Originally Posted by
White Van Driver
It might be a good idea here to just give potential joiners a quick rundown of our rostering system, JSS.
Each month the company lists all the trips for a full month. P777 its normally around 1500 or so trips to be shared among the 600ish copilots on the fleet. We then have a few days to put together our bids. This is currently happening now, for March rosters.
You can make up to 15 "bid groups".
In each bid group you have 7 buckets to fill with the trips, using a sequence of commands. Ultimately you can differentiate between the trips however you like... Mondays, report after 11.45am, Caribbean, BA283 on Wednesday, long layovers in Mauritius, anything you like right down to a certain flight number on a certain date.
The 7 buckets range from what JSS will try to give you lots of if it can, down to what it will try to avoid giving you, if it can. You can leave any trips you really dont want outside by not putting them in any bucket at all, and JSS won't even look at those trips for you.
But if it doesn't have enough work to build you a roster, that Bid Group will fail and it'll move onto the next Bid Group.
After it has made a roster for everyone, if it has too many leftover trips, JSS will open up rosters from the bottom up to squeeze more trips onto your month. It'll still try to give you what you've asked for but really all bets are off. This is called Global Constraints and has recently gone all the way to the top of the list causing much frustration.
On a practical level, i find as junior P777 i can't get any particular day off im after, but if i give it 20 destinations i like, it might give me one or two from that list. The rest will be from the lower buckets.
For March, I've tried to get a certain Wed/Thu off for childcare. Then I've tried to get the following weekend off. Then ive tried to avoid JKF EWR ORD. Then I've listed 23 places I like in the top 3 buckets (of approx 45 destinations on the fleet). I'll update here the result if anyone's interested.
Apologies if this post is seen as a bit off piste. But bidding and rostering is such a big part of life at BA I think it probably warrants a discussion...
This is great information thanks. As someone who is joining the 777 in the next couple of months and will be commuting I have a few questions.
1. There is a CAP each month of certain hours you need to fly, is it Duty or Flight duty and how much is it? Does it change month to month? What happens when you dont hit the CAP or exceed it? Annual leave months how does it work?
2. As a commuter what are the limitations other than obviously EASA/UK CAA regulations on back to back trips which may give extended time at home? ie. 3 day trip, min rest, 3 day trip, 4-6 days off (is that accurate?)
3. Random question that will probably be answered by a phone call from someone at BA in the next month, which hotel to stay at for the training? Best bus to get there? I know there are loads but not all link to training centre.
4. Lots of new pilots are joining now, what does that look like for trips? Is there more capacity for more routes or slots in LHR or is it purely to resource the routes right now that arent covered?
Thanks for anyone with information. DM me if not comfortable with sharing info.