Every month Flight Attendants bid for their next months schedule. Our bid packets come out around the 15th of the month and our bids “close” on the 21st. In between that time we go through our bid packet and select in order of preference what we would like to have as a schedule, also known as a “line.” Lines are built anywhere from 21 days off a month down to 10 days off a month, from one day trips to four days. Lines are then “awarded” in seniority order. It is a pretty exhausting process, one I still haven’t figured out a good system for. You would think that since my husband only works eight days a month that I would have an easy enough time working around his schedule but his schedule rotates and is not the same two days every week which actually makes it difficult. We usually end up with three or four days that interfere with each other, but it’s something I resolve by “advertising” those trips to other FAs or personal dropping (scheduling will take the trips back, coverage permitting). That’s an example of the flexibility I’m always talking about, so it usually works out.

We also have a great thing called job sharing, which is what I have been doing with my girlfriend the last couple of months. We bid one schedule and the line award gos to the senior FA….which happens to be my friend, by one number…..and we split the schedule in half any way we like. This has worked out great but next month she wants to fly a full schedule, which left me to have to bid. Like I said, I don’t have a great system and I hate going through that giant bid packet so I took the lazy way out which is to bid for a vacation relief line. I like vacation lines for a couple of reasons:

1. They’re kind of a gamble, and I’m usually lucky
2. I only have to bid about 20 lines vs. hundreds of choices
3. and their senior FAs schedules

I’ll explain, vacation lines are a compilation of four FAs schedules. When a FA has a week of vacation, the trip or trips they would have flown that week become part of the vacation line. This is done four times equalling four weeks of vacation with four different FAs. The risky part is not knowing what they might bid. They may be senior and still like four day trips, in which case I wouldn’t be so lucky since I don’t care for four days. But, I did get lucky, very lucky. We switched to a new bidding system this month, no big deal just a new bid screen. Well, I only bid about 10 lines, all vacation lines and I didn’t get any of my choices! When this happens the computer automatically assigns you the next line in the bid packet that your seniority holds. I was assigned a line that I wasn’t to happy with but didn’t think much of it, until I got a call today. A call from my inflight department, saying that there was a glitch in the new bidding system and that I should have held my first choice. Me and about five others. Hmmm, they obviously can’t go and take that line away from the person who did get it. What can they do? They decided to let me wipe my line clean and go into the computer and pick up from our “open time.” Open time is extra trips they have in the system which are available to everyone but not until April 28th….I get to go in on April 27th and “build” my line any way I like! There are a lot of very senior trips available. Did I mention I can work any days I want and have any days off I want? Did I mention how lucky I am…very…..very lucky: )