Fleet: Short Haul Domestic 737
Seniority: 106 of 129

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There comes a time where SmartPref senses that in order to build the remaining lines within the stipulated limits of utilization (i.e. line average), it must be very careful on how it distributes the available trips among the remaining line holders. That point will vary from month to month depending on how the bids create either an unacceptable concentration of trips or favorable distribution of trips in a certain part of the month. This is generally due to a high demand of the same days off (i.e. as in holiday months) or the criticality could stem from too much or too little open time being left for the remaining line holders to be within the stipulated limits. In the first instance too many senior bidders are requesting low values lines possibly to get additional time off, and in the second instance too many senior bidders are bidding high time lines for pay for the Christmas shopping of the previous month.

In the current example you are in the middle of the bidders under global constraints (it started at bidder 95), and there are only 23 line holders junior to you. Some days are clearly critical and trip choices are limited, yet many elements of your bid have been satisfied (2 day trips) and the most important days off have been honored.

It is important to understand that under global constraints a way (solution) has been found to dispose of all the open time within the utilization limits imposed on SmartPref. Meeting bidders' requests then becomes a matter of finding another feasible solution that retains the completeness it initially had and that best satisfies the bid at hand. There may be an extremely large number of feasible solutions out there (possibly millions), so finding the solution that best satisfies a bid can never claim to be the absolute best.

So, even though you see a trip that is available and currently assigned to a junior bidder, you may not get it when you bid for it. This is because if SmartPref does not find a way to rework the solution giving you that particular trip and still retain its original integrity of having all open time covered legally within the stipulated limits, it is constrained and thus you are cautioned of being under 'global constraints.' This is not because of SmartPref but because of the line awards senior to you and the utilization requirements placed on the build by company and contract limits.

If at that seniority level specific trips may be hard to obtain, you will find more success in being more general and less specific, although specific days off, if available at all, are generally obtainable. Of course as you become more junior (in a no open time solution) the ability to change your award becomes even harder to achieve as we will see in our next and last test case.