Where you stand
Your position against the Regular Line Limit decides whether a regular line or reserve is the working part of the bid.
PBS shows a different number?
Seniority moves every month. Set the number PBS shows on its Info screen; it applies to this bid month only.
Do you commute??
Grades every pairing on whether you can get to it and home, and drives the commutable-time limits on step 4 and the Commute tool.
from
Bid group structure?
PBS processes bid groups top-down. The structure follows your seniority; choose another if you know better.
Build with AI
Say what you want out of this month in plain English. It is read against your package and your standing, then it fills in Days off, Flying, Credit and Reserve for you to check, and groups the trips you asked about so you can pick through them later. Optional: every step works without it.
Days off
Tap the days you need off and say how firm they are. Each set becomes a Prefer Off line PBS reads left to right.
Which days do you need off??
Consecutive days become a Dates Range; scattered days a Dates List. Build several sets with different firmness; set 1 is the one PBS protects hardest.
Any weekly pattern?
Prefer Off Weekends or specific weekdays, every week of the month. Added as lines of their own.
The flying you want and the flying you avoid
Avoid Pairings removes pairings from the pool; Award Pairings asks for what you want, most specific first.
What must your line avoid??
Each limit is honored or denied whole. The count is what it removes from the pool.
What flying do you want, in order??
The first ask is filled first. A specific pairing goes in as a Pairing Number line with Limit 1: target it on Trips.
Pool after your answers?
Credit and conditions
Set Condition lines shape the whole line. Waive opens flying the contract keeps off it. Instruction jumps between groups.
How much flying??
A credit window condition tells PBS which end of the line construction window to build at.
Anything else PBS offers??
Minimum Base Layover, Pattern, Consecutive Days Off In A Row, vacation conditions, the three Waivers, Clear Schedule and Start Next Bid Group, Forget Line, or a custom line typed exactly as PBS prints it.
If no line: the Reserve Bid Group
Rank the days you need off; your X-days are placed from the top of the list.
Which days off, in priority order??
Review the bid
Every line, numbered as PBS numbers it, with the check PBS runs when you submit. Edit any line in place; drag or use the arrows to reorder.
Your bid groups?
Enter it in PBS
WidgetBid never signs in and never submits. You press Submit in PBS.
1. Save the bid
A saved snapshot is what Bid Transfer reads and what Historic Bids keeps.
3. Or type it in from the sheet
Bids, Current, Add Bid Group, Pairing Bid Group, Apply; then each line through the Bid Preference Editor in this order.
1Your bid package.
Everything starts from the September package the crew portal publishes: the month, your category, and the parameters PBS prints on its cover. Upload your own package when a new month opens. Tap any ? for help.
1BID MONTH AND CATEGORY?
Category & base, from your seniority record:
—
?
2ARE YOU A COMMUTER??
From → base LAX · two-flight rule
Any US domestic airport — type the 3-letter code or city name.
3YOUR SENIORITY?
Real standing loads from the seniority list. Slide only to explore.
4PRIORITIES — RANK THEM?
5DAYS YOU MUST HAVE OFF — SEP?
Tap dates to lock off. They become Prefer Off lines in your bid (the Bid Builder shows exactly how).
6OR JUST DESCRIBE IT?
Type your ideal month in plain English — it becomes bid chips you can review, and everything lands in the Bid Builder.
open Bid Builder →
On reserve? Your day-off bidding — calendar, