December 2014

I woke up this morning after a twenty-one hour three day trip in a haze. Thank God for coffee, this past trip really drained me! Mainly, our biggest problems on the trip were related to the super cold weather that we experienced this week. I went to work on Monday the 10th at 8:00am and it was 60º F. When I reported at 7:00am the next day it was 10º.  Last night, walking out to my snow covered car it was -1º. We're nearly a full month away from winter too. Brace yourselves! This isn't going to be an easy winter. And brace yourselves for the bidding nightmare of December. This is always the craziest month for bidding!

Working on Christmas isn't fun, but it is necessary for some. Us included. We still have a job to do. Now, our job isn't like all the others but there are some that know exactly how we feel. Keep it in perspective. There is a duty, a responsibility that has to be accomplished. I simply hope that if you're working a Christmas day that it is uneventful like these firefighters. Scenarios involving emergencies aren't fun and heaven forbid anyone experience that on a day that should be a resoundingly joyful occasion. Should you work on Christmas at least find solace in your fellow crewmembers.



I am sure all of you still want Christmas off, don't we all? I am no exception, so I'll explain what I do to try and hold Christmas off. I have explained this all before in my 2012 How to Bid for a Holiday post, but I suppose I could use a bit different semantics to drive home the point.


1. Determine how many trips fall on or over December 25. 

In Colorado Springs there are nine CRJ200 trips that fall on or over Dec 25. There are eight CRJ700 trips that fall on or over Dec 25 too. With the 700 (or any dual flight attendant aircraft) you'll have to multiply it by two to account for forward and aft positions, so sixteen plus nine equals 25. Twenty-five trips that fall on or over December 25 in Colorado Springs.

2. Determine  how many people junior to you will be "CN'ed" one of the twenty-five trips (if PBS actually works in reverse seniority for the distribution of those 25 trips). 

In Colorado Springs there are seventy flight attendants bidding. For December there are fourteen reserve lines. Seventy minus fourteen equals 56. Fifty-six is also the number of the Targeted Line Holders number in Colorado Springs. There could be some fluctuation in the number of actual reserves but, there are still 14 guaranteed reserve lines.

3. Apply the number of line holders within domicile seniority who will be awarded a trip on or over Christmas. 

We're trying to determine how far up the seniority list the CN demon will travel. Again, this is assuming that PBS will actually award in reverse seniority the trips that everyone is bidding to avoid. From the most junior projected line holder to the most junior "CN'ed" line holder is (56 - 25 = 31) thirty-one. So, in a perfect world from the 31st person in the seniority list to the first, they should be able to hold December 25th off. 

4. Apply the seniority of the must junior "non-CN'ed" to your relative domicile seniority.

I am number 29/70. So, in theory I should hold Christmas off by two more junior to me. Now, that is assuming two things. First, PBS works as advertised. Second, I don't screw up my bid and force it into the "eighth layer". That eighth layer is the CN/PN layer. If PBS cannot (or chooses not to) finish your award within your seventh layer it progresses to the final layer, the unpublished 8th layer (The PBS does-what-it-wants layer), to build a line of its choosing for you. 

5. Bid wisely.

I don't want to give PBS any excuse not to complete my line after my seventh layer. If I formulate a bidding strategy based on the information I just discovered, I need to make sure that I bid for every single pairing except those that fall on or over Christmas by my seventh layer in order to ensure I can hold it off. In other words, my last layer had better have only December 25 off and nothing else or I could open myself up for a disastrous CN.

November Update

Sorry for leaving you hanging on the September bid. My award wasn't a pretty one... and because of the results I believed that I had encountered a bug within PBS. I had to do quite a bit of research to see if I was right. It is a rather lengthy story so, I wouldn't bother explaining it all until I am sure that the issue will repeat itself. Sounds bug-like right? Well, I think it was more of a perfect storm of variables... but that's all for now.

The October bid went great for me. I was very, very, happy with my awarded line for October. Which, beyond that makes the oddity of September more of a unicorn.

I think that all of the year, thus far, has been child's play to what we are to experience in November and December. If you were a football player I would tell you to buckle you chin strap and make a play. There is going to be a lot of craziness over the start of the holidays, so be ready for it! 

Get your head in the game!!! Here come the holidays.

