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

Hello June 17th!

This morning I put the finishing touches on my bid for June. I was satisfied with it last night but it never hurts to double check it. Especially after last month when I made a simple error that effected my award negatively. To be honest, my bid will never be exactly what I want. I doubt any of ours will be perfect. Each month I'll dream of 23 hour three-day trips with 140 hours and 12 days off. That would be my ideal scenario. Reality is that we work for SkyWest so each month brings new challenges and new excitement. Which is why, for me, this blog provides a damage control that can't be found otherwise. I certainly hope for those of you who will read this that it provides you with more of the same... if not better.

My bid this month was a little more conservative than I normally make it with my layer seven well exceeding my seniority ranking ratio. I spent a lot more time analyzing my line properties than I normally do. The same goes for my removing pairings. I removed all the 30 hour layovers. Reason is, when bidding for average credit per duty period, these pairings are included. So even though they're only 18 hour four-day trips, they're considered to be 6+ hours per duty period (which is less than the 24-hour four day I'm trying to bid for). Since these pairings include the 3:45 minimum guarantee for the day off and no duty those, along with carry-in pairings, are ones I want to avoid. The only way to remove a pairing is by going into the View Pairing Set, selecting the day of the pairings, and removing the individual pairings.

So this is me. I hope our bids turn out well!