How is a trip selection made?

With SmartPref™'s graphic user interface trip selection is made using drop-down menus, checkboxes and buttons. It's easy to build a complex bid consisting of a number of very specific criteria. Using your mouse you might select all one day trips. 180 trips are displayed. you then add to the selection criteria that you want trips that depart after 8am. 125 trips are now selected. You add to the selection criteria that you want trips that return before 7pm. 78 trips are now selected. Finally you add to the selection criteria that want no more than 4 legs in the duty period. Now 54 trips that meet all four requirements are displayed. In SmartPref™ you can build your bid in the stepwise manner described above to gauge the trip availability as the criteria is narrowed. This gives you up-to-the-minute visibility. Or you can submit the entire request in one simple command.

How many different trip selection can I make?

SmartPref™'s logic uses preference recognition based on the order of your choices. You can make as many selections as you want until you have exhausted all available trips. The important thing to remember is that the selections within a level of importance are ordered in the sequence you submitted them: trips in the first selection are preferable to trips in the second selection, etc.

Why does the bidding interface use 4 calendar lines?

There are 3 horizontal calendar lines marked relative importance 1, 2 and 3 and a 4th calendar line marked 'required' is to indicate to the crewmember the relative importance of a day off versus a trip. This addresses one of the problems we have overcome in SmartPref™' which we have seen in our years of experience. Crewmembers sometimes confuse the priority of a day off versus a trip. In SmartPref™, if a day off is deemed most important, it is entered in the top line of the calendar (Level 1). Trips bid would then be bid with an importance level of 2 and would appear in the second calendar line (Level 2), visually distinct for the days off. If trips were bid at Level 1, they would appear on the same line as the days off, visually indicating the same importance as days off. In that case the implication is that; of the trips selected, those that do not conflict with days off will be considered first, as they satisfy both demands, but if needed the trips selected that did conflict with days off would be considered.

If the crewmember had put a day off period on the 3rd line, (Level 3), and bid for specific trips during that same period at priority/relative importance 2, then the system knows that the specified trips are more important than the day off period. However, if those specific trips are not available, the crewmember wants the days off instead. You have control of the Preference of days off vs. trips!

All trips on the top three lines are shown in green because the crewmember requested them. The required line (the 4th or bottom line) shows trips which the crewmember either didn't ask for, (shown in black), or were forcibly assigned by the system because of mandatory conditions. In addition, trips on this line will be shown in red if they conflict with a requested time off period.

This breakout is very helpful in bidding because when the crewmember sees trips on this line that are black, he knows he should expand his bid and if the trips are in red, he should rethink his bid strategy.

What are line options and how do they work?

Line options are used to define overall constraints that are no trip dependent such as maximum line, minimum line, and commuter line, minimum-off period, maximum on duty. These are line characteristics independent of trip characteristics. SmartPref™ will do every thing it can to abide by the selected line options even if it means using an undesired trip to maintain the integrity of the line. In that sense line options are considered most important, more important than days off, more important than trips bid. Of course in its attempt to satisfy the bid, SmartPref™ will use trips that were bid and respect days off as much as possible.

Can trip selection menus and line options be changed?

Yes, obviously not all airlines or even different fleets within an airline have the same characteristics and menu items and line options can readily be changed. In certain instance program modification may be required and would be evaluated prior to implementation as part of the engineering study. The majority of the time, it will consist of removal of items that do not apply.

What are stand-by bids?

The standby bid is the bid that would be used if the crewmember did not bid for some reason in the current bid window. The crewmember's standby bid is typically one that the crewmember has created which describes in general terms their preferences, i.e. weekends off and one day trips departing between 8 and 10am.

How realistic are the bid results in the very beginning?

To avoid unrealistic bidding results in the very beginning, SmartPref™ builds an initial solution based on everyone's standby bid and this initial solution is online when the bidding window opens. This prevents a junior crewmember who may be the first person to bid to see trips and days off that are typically not available to him at his seniority.

As more and more bidders interact with the system, the bidders' standby bids are replaced with more current and accurate preferences. Further when the crewmember logs in, the system will advise the crewmember how many and what percentage of crewmembers senior to him have bid.

What happens when the requested days-off period is not available?

When a days-off period is defined, the crewmember begins with the most important day and ends of the least important day. If the requested time off period was from the 5th at 1300 to the 9th at 11am, the system, if it had to, would "take away" time beginning at 1100 on the 9th and work backwards to the initial time period until a legal line of time could be built.

What happens when the requested trip is not available?

Trips selection can be very specific, down to a unique operation, and many bidders will choose that method of selection. However if the trip selection is very specific, with few alternate choices, non availability could cause other trips that were not bid for to be included in the line as the builder must return a line within the min/max utilization window. It is therefore good practice to enlarge the trip selection with a larger pool of trips that will be used by the builder should it need to do so.

May a crewmember enter conflicting bids?

Yes, very often trip selection includes a set of trips that conflict with each other and the bidder should not be concerned, as the builder will considered in order of preference and deal automatically with the legalities. By the same token, trips selected by generic demand (e.g., 2 day trips with at least 12 hr of credit time) may conflict with days off specified, depending on the relative level of importance associated with the request (less important, more important than days off); they are either wanted or not wanted.

What does ordinal line, combinatorial line and backup line mean?

Assume an available trip selection a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h in order of preference, the ordinal line will be constructed as follows: "a" being most wanted is selected first, then "b". If "b" is not acceptable due to a legality, then c is considered and so on and the ordinal line may end up consisting of the selection a,b,f,h.

The combinatorial line is the result of trying alternate choices, not necessarily in the order specified, to try to complete a line with trips with an overall higher selection rating. For example, if trip "b" had not been given but trip "c" instead, in which case trips "d" and "e" would be acceptable so as to make the line a,c,d,e that would be considered a 'better line' because it was satisfied by overall higher rated trips. Often thousands of combinatorial lines exist and analyzed to improve bid satisfaction.

The backup line is arrived at by assuming that all of the ordinal selection of trips are no longer available and would typically be c,d,e. However the line would be incomplete and the builder would have to fetch another trip, out of the selection list, to complete the line. We would recommend that the bid be enlarged to include more choices

The backup line should be viewed as the worst case scenario and the ensemble ordinal, combinatorial, backup lines as what we call the 'window of opportunity'.

What kind of training is available?

Our system design goal is for no training to be required. Until then, we want the crewmember interaction with SmartPref™ to be equal to, or better, than your normal interactive experience with other web sites - quick, intuitive and with no confusion as to what is required of the user. As an option to our train-the-trainer training (say that ten times quickly), we would work with the airline and the crewmembers to design and develop both a training video that will be available to the crewmembers on the web and a computer-based training syllabus.