't have much of a strategy. I didn't have any days that I particularly wanted off or anything pressing that I would have to bid around. So, with having the month wide open I went right to the pairings to see what I wanted to bid for. I usually like 2-4 day trips that pay well. Locals would be fun but they usually don't outweigh the cost of driving to and from the airport and the loss of per diem. Recently, I have come to really enjoy the '50 and there were a few good paying 3-day '50 trips that I really wanted. I don't know if my seniority will hold them but they are my first choice. Also there were two 26+ hour four day trips that I bid for. Also, as most of you know, I am an Arkansas boy. The only 32 hour layover this month was in LIT. It's in layer one. Otherwise my Christmas tree gradually descends with lesser paying trips until layer seven when I include locals that pay greater than 6 hours. So here it is!

As you'll see in my line properties section, I relaxed my target line credit range down to 84 hours minimum and included max credit in layers that I don't particularly car for. I believe this will be the biggest help to avoiding line constraints. I also 'remove(d) pairing on date' a couple pairings that were carry-in pairings for February.

Scott Maclean, the current SAPA RSR for DEN/COS, gives a report about the domiciles they represent. Here is January's report from Scott:

DEN/COS  RSR Report for January 2010

Happy Holidays!  I hope y'all had a good Thanksgiving where ever you spent it.  I ended up in Palm Springs and my wife drove from San Diego so we could be together.  I managed to get Christmas and New Years off this year due to a combination of bidding pairings and awarded vacation.  In 9+ years, I've managed to have the trifecta of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years once.  Every year my priorities change and the pairings change, so I bid accordingly.  Make sure to look at the pairings to see the changes!

Big Picture:  Delta has made it clear that they are going to reduce the amount of flying Delta Connection does.  Half of the reduction (almost 4% in the 1^st quarter and 10% in the second) is going to come out of non-wholly owned carries like us and ASA.  We may see a slight increase in April, May, and June.  United is going to grow United Express a lot in the first half of next year (16% in the 1^st Q and almost 9% in the 2nd).  While Expressjet was awarded the Mesa flying (I've seen their ugly colored 145s in Denver lately, luckily I have a strong stomach!), there are no major announcements for us yet but we do have 700s coming and they need to fly. Air Tran's increase in flying is making life difficult for the Crew Planners and I am glad not to be based in ORD. Almost all the CRJ domiciles saw a reduction in flying except ORD and DEN. 

DEN:  Flying in DEN has increased by a lot!  This is a nice change from the recent trend of block hour reductions.  While the credit values could be higher, a significant amount of crews will be coming off of reserve.  A side note about ASE.  Again I don't cover ASE or the parings, but I tend to look at what is going on.  A lot more 4 day trips for crews that usually don't do 4 days and the total lines stayed the same.  I'm guessing it's just a seasonal/monthly fluctuation due to increased flying...

COS: Reduction in flying for everyone.  Tough I know.  A pairing mix that I suspect will generate a lot of emails for me...While some people do not like trips that exceed more than 1 day, I have gotten a lot of comments and emails from crews who really like the 3 day pairings for December.  Let me know what works or doesn't work for you.  1 email = 1 vote. 

Again, if you don't like the pairings or if you do let me know! (Thanks Will!) Send me an email [email excluded for his inbox safety, just SWOL him].  Its the only way to help me help you...

Make 2010 the year you took control of your schedule. Frank Bowlin's piece on Holiday bidding is great and I think everyone should keep a copy handy.  Don't forget we also have golden days for when you absolutely need a day off (birthdays, anniversaries, the Superbowl etc.)  Make sure you look at the pairings, bid accordingly, get help before the 17^th, and then email your RSR with suggestions for improvements after the awards come out. 

Have a great day and happy bidding,

Scott Maclean. 

Line Constraint: The Final Word

Line constraints has always been my number one enemy and my last bid was really hurt by "line constraints." I called Frank Bowlin up on the PBS help line last month for a follow-up on my December award. Frank has been very kind to me. He explained it to me over the phone and he was kind enough to send me a copy of an article written on the SAPA forums about line constraints. I think this should be the final post on line constraints as I was wrong on what they are and why they occur. Thanks Frank, hopefully I'll be able to learn from my mistakes!

