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.

Goals

So, my goals for September are:

1. Weekends off

2. High paying three day trips (more credit, less days away from home)

3. Avoiding the trips I don't like (DL flying and ugly four-day trips)

4. Keeping my arm attached in flight.

Now, I highly doubt that we'll see our published awards as soon as we used to. The last few months we've seen them published early on the 20th or late on the 19th. That means we should see our bidding results on Tuesday next week barring all goes well and they don't try to re-run the bids after they catch an awarding error.

Thanks for reading. Fly well, Bid Carefully!