You don’t exactly ‘bid for a blindine’ – you get one by default if you don’t bid. Don’t worry, it will all make sense in good time, hoho!
Anyway, I’ve been on blindlines for quite a few months now so here are some stats. Talking to contemporaries, they're all getting pretty similar, so I think its fairly representative of what you can expect…
Majority of work (~75%) has been 3-day trips (2 nights away from base). The rest have been mostly 2-day trips (1 night away) and some 4-day trips (3 nights away). There are a few 5-dayers around but they’re pretty rare.
Since completing line training, have only flown
one day trip (thats at all, not each month). These are v popular and so are generally snapped up by the more senior folk.
Have been rostered 1-2 ‘Time Assignable’ days each month. This is like a standby except they will call you before 6pm the night before to say what you’re doing (most likely to be a daytrip so as not to disrupt the rest of your roster). If you haven't been called by 6pm you're not going to be and it effectively becomes a day off.
Average 11 nightstops/month away from home.
Average 13 days off/month. Generally in 2 or 4 day blocks.
Have made the return journey from home to work, on average, 6-7 times/month. Not too bad at all if you’ve got a nasty journey. If you do, your biggest headache (not including groundschool/sims!) will most likely be when you are on reserve. As a junior bod, you’ll probably get at least one reserve period each year. It lasts for 4 weeks. One week is off (5 days off at the beginning, 2 at the end). For the other three they’ll call you each night to tell you what you’re doing the next day – it could be five day trips in a row!
Hope this helps and well done - Contrary to what some seem to put about there are many, many worse places to be. Enjoy!
VS