Pilots have consistent schedules early in their career. Flight instructors set their own schedules. Small cargo operators don’t have this same flexibility, but they typically have stable schedules where they will work the same hours on the same days each week. Airlines throw the schedules into a mess though.

How It All Works

Crew planners are the people in an airline responsible for setting up trip schedules and for combining those schedules into a line for pilots to bid on. Crew Planners create what are known as pairings from information sent down to them from the magic eight-ball readers in the marketing department. The marketing schedules vary between seasons as airplanes are re-allocated for specific markets. For example, more people fly to Alaska in the summer than do in the winter. Schedules are adjusted to pull airplanes from areas with reduced demand in the summer and re-allocate them to areas that get busy, such as Alaska.

Airline pilot schedules are broken up into bid periods, with the periods typically aligning with months so that there is 12 periods in a year. Some airlines like to get cute though and use bid periods not based on monthly schedules. There are two primary ways these schedules are set and then bid on.

In a traditional bid system crew planners create a set schedule. They fill out the bid period with trips and the complete schedule is then known as a bid line. All the bid lines for a specific position within a base (i.e. first officers in the B737 in Seattle) are then grouped for the pilots in that base to bid on. When a pilot bids they order their preferences. Then, when the schedules are assigned the computer uses its auto-magic to award schedules in order of seniority. The senior most person is awarded their first choice with each following person awarded their first choice that is not yet taken.

Within a base there isn’t a line available for each person. There will also be reserve schedules and coverage schedules to bid on. With a reserve schedule pilots are available during times set by that schedule to be at the beckon-call of crew scheduling. The reserves are used if another pilot calls in sick or for non-scheduled operations that pop up. When a pilot is on a reserve schedule they can only be contacted during specific times as specified on their schedule. When contacted, the time a pilot has to get to the airport depends on the type of reserve. With short-notice reserve, pilots have to hang out at the airport and be available for a flight very soon after being called. With other types of reserve pilots have enough time to get to the airport from home (if they live in base). These callouts range from 1 hour to 24 hours.

Coverage lines are built from the left-over’s. Often, there are reserve periods and trips that are orphaned and aren’t able to be put on a specific line. A composite line is pieced together using these orphaned pieces to make a complete schedule. With my employer coverage lines are a tricky lot as they can range from some of the best schedules available to poop-flinging bad. We can expect a good coverage schedule if we are one of the senior most people awarded coverage where as the junior people on coverage have to settle for a bid of poop flinging.

Bidding Systems

The traditional bidding system is the first standard in the industry. However, it does has some inefficiencies. Lines cannot be tailored to pilot’s preferences, so it is frequent after lines are awarded for pilots to try adjusting their schedules. These schedule adjustments require work, after the fact, for the airline’s crewing staff. With the traditional system there ends up being many un-assigned trips (stuff that needs to be flown but isn’t on anyone’s schedule) and reserve staffing then has to be kept at a higher level to cover the operation.

The preferential bidding system (PBS) is the newer system in airline scheduling and helps with some of the inefficiencies found in the traditional system. With preferential bidding crew planners still use auto-magic to construct the trips, but they don’t assemble bid lines. Rather, pilots enter preferences into the PBS software and the computer then constructs the schedules using a combination of seniority and each pilot’s preferences. The PBS software can accept many preferences such as days of the week to work, specific days off, cities a pilot likes to fly through or overnight in, and specific people a pilot wants to avoid working with. Pilots can specify if they want to have all reserve or some reserve on their line, and they can specify the type of schedule within a trip they prefer such as morning or evening flying.

PBS leaves fewer un-assigned trips in open time and thus requires fewer reserve pilots. By incorporating preferences, pilots don’t need to adjust their schedules as much. PBS reduces the strain on reserves from vacation. With the traditional system, when a pilot has vacation the vacation period just knocks trips off their schedule and into open time (not assigned). With PBS, trips are not scheduled during vacation periods from the start.

The preferential bidding system isn’t all peaches and cream though. Often, the junior pilots still get hosed on their schedules. Some PBS software tries to avoid this by making the complex calculations even more confusing; but this software isn’t used everywhere and it still does give the junior people less desirable schedules. The PBS system is a garbage in – garbage out type of deal. If an airline has poor schedules PBS will not magically make them better. The powers that be can also specify parameters that will make the schedules less than what pilots hope for. The efficiency of the system means fewer pilots are needed at an airline so there are fewer pilot jobs.

Vacations

Much to airline managers dismay, employees need vacations to stay sane, and pilots are no exception. Vacation time is yet another added complexity to a bewildering system. As with most jobs that have benefits, pilots accrue vacation time into a bank that can be later deducted from for sanity time. There are two ways pilots typically get vacations.

The first method for vacation is seniority driven. Each year vacation time periods, typically a week at a time, are made available for bid. For example, the week Christmas would fall in would have a set number of slots available for each pilot position. The senior people in the position bidding for the week would get it until there are no more slots available. In this example, Christmas is difficult to get off until pilots have some seniority. Not every week has equal slots open as marketing demands change through the year and fewer slots are available during airline busy times. Unfortunately, the busy times coincide with typical vacation times such as the winter holiday season and the summer vacation season.

The other method for using vacation time is in schedule adjustments. Pilots often adjust their schedule as able to fit their personal lives and use vacation to cover this. This is much less reliable as it is dependant on the crew planners/schedulers who will only allow it if reserve coverage stays above minimum levels after the requested stuff is dropped. Some airlines make it a habit of continually short staffing positions. With these airlines there is rarely an opportunity to drop legs or trips.

Getting Sick

Pilots accrue sick time in their paid days off bank. When a pilot is sick they call crew scheduling and are removed from the trip. The time is then deducted from their sick bank to cover missed flying.

Pilots can call before beginning a trip or if they get sick during a trip. If it is during a trip, most employers will fly the pilot positive-space as a passenger back to the city in which they are based. If a pilot is too sick to fly home, they are allowed to stay in the hotel until well enough to travel home. Pilots sometimes try to ‘gut it out’ and fly to their base before calling in sick as it can delay or cancel flights if they call where reserves are not available.

Airline managers are weary of sick calls on holidays or just before or after a pilot’s vacation period. They sometimes require doctors notes for sick calls during these suspicious times. Less scrupulous airlines require doctors notes for every sick call.