"Replaced by lower layer pairing due to line constraints"

On the face, it appears as if your seniority could hold a pairing and PBS took it away from you, which is true. However, the reason it was taken away is that your line could not be completed as required under your direction.

For instance:

Let's assume that you are bidding #1 in your bid package. You get everything you want, right? No, not necessarily. Your seniority will not trump legality, PBS limits nor run-time constraints placed on your line.

With that in mind, imagine that in layer 1 you bid specific pairings on date. That's fine; as #1 all the pairings you want should be available to you. Let's also imagine that you construct your perfect line and it adds up to 75:01. (You're an RJ pilot). Well, if everything goes as you planned, PBS will award you exactly what you bid in layer 1 and you'll have your 75:01 of credit for the month. SuuWEEEET!

EXCEPT, you failed to take into account that 6 day work block you're working at the end of the previous month that you put there to get a big block of days off earlier. And your current bid starts with some consecutive days as well. In fact, between your last month and this bid, you've ended up asking for 8 days in a row. OOPS!!

But, being #1 in base, you assumed that anything you wanted you could get, so you only bid one layer.

Here's what PBS did:


It gave you everything you asked for in layer 1 EXCEPT it didn't give you one pairing at the beginning of the month because of its requirement for a calendar day off in any consecutive 7 days.

But, by not giving you that one pairing you don't have enough hours. (PBS minimum for RJ pilots is 75 hours.) So, PBS goes to layer 2. Oh, there isn't a layer 2, so it goes to layer 3. Nope. No layer 3 either, and so on through layer 7. It falls through layer 7 looking for something, anything, that you'll let it add to your schedule to make a legal line. It finds nothing.

Since it finds nothing in your bid, you lose all control of your bid. Once you lose control of your bid by letting it fall off the 7th layer, PBS gets to do what works best for IT without regard to what you bid within your 7 layers. Seven strikes; you're out!

Suppose the calendar geometry of what you bid doesn't let PBS add anything to your schedule. So, the only way it can add more credit to your line is to replace a pairing you got with one of its choosing, and that's what it does. The reason reported for that is "Replaced by lower layer pairings because of line constraints."

This is a simple example that clearly shows that PBS has to do something, even though this particular scenario is a bit unlikely.

This process of replacing a pairing with one from a lower layer (or one of its own choosing if it exhausts all 7 of your layers) results from an optimization. An optimization occurs:

After failing to complete a line within your 7 layers

When you specifically ask for one by bidding "Try to finish at this layer" and

as the first step of a "Clear award/partial line"

Unfortunately, you can't always easily tell when you've been optimized by looking at your award. Usually you'll just see an LN solution and that's a sure sign. However, if the optimization allowed it to solve by replacing a pairing with one from one of your lower layers rather than going off the end, it will show a line solution from that lower layer, L5 for instance.

There are lots of reasons that a bid that otherwise looks reasonable might not solve within your 7 layers. The most common are:
You bid a target line credit range that was outside of the credit limit that PBS needed to impose. For example, you bid 90-120 hours but PBS limited you to 85 hours max.

When there are a limited number of bidders left to work on a specific day on which that same number of pairings fall, you WILL BE REQUIRED to work that particular day and your bid did not permit PBS to work you. (Remember, the company's requirements trump your seniority. PBS's first responsibility is to cover the flying.) In this case, PBS requires you to work that day but if your bid prevents doing so in all 7 layers, it'll fail off the end.

Your bid is too restrictive and there simply aren't enough pairings left with the right dates to make a full line within your bid. Kinda like when a junior line holder only bids for high-paying pairings with weekends off.

Composite Lines

Frank Bowlin was kind enough to answer a couple questions for me today. My first question was about composite lines. Many people wonder about being awarded a composite lines and I knew nothing about them. Here is my what I found out.

Ron: Frank, in the one of the recent flight attendant pay proposals the PBS enhancement to "bid for composite lines" was mentioned. How does one currently bid for a composite line?

