September '12 Bid Summary.

Weird that this year, this coach is without a job. I loved to hate him.

September. Yeah, it is time to bid for September. There is a part of me that is really happy about it. September's return marks the return of the pigskin wars and I am a proud expatriate. There is nothing quite like an Autumn Saturday. After all, there is even a doctor devoted to it. It is my favorite time of year. On the other hand, I have worked my tail off this Summer and I hate to say goodbye to it without having had a chance to bask in the Summer sun.

Roller coasters can be scary
even for 250lb running backs.

So, you probably read that there is a reduction in flying for September. Don't worry. It is just the normal, seasonal, roller coaster (see left). Funny enough, it won't effect the flight attendants in COS too much. COS looses a few of our 200 trips. We all know that CRJ 200s only have one FA, so the reduction isn't bad at all for flight attendants in COS. If we had lost some 700s though, I would be singing a different song. Also, keep in mind that part-timers return next month. I imagine that for every two part-time flight attendants senior to you, your bidding seniority is virtually one better as two part time lines usually equal one full time line. The way I look at it, the more part-timers senior to me or you, the better and I'm glad they're back.

I count that we have 304 pairings in COS for this September. We had 354 in August. All things considered, this look pretty good. Last year, September 2011, I was on hiatus from blogging. I wish I had not taken a hiatus so that I could compare this year to last. In 2010, however, COS had 287 pairings for FAs. At the time I was number 38. In the past two years I have moved up eight spots to number 30. I went from 62.3% to now 44.8%. You may not believe it, but that makes a big difference, especially in a small domicile.

As for bidding, I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary. Last month worked out gloriously well, so I want to try to repeat my luck even despite the slight reduction. Weekends off are a priority for me and I surely do not want to be stuck working a 17 hour four day so I have to be savvy. On top of that, weekends off are hard to come by so I need a backup plan should I be unable to hold weekends off. 

As you can see, I bid pairing specific in layers 1-3. I bid for more trips than usual too in my first layer. I typically only bid for 7-10 trips in the first layer, but I knew I wouldn't get half of them, there were some good trips. 16 hour two day, a 20 hour three day. Yeah, those are good trips and I wish we had more.

I realize now that I goofed up a little. I forgot to select the "try to finish at this layer" property at the bottom. I'm not sure why I forgot. I did finish bidding on the 17th at 2:00am MDT in YEG, but I sure thought I had enabled it in my first three layers.

This is my line. The P and number underneath indicate the layer from which it was awarded

So here is what my bidding gave me, 96 hours of credit and fourteen days off. Weekends? Well, I had to settle for a few late Sunday shows, but I got every Saturday off so I will be watching some football! That isn't a bad line for me. In fact, it is pretty good.

One thing I find strange is that on both the line and reason report is that my line "solved" at layer 5 (L5). I don't get it. I don't have any layer 5 pairings. Looking at it from what was awarded, layer 4 gave me one more trip and that's it. So, I don't get it. Usually, you don't see the 'solve' layer on the reason report, so obviously the computer had tried to move to my fifth layer. I guess any more flying would have put me too far over the hour requirement. Without the layer four trip, I would have had 86 hours which is an hour and 44 minutes shy of the required minimum line value. That is why my bid didn't solve by layer 3.

At layer 4 I am bidding for 28% of the pairings in the domicile. That tells me two things. First of all, I'm number 30 so there are a lot of folks senior to me that don't want these trips. Secondly, I can bid a little more restrictive. My layer seven is a great safety net, but I don't need to bid for any more than 60% of the pairings to complete a line. If it weren't for the high hour requirement my line would have solved with my bidding for 15.5% of the pairings in layer 3.

So there you have it. September's bid is in the books. Three more bids are left in the year. Isn't that scary?