December '10 Bid's Strategy in Bidding and Christmas Tree:

Edit 11/17/2010 1:28PM: I should really have my wife proofread everything. It isn't 2009 for those that caught my error.

Welcome to the final month of 2010 or the bid for the last month of 2010 anyway. It has been one heck of a year. This time last year I was ready to throw in the towel with SkyWest. Now, I'm more confident that although things aren't as good as they could be it could be a lot worse. In my opinion, things are getting better. Usually with this blog I only make comments on PBS stuff (since that's what this blog is all about) but there are times when a thing comes along you just have to talk about. The United/Continental marriage has recently turned from the honeymoon phase to the... pissed off phase with Continental flight crews furious that SkyWest will be operating 700's in none other than IAH. The domicile announcement was the straw that broke the camels back and those folks are screaming mad. I wouldn't have imagined it, but one thing that always brings a group together is opposition. I've seen that recently with more and more SkyWest crews become really tight and really taking offense to it all. This year has been turbulent and I don't see any end in sight!

Now, let's talk PBS!

Last year December was one of my prototype months for this blog. I failed horribly! Like last year I am hoping for Christmas day and New Years eve off. There were two real problems with my bid last year that caused me to work both. The first way my overly restrictive bidding. I should have opened up my layers so much further than I did, especially around layers 3-6. My bids have regularly been solving around 50-60% of the pairings. The other was a terrible use of target line credit range in layer 7. Both of those issues are resolved and I'm ready for PBS to give me a better line than last year!

A year later and a year wiser. Now, usually a year's time would have one gain seniority. I've actually fallen in seniority from 58% last year to 63% this year. Not great seniority, but I'll take what I can get! Good luck everyone. I hope you have a merry Christmas and happy holidays!