Fleet: Short Haul Domestic 737
Seniority: 2 of 129

Launch Scenario »
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You are very senior, only the choices of number 1 can affect you; however there is no need to call him, you can bid very specifically and accurately to get exactly what you want without having to know exactly what number 1 bid and this applies to all bidders of all seniority levels. Obviously as you get more junior, the number of trips and days off available to choose from becomes more restricted, but with SmartPref and the continuous updating of your bid, taking in account the bids of senior crew members, you know exactly where you stand at all times.

In order to successfully bid in SmartPref you must have plan, a bidding strategy, and decide what most is important and what you want the SmartPref builder to protect the most. Importance levels allow you to do this. You can bid very specifically, by specific pairing number and operation date, but you should always bear in mind that if that choice becomes unavailable what then?

SmartPref is a continuously updated system, not only by the bids it gathers, but by changes that may occur in the schedule or in your personal status (inbound history for carry in and FAR limitations). It is of great value to management to know it can modify the planned pairings due to last minute changes, even while the bidding is going on, and to know that these changes will be reflected in the latest build cycle. For crew members, their bid will be automatically adjusted to reflect the changes by selecting other choices and reworking their line accordingly, one more reason to have multiple choices available. SmartPref has a built in notification system to contact crew members via email and advise them of any significant changes in their bid (if they so wish).

So even at this very high level of seniority we are going to make a bid that embodies the principles of sound bidding techniques that should be applied at any level of seniority. The basic four tenants of SmartPref bidding strategies are:

1. What is more important on given day(s); to be off or to be at work or neither is significant.
2. When it comes to work, what kind of trip do I want to fly, think in terms of characteristics not in terms of specific trips numbers; similarly there are trips characteristics that you may wish to avoid?
3. Have I given enough redundancy or alternative choices to my trip selection to insure satisfaction even when the availability of certain trips may change?
4. Are there certain features that I want my line to have that are not reflected by individual trip choices but by overall constraints? Those are selected from the line preference menu.

When first starting to bid, you should have the help windows on how to bid as icons on your screen so that you can quickly refer to them and then, as your first bid you should clear the entire bid as it stands and attempt to reenter the bid as you see it below:

In the above example, the days off are of highest importance, if certain days are not as important define them at the lower importance levels. Our bidder had a very specific requirement, he wanted to be in Denver on the 27th and the best trip for that is trip 1229, but following our principles, he has also entered as a second choice "layover at DEN on the 27th", the generic characteristic of trip 1229.

Next he addresses the remainder of the month using the best and safest technique: 'feature defined selection,' namely in his case "I definitely do not want trips with attribute N (night flying) and I hate layovers at PDX." So he used the avoid command to do exactly that and then for the desired trips he said:

"I want 4 day trips that depart after 12:00 and return before 17:00, bring at least 20hrs of credit each, with no more that 1 equipment change in a duty period and no ground time between flights greater than 2hrs"

(By clicking on 'more' and the end of the BID line the entire bid is shown)

In the 'BID TRIPS' window you will notice that trip 1229 and the layover in DEN request appears first because they were bid first and are entirely independent of other requests that follow. SmartPref, unlike many other PBSs, does not have a cumulative rating where every time a trip matches a quality requested by the bidder it gets a higher 'value' but works on an additive form of bidding where a bid is the sum of different independent criteria that need not to be consistent with another and do not affect one another. The inherent 'value' of the trip is its placement in the string of choices the bidder has made.

Thus to duplicate the bid be sure to follow the following steps:

1. Define the periods of days off in the order shown in the example
2. Bid trip 1229 (add to bid)
3. Bid layover DEN on the 27th (add to bid)
4. Avoid attribute N (add to bid)
5. Avoid layovers at PDX (add to bid)
6. Enter the selection described above, it will take 6 different criteria (4 day trips + departure >= 12:00 etc...), all part as one trip request, then add to bid, and you should have the result as shown above.

Okay now that you have duplicated the results, let's use some of the powerful editing features of SmartPref. You will notice that trip 1346 returns at 10:51 before the 12:00 you specified as the start time of the day off. Perhaps you made a mistake or later decide you wish to start the day off at 0:00. If you now wish to change that day off period this is what you do:

1. Click on the day off priority number; select the delete option to remove the period.
2. Redefine the day off period as you would now like it
3. Click on 'Rebuild' to cause a new line to be built with your same trip and other preferences but with the new day off period in place. The steps are illustrated below:

Another feature you may wish to use in defining your line makeup is the line preferences panel. The items here are not reflected in trips themselves but to give rules on how to combine them. Duty periods or work blocks that may consist of many trips (a duty period in that sense is understood as s series of workdays unbroken by a day off) may be limited or extended. Similarly, off periods can be imposed without being specific about which day off it should. Most bidders hate having a single day off between duty periods and would check the no single day off box. For more junior bidders, it may be preferable to use a MIN OFF 3 setting so as to allow the builder more flexibility in finding the trips that you want. Line preferences are powerful and should be used sparingly.

Note the REBUILD button as illustrated in the days off example above can also be used to evaluated and consider the consequence of different line preferences alternative quickly. The bidder should be very careful in choosing line preferences as they define barriers within which the other preferences must be able to fit.

In summary your bid is completed by taking the following actions:

1. Define the days off that matter to you
2. Choose the line preferences that are a MUST have
3. Make a series of trip selection (steps 1-2-3 illustrated below) understanding that the first selection is more important than the second. Generally, a bid consists of steps 1-2 3 repeated many times, starting with very specific requests with few trips selected at a time (as the DEN request in our example), followed by more general selection criteria to insure that a sufficient pool of trips is available to line builder.

You should then practice making all sorts of different bids at this seniority level. Because trip availability is not an issue, you have plenty of choices to satisfy the various criteria selection you choose and for you to see how the line builder handles these choices. Use the SmartPref powerful criteria selection capabilities to understand what is available, what you can ask for, how many such choices there are, etc.