September 2014 Bid

Domicile Status

I have remodeling this blog a bit, so bear with me. I haven't blogged my bid and award in thirteen months. The last time I blogged I was awarded all of my first layer. With a few exceptions, most of the last thirteen months have had similar results. For September 2014, I am not quite as confident that I'll hold all layer ones requests. You see, my relative domicile seniority has gone down. 

While my company wide seniority has risen to 716 (compared to 765 in August 2013) in Colorado Springs I have fallen to 29 of 67 or 43.3%. You'll see that thirteen months ago I was 26 of 66 or 39.4%. It isn't that big a deal and thankfully, there are three part-timers ahead of me. Still, I have to be a little more thorough in my bid or I'll hate my life thanks to a poor award. 

Those senior flight attendants that are bidding again are friends of mine, but they aren't doing me a lot of good (they know and love it)! Sometimes I kid with them that I'll need to go all Tanya Harding on them to gain some real seniority! I joke of course, but it is frustrating to fluctuate back and forth on the seniority list. Especially frustrating since I would be ridiculously senior in other domiciles. Par for the course I guess, I just have to live with it. Commuting to other domiciles would probably make me want to attendant anger management classes,  but thankfully, those senior to me want mostly locals and two days. I am after the high credit weekday three-day trips. So, I am still mostly getting what I want in Colorado Springs even if my seniority is fluctuating. Now, if Colorado Springs were to gain more flight attendants and more flying, that fluctuation wouldn't matter much. As it is, it looks like we'll be around 70 flight attendants for a long time. April 2012 was about the highest I've seen Colorado Springs. We had 73 bidding flight attendants. Funny, when I first got to Colorado Springs in 2006 we had around 90 flight attendants. We've hovered just below the 70 mark for years now.

Strategy

As is my usual pattern, I am bidding pairing specific (pairing on date) in layers one through four. Layers five through seven and pairing criteria. Often times I'll switch up layers four and five, sometimes bidding criteria in layer four instead of pairing specific. In this month I am bidding for roughly 80 pairings on date by layer four, then I switch to criteria in layer five. My criteria consists of weekends off and a descending average credit per duty period.

I want to avoid the DL flying since I am so familiar with the UA flying. Inside the criteria, the only way to avoid DL trips would be to avoid landing in Salt Lake City. All of the DL flying that Colorado Springs has flies through Salt Lake City. Still, my layer seven is my safety net. I am sure that I can hold weekends off if I allow for the DL flying in that seventh layer, that safety layer as I call it. It saves me from being subject to bidding too restrictive and thus opening myself up for CNs and PNs. Weekends off are more important to me than avoiding DL trips altogether.

I also want to avoid the five total four-day trips that Colorado Springs has. Their credit is awful and they all have 30+ hour overnights. Three of those five fall on weekends, so as I am bidding the criteria of weekends off, they are nullified. The remaining two four-day trips are on the weekdays and I have them "removed from pairing set" to avoid them. If there had been more four-day trips, I would have simply bid to avoid four-day trips all together. As it is, I have avoided them with bidding weekends off and removing the two. Those two that are on the weekdays are included in my seventh layer, for safety sake.

Juniority September 2014

****Update 5:45pm Aug 12, One more correction. The formula for total bidding flight attendants was incorrect and effected the accuracy of reserves and such. The formula has been updated (Target plus Reserve equals total bidding) and hopefully this will be the last update to this Juniority report. The sharp eye award goes to Sheri Jo for spotting the discrepancy! 

***Update 7:30am Aug 12, I had entered Denver's information incorrectly. This is up to date and double check as of now. Big thank you to Amy for catching my error.

It isn't every day that I update this blog. It is useful, but I have covered quite a bit thus far and I don't have questions nearly as often as I used to. For those of you reading this, thank you. This is for you and I hope it serves you well.

Several years ago I made a post called Juniority. In that post I had taken the information from the Bid Info page on SkyWest and implemented it into a spreadsheet. If someone were to ask you what the most junior base is, what would you say? Sure, you could speculate, but these numbers don't lie. Plus, this is critical information for those who are considering transferring to a domicile where they'd be a line holder. So, if you know someone who is considering transferring for a line show them this.

This Blog May Actually Be Useful!

It has recently come to my attention that crew members still search for bidding tips during bidding. Now, I am not an expert. I am simply a crew member. But, if I can share some knowledge with you to assist you in your bidding strategy by golly, I should do it. I think my previous format was a little difficult to navigate, so I'll try to simplify and make it a little easier. I'm considering video blogging or something similar. Any suggestions? Comment below if you have one.