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.