Frank: First, there is currently no way to explicitly request a composite line. I fear that even if this requested bid property is put in most will not understand that composite lines ONLY result from there being insufficient pairings remaining for PBS to award a full line. I’ll guess that people will see that property and think they can bid for and get a composite line in all circumstances.

A composite line, as indicated, is a failure by PBS to award a full line because insufficient pairings remain. Thus, senior folks will never get one, even if junior crewmembers might end up with one. A composite line results from a PBS bid when:

• There is NO WAY POSSIBLE for PBS to build a full, legal line even after ignoring ALL crewmember preferences in ALL 7 layers.
• The crewmember’s bid preferences WILL ULTIMATELY BE IGNORED because, by definition, PBS will fail all 7 layers.
• The crewmember did not bid for an available reserve line in any of their 7 layers.
• There are remaining pairings or the crewmember is within the targeted crewmember number published for their bid package.

So, for a composite line to result, the bidder must have bid for a line in all 7 layers, those 7 layers must have failed, and PBS will construct whatever partial line it can with the remaining pairings. If, in processing a crewmember’s bid, PBS encounters a bid for a reserve line, that reserve line will be awarded if it is available.

This results in a bit of a devil-you-know vs. devil-you-don’t-know kind of choice. With a composite line you have essentially NO CONTROL over what schedule you’ll get, but if you bid for a reserve line you can usually at least control your days off. Plus, worst of all, if a composite line would not be available to this bidder and they didn’t bid for a reserve line, PBS will give them a reserve line that nobody else wanted.

For this reason, there have been requests to provide a bidding property that would essentially allow the crewmember to bid for a line (composite or not) if one would be awarded, but if no scheduled line would result, allow the bidder to specify a reserve line bid.

I think Frank has answered the question completely! Do any of you have any questions?

January '10 Bid's Nuts and Bolts

Welcome to the PBS Journal. 


If you are new to the blog, I journal my bidding strategies. Each month I do the "Nuts and Bolts" for COS flight attendants. Recently, I have gotten off topic a time or two due to a recent series of unfortunate events. I apologize for the negativity. This blog is dedicated to my and our PBS education. Now, on to the Nuts and Bolts!


For January, with the addition of five transfers, we have now reached 70 flight attendants domiciled in COS. It is certainly good to see the continued growth as typically January is an extremely slow month and one that many people dread. This January looks promising for the most part, however we are loosing about three lines. In December we were given a 'C' package with 54 guaranteed lines, 57 targeted lines, and 10 reserve lines. This month is a 'B' package with 51 guaranteed lines, 57 targeted lines, and 12 reserve lines as we see below. 


January Line Information:

In January we have 422 total trips (200 & 700, FA & FF). Of those 168  are on the CRJ200 and 254 are on the CRJ700.

Pairing lengths for January include,

• 201 Locals
• 84 Two-day trips
• 36 Three-day trips
• 97 Four-day trips
• 4 Five-day trips, that's right! Five-day trips.

Compare this to December when we had,

• 474 Total trips
• 282 Locals
• 52 Two-day trips
• 55 Three-day trips
• 85 Four-day trips

190 of those pairings were on the CJR200 and 284 of the pairings were on the CRJ700.

January is a relatively easy month to bid. There shouldn't be many, if any, 'coverage days' as all of the New Years Eve trips were awarded in the December bid so hopefully we will all have better luck than last month. 


P.S. This month I am going to email a few questions to the PBS gurus about specific items. One item that has been on my mind are composite lines. One the of the flight attendant pay proposals included several enhancements, one of those is the ability to bid for a composite line. I was never awarded a composite line when I was escaping reserve and I know diddly squat about it. I suppose that now is a good a time as any to educate myself on them. I'll include that in a dedicated post soon!

24!

Today is December 9th and you know what that means! Tomorrow starts the bidding for January. In COS we have five new faces on the FA side of the coin. It certainly is nice to know that COS is growing, even in January! That brings the total FA count in COS to 70 which is the highest number we've had in COS since 2008. January has always been a special month for me. It is the anniversary of my being awarded my first line, January 2007.

The "Nuts and Bolts" post will be up tomorrow, at least I hope. See you soon!

P.S. Today in the Sky blog had some interesting information on UAL's 50 jet purchase.