May '11 Bid's Award & Reason Report

I am very pleased with my award. That has been rare the last few months and dare I say, this is the best line I have had in a long, long, long, time. I was awarded three layer one trips, three! It has rarely happened that I have been awarded even one pairing in my first layer. It makes me wonder if some error occurred and the bids would need to be re-ran. 

Sixteen days off! That is the most I have had in a long while, but with so little flying on the 1-15, I will probably end up picking a trip on the 10-13th. Who knows, maybe I'll allow myself to be lazy if there isn't anything good to pick up. Bailey wouldn't mind all the daddy-daughter time. We might even take a trip somewhere. Either way, life seems to be getting better and better. I hope the trend continues.

May '11 Bid's Strategy in Bidding and The Christmas Tree

This post comes after the fact of the lines being published. So instead of telling you how it goes down, I'll tell you my strategy and show you the Christmas tree for reference as I typically do with my series of posts.

As you can see, I have moved up a few spots in the last few months but the best part of the May bid has been the addition of some five or six new hire FAs in COS! It makes me 34 out of 68. So, for the first time I have broken 60% and am now at the half way mark. That really helps out my bidding.

The "Christmas Tree"

With being more senior this month, I knew I could bid more restrictive but I didn't want to change what I was doing since I had been awarded a layer 7 pairing in April (which I was able it drop).

For May I was able to use a couple golden days for my birthday which is, coincidentally, on Mother's day this year. The carry-in pairings don't really matter since they still make me legal for a four-day trip. This month I really wanted to get as many weekend days off as possible, but with my seniority I would sacrifice all the best paying trips I could hold for having weekends off. That is why I came up with a strategy to bid for the best credit trips in layers 1-3 and weekends off in 4-6. That gives me access to the best trips available while holding the max weekend days off. 

As always layer seven becomes my safety net that will prevent me from being awarded a CN or PN. I have layer seven at plus 10% of my domicile rank percentage and while that could be too slim, for the multi-day pairings, it does its job.

This month I left off Max credit and 1 day off between work blocks. Neither were doing me much good so I kept it simple and even added target line credit range.

May '11 Bid's Nuts and Bolts

Now that I'm back doing my PBS journal I don't have a place to start the Nuts and Bolts post. Previously, I would try to give a brief overview of the changes seen compared to the previous month in the Nuts and Bolts post. In this case I didn't document April so I'll just overview where we're at.

I am so glad I wasn't blogging during the "bid re-run" fiasco. My head was spinning during that process, I still don't understand why the bid had to be re-run, it's not like we had new flying inserted to the bid package. Either way, my line didn't turn out very good for April but much to my pleasant surprise, I have had the honor of flying with some great crews! I have always said the worst trip with the best crew is better than the best trip with the worst crew. That has certainly been a relief.

The new pin pad seems to be giving us some trouble. It is just complicated enough with the separation of half-weights in their respective zones and the total count reformat that it throws a wrench in the process. Rather than counting once and being right once, I have found myself counting three times plus, just to make sure I am correct. That doesn't do us any help for expediting performance, but I think with practice we'll slowly get better.

In COS we have some new FAs!!! I'm not talking about some transfers either! I'm talking about some 40,000-straight-off-of-ioe-FAs. That makes me happy. It is good to see some new blood and hear their take on everything.

On to the May Nuts and Bolts:

In May we have 418 total pairings (FA &FF)

148 are on the CRJ 200
270 are on the CRJ700

188 Locals
110 Two-Day pairings
38 Three-Day pairings
82 Four-Day pairings

It is interesting to see that even with the transition to MSP and IAH we are very similar to May 2010.

The Come Back. April 10th, 2011

After the January bid I decided to take a break from the blog and responsibilities that I had taken. I resigned from SIA in February for the sole reason of devoting more time to my wife and daughter since I'd been every bit of a work-aholic since 2008. Now with my wife working and the return to a bit of normalcy, I am going to start blogging again. Along with the increased need for me to refine my bidding I've also been inspired to continue my journal thanks to the newest additions to the seniority list, which I'm glad to see a few have come to COS. So this week I'll continue the "nuts and bolts - reason report" posts.

Welcome to bidding for Summer!