We don't bid 'lines' anymore at CAL - although the FA's do. A line would be a pre-constructed pairing of trips for the month.

What the pilots now have is called PBS. Some hate it, some love it. PBS allows us to specify the parameters of our award group. Some want weekends off, others don't mind working weekends. We can define start/stop hours, equipment we want to work (900 for instance), equipment we want to avoid (300), airports we want to layover at (HNL), avoid (EWR), minimum pay per day (5 hours/day), etc. There are about 40 parameters we can define. The program runs for a few days and then awards us our schedule for the month......

800s and 900s are considered 'premium' pay for us 737 types and I can request 100% premium trips. Generally those might be hard to hold, depending on seniority, so I'm more likely to get awarded pairings that have 70% premium pay, and 30% on the old-gens. Guys junior to me are more likely to hold 50%/50% type pairings.....

My first bid group requests 100% premium, then I start relaxing the bid to 80%, 70%, etc. I actually like PBS. I'm able to define the things that work exactly for me, as opposed to trying to sort through 700 pre-constructed lines trying to ID the one that fits some of the things I want. I'm fairly generic on my requests, and normally get my first bid group choice every month - which I doubt I would get with the old system of lines.

DRW