October '10 Bid's Award & Reason Report

As you can see, I was bit by the layer 7 bug. My Strategy worked well and I avoided any CNs or PNs. The pairings were just terrible this month and I did my best to avoid the inefficient trips. I was lucky enough to be awarded decent trips. I can build on that and shape up my line with Skedplus. I may have to pick up a DEN trip, but I am confident that I can drop one or two of the layer sevens.

October '10 Bid's Strategy in Bidding and Christmas Tree

This month I had to bid around SIA dates. That became a bit complicated due to my not knowing the flight schedule for my transportation to and from the event. That said, I pieced together the trips that I wanted in the first three layers and I was sure to try and avoid the less efficient trips in the final layers. We had several four-day trips with 30+ overnights that paid on average 17 hours. I was able to avoid those by avoiding the 30+ hour overnight in LSE. That strategy has worked in the passed and it worked to perfection in this month... see line award.

October '10 Bid's Nuts and Bolts

Sorry the Nuts and Bolts is coming out late. I was elected to SIA a while back and ever since I was  my workload has really gone through the roof. I'm still flying 115 a month average too. Anyway, here goes the post.

September proved to be a record setting month for Colorado Springs. Three hundred and fifty-one pairings made for the slimmest month the domicile has seen to this journal's date. No doubt the tightest that many of us have ever seen in COS. Going into October many of us were concerned that we'd end up with yet another decrease since the fall months have historically been worse. I'm happy to say that that isn't the case, however, 394 pairings for October is hardly something to brag about. Especially with the block hours dropping by 10% as you'll read in the RSR report. I'm happy to say that our new RSR gives us a little more information than previous RSRs.

DEN/COS October Bid Information

Overall, October's total block hours are down slightly from September.

Here are the details for COS:

Total CRJ (200 and 700 combined) block hours for October are 2376 vs. 2641 block hours in September - a reduction of 10%.

As far as credit distribution, the highest credit per duty period on the 200 is found in the locals, with an average of 5:51 per duty period. 2-days average 5:01, 3-days average 5:19, and 4-day pairings average 4:56 credit per duty period. Although there are fewer block hours, the credit-per-duty period is higher overall than last month.

On the 700, locals are also highest credit ratio with 5:40 per duty period. 2-days average 4:22, 3-days average 4:35, and 4-days average 4:55. Unfortunately, the 700 pairings have lower credit-per-duty periods on average – especially the 3-day trips.

In DEN:

Total CRJ (200 and 700 combined) block hours for October are 16527 vs. 17,392 block hours in September - a reduction of 5%.

Credit distribution among the CRJ200 pairings in DEN is as follows: Highest credit ratio to duty period is found in 3-day trips, with average of 5:41 per duty period. Locals average 5:40, 2-days average 5:07, and 4-days average 5:08.

On the 700, 3-day trips are also leading with 5:52 average credit per duty period. Locals average 5:26, 2-days average 4:15, and 4-days average 5:04. The 2-day trips show a very low average credit-per-duty-period ratio. Incidentally, there are 100 occurrences of such trips this month, with 33 of them paying less than 9 hours credit for the 2-day pairing.

The following is an aggregate comparison of number of trips by type for each aircraft, from last month to this month. Note that the numbers reflect occurrences of a given trip type. In other words, if a given pairing number (e.g. N1200) starts on three different dates in the bid period, that pairing would account for 3 instances of that trip type in these numbers.

Bid Package Summary for the CRJ200 for September / October:

	Stnd-up	Local	2-Day	3-Day	4-Day	5-Day	Total Block
COS	0 / 0	78 / 55	10 / 15	31 / 10	22 / 29	0 / 1	1415 / 1165
DEN	79 / 79	134 / 147	112 / 135	83 / 80	335 / 301	1 / 18	10225 / 10316

Bid Package Summary for the CRJ700 for September / October:

	Stnd-up	Local	2-Day	3-Day	4-Day	5-Day	Total Block
COS	0 / 0	25 / 68	42 / 54	10 / 7	28 / 13	0 / 0	1226 / 1211
DEN	80 / 84	96 / 44	64 / 100	36 / 43	245 / 199	0 / 0	7167 / 6212

Vijaya Tensei

DEN/COS Regional Scheduling Representative