Bidding for Routes
 

Bidding for Airline Route Preferences. I've heard of it from as far back as Fate is the Hunter, but for the life of me I can't find out how the process works?

Depends on the airline and the system it uses, firstly you'll need a pecking order, aka seniority, usually governed by date of joining the company.

1. Airline allows bidding for "trips" (which is what I think you mean by route):

.. Trips to be bid for are published by the company. Pilots let the company know their preference (and there will be a closing date for bids, e.g. last day in Jan for March's work). Number 1 pilot on list gets his/her first choice, second pilots gets his/her first choice unless pilot 1 has already taken it..and so it cascades down. Rest of months work then filled in by pilots having a second preference or by the company just filling the gaps. Process repeats every month.

2. Airlines allows Bidding for a "Line" of work/monthly roster:

The airline puts all the trips that have to be flown in a month into a sequence of rosters that in totality contain all the month's trips for that fleet- that'll mean perhaps several hundred rosters or "lines" on a large fleet.
Those rosters are then published for the community to see and bid for - again there will be a closing date. Again the most senior pilot gets his/her first choice of roster, the number two gets/his her choice unless number one has got it, and so it goes. Again process is repeated every month.

There are many other ways of doing it and many airlines don't give the pilots any choice other than perhaps a preference for days off.

In any event most systems are much more complicated than I described above because you need to make provision for leave, training etc, but that's the basics - the full rules often occupy a book the size of a small paperback.

Hope that make sense.

Ok thanks. That sounds straightforward.