Written by Virginia Fritz, MEC Scheduling Vice Chairperson—PBS
We often hear: “Don’t they just have to click a button?”
Well, yes, they click the button. But there is a lot of happening after that.
When bids close at 9am PT on the 10th, Crew Planning pulls the most up-to-date information from Crew Access so NAVBLUE is working with the information needed to process the following month and build legal schedules. Once that’s complete, that’s when the AFA Joint PBS Committee gets to work and start processing our bid awards.
Pairing lines are processed first, in Seniority Order
NAVBLUE reads each Flight Attendant’s bid and works through the preferences that were actually submitted. As it processes an award, it is:
- Reading and evaluating the Flight Attendant’s bid and preferences.
- Looking at available pairings that fit those preferences and their legalities
- Looking at coverage needs and determining how much coverage is truly needed so flying isn’t unnecessarily left for coverage when it could be awarded through the seniority-based process.
- Using denial mode when a bid cannot be fully awarded, going back through the bid to determine what can be awarded.
- Using trip substitution to find another pairing within the Flight Attendant’s bid preferences when possible.
- Working through different combinations to find the best possible solution.
- Using SLG (Secondary Line Generation) if needed to complete a legal line if one cannot complete after all iterations have been exhausted.
The program is given millions of iterations (attempts) to work through different possibilities. It can try many combinations of pairings and preferences rather than simply taking the first solution it finds.
Why does one run take so long?
The size of the base makes a big difference. At a base of around 500 Flight Attendants, a pairing run might take approximately 3–10 minutes. At a base of around 2,700 Flight Attendants, a run can take approximately 2–12 hours.
And one run does not necessarily produce a legal or acceptable result. The line average may not be within the required range, or the minimum and maximum line values may not fall within the contractual windows. When that happens, our Joint AFA PBS Committee adjusts parameters and launches a new run.
For the October Bid Month, the first SEA PBS run took 11 hours and 5 minutes and produced only 436 of the 510 reserves needed for the operation. Even if the company wanted 74 fewer reserves, the run still wasn’t legal. The ALV was 77.4 TFP, with windows of 70 TFP Minimum, 80 TFP Threshold, and 90 TFP Maximum. Based on the ALV, the legal maximum was 87.4 TFP making the 90 TFP Maximum 2.6 TFP too high.
Then reserve awards are processed
Once an acceptable solution is determined for line holders pairings, reserve awards are processed. Reserve processing can also require multiple runs to find an acceptable and legal solution.
October was particularly challenging because of Junior Vacation and Junior Recurrent already pre-planned on the schedule, leaving the program less flexibility to work around those activities while finding legal line solutions while it already had less pairings to potentially award.
The number of runs and the amount of time each run takes don’t necessarily go together. The summer months generally had shorter run times, even though some months required more runs.
Bidding Timeline
Bid packets and bidding timelines is covered in §10.J of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. After bids close at 9am PT of the 10th of the month prior to the bid period, bid awards are required to be available to all Flight Attendants by 9am PT of the 13th of the month prior to the bid month, per §10.J.8.
We understand the importance of getting Flight Attendants their schedules and our AFA Joint PBS committee works very hard to make them available as soon as possible. For the bid months of 2026, bid awards have consistently been published well ahead of the deadline averaging 1 day, 18 hours and 37 minutes early. The earliest bid awards were published in 2026 was for the February 2026 bid month which was published on Sunday, January 11 at 10:30am – 1 day, 22 hours and 30 minutes ahead of the contractual deadline. The latest 2026 published to date was for June 2026 bid month which was published on Monday, May 11 around 5:40 pm – 1 day, 15 hours and 20 minutes earlier than the contractual deadline.
AFA vs. Management Goals
The company’s operational goals include estimated reserve needs, open time, and coverage of dates where flying is needed. From AFA’s perspective, we are looking at staying within contractual parameters, reducing coverage, reducing SLG, and maintaining the best possible options for Flight Attendants within the available flying.
So when we are waiting for PBS awards, there isn’t necessarily one calculation running once and then the awards are ready. There can be many runs, with the program working through different possibilities each time.
So, do they just click a button? Yes, that is one of the steps in the process.
Then NAVBLUE starts working through millions of possible combinations: reading bids, checking legality and coverage, using denial mode when needed, looking for trip substitutions within the Flight Attendant’s preferences, and working through different combinations.
And sometimes it has to do that more than once, many more times.
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