November 2012 Line Award & Reason Report

Line Award for Nov 2012

Reason Report

Who has two thumbs and has Thanksgiving off? This guy. I was awarded a lot of hours, too! I'm shocked that I got as many hours as I did. Now, most people would not be happy with that many hours. I, on the other hand, typically like to have 100 hours a month or more. It isn't every month that I want to fly 143 hours, but November is what I like to call my sacrifice fly.

Juniority, November 2012

In May of 2010 I did a post called Juniority. I know, Juniority isn't a word but I don't exactly know what else to call it. My idea was to make a visual comparison of the domiciles based off of the PBS bid info data. There is a lot of great information on the pbs info page and if you simply plug in the numbers you can get a very interesting picture of just what is going on, not only in your domicile but at SkyWest.

November 2012 is an incredible month for us. It is the month that we begin flying for our fifth major partner. As you can imagine that has thrown the flying in some domiciles for a loop. Fortunately, for me and COS, there isn't much effect when it comes to bidding, but after you look at the charts I have created from the PBS Bid Info, I think there will be something brought into the light.

November 2012

Welcome to the holidays and the 4th November bid I have covered,

Thanksgiving begins my favorite time of year, the holidays. For many of you it is the same. Tradition is a funny thing and my family has lots of tradition even if it is largely not recognized. Food is certainly one of the major parts of the holiday where everyone is allowed to be glutenous and merry and... thankful. I encourage you to be thankful as well. Even when tragedy strikes there are (often overlooked) blessings that we should recognize.

October '12

Greeting and welcome to the October bid. October marks the Fall season. While the temperatures drops and leafs change color it is easy to see that we are getting close to the Holidays. Summer is gone and Winter isn't too far now. From now until 2013, no bid will be easy. Keep a sharp eye out on the pairings and be savvy. Happy Halloween and the beginning for Holiday bidding.

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.