Fleet: Short Haul Domestic 737
Seniority: 70 of 129

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Still plenty in the pot available with many possibilities. There are all sorts of options available to you, and now as an experienced SmartPref bidder, you can apply your bidding skill to get the type of schedule you would like. True, more than half the trips are gone, and probably the more senior trips are no longer available, but the point is what you are seeing now is the reality as it was after the last build that was probably made within the last 1-2 hrs. Therein lays the true power of SmartPref in giving you a realistic picture of what you can expect at your seniority.

A very popular and an often senior bid is the 'commuter' line. You want to work as few work blocks as possible and have the personal proper time to commute at each end of the work block to get to work and back home on the same day. In general, for domestic carriers you will need three work periods, but for international and especially 3 pilot operations you can have 2 and sometimes only 1 work block.

In this domestic environment, because of FAR limitations, the best you can expect is three work periods. The 'Commute' option is found in the Line Preferences tab and you should consider using the minimum off days between work periods if you wish to separate the work periods as well. Then turn to the Trip Preferences tab, and the first order of business is to enter your depart and return time windows that will specify the acceptable times for what you think is necessary to go back and forth to work (times refer to blk. departure and blk. return). The commute option will automatically favor the larger trips (in terms of credit) that satisfy both commute depart and return times, followed by trips that satisfy either the depart or return side of the commute window.

The line builder will first attempt to find three large trips that would satisfy stipulated min/max line values, and if cannot, it will resort to combining smaller trips together in one work period that satisfies the commute window. In our example, at the seniority level you are at, probably the most lucrative 4/5 day operations are no longer available, so in order to meet your desired credit window, the builder had to add a one day turn in front of a four day trip. The departure of that one day trip however does satisfy you depart time criteria. If you remove the imposed credit preference you will see that the trip is no longer needed, but of course your new line is less credit but that is your choice (click on the line preference window, remove the credit option in effect and then click on REBUILD).