Bidding for Reserve Just Got a Lot More Interesting.

Effective for the March 2013 bid, bidding reserve. This is going to be interesting!

Well, for flight attendants at least. Pilots will most likely receive the option soon, but the hang up is likely the long call reserve feature for pilots.

Flight attendants, bidding reserve, will be able to bid for days off finally. "Hard" reserve lines are a thing of the past. With that, the only PBS hard lines are in the DEN ASE pilot system.

I've uploaded the PDF that has the instructions and a Q & A. Let me know if you use it, I'd love to get more information on strategies and such.

Bidding Reserve 

How to Bid

It has been said that the number one contributor (besides seniority) to your happiness as a crew member at SkyWest is the efficient use of PBS. I completely agree with that. This blog has been less instructional than one might imagine, until now. When I first started blogging I originally intended this to be self serving. That changed when I realized the potential for the blog to assist anyone who wanted a little more help. Now that I have a few years worth of posts about how I bid I think it is time that I describe the basic mechanics of how one bids. For those of you who are new to bidding in SkyWest, this post is for you.

If you browse around this blog you will find that, primarily, I have shown how I bid and the results.  There are two main reasons for that. First of all the benefits of keeping a journal are invaluable and I encourage you to journal as well. Journalism is an easy way to remember past mistakes. The knowledge you gain by keeping a journal is truly priceless, especially when we bid only 12 times a year. Secondly, posting my bidding errors... blunders... may help you. I am not too proud to say that I goof up more than the average guy. Hopefully, you will find my mistakes to be helpful.

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.

SkedPlus+: The Magical, Monthly, Extravaganza

Imagine that your bid went sour or you forgot to bid (been there). Pretend that your line is really bad. Suppose that PBS gives you 11 days off with 70 hours and 38 hour overnights in the most obscure locations. Yeah, okay, don't imagine that. I want to submit a two-week notice just thinking about that nasty of a schedule. No, I do not have a bad line and I hope that neither do you, but in case you are so unlucky the title of our post says it all. This post is about the magical, monthly, 8:00pm extravaganza: Skedplus. Also, in June we received added incentives for flying. While I doubt that August will be as desperate as July was it is fitting to do a post about Skedplus. Skedplus will be live in a few hours, now.

I know several people that depend on Skedplus. Whether it is to pick up or drop trips, these people live and die (as the saying goes) by a luck-of-the-draw schedule "enhancement" computer program. Maybe you are one or maybe you know one, these folks all have one thing in common, they all know that the 24th is very important.

August '12 Bid Summary

Greetings,

Welcome to the end of Summer. Yeah, already. Well, at least August ends the summer break that most people associate with Summer. So, are you ready for August? No? Me either, but it is time to bid for August so here we go.

July was a tricky month to bid for. There was lots of flying (correction to my July post, July did have more flying than June in COS) and we had a holiday to put up with. August becomes easier to bid for mainly that reason. On the other hand, August may be more difficult. As you know, part-time lines are suspended for August. I have four or five flight attendants senior to me that are part time, so I will certainly be effected. I'm not too happy about that... and neither are the part timers, obviously. My seniority will be effected by the suspension of part time lines. Hopefully it won't be too bad, but I had better be cautious about it. There isn't any sense in bidding like I did last month, the month before, or any other way I have bid before. Sure, I'll keep the same style of bidding but that's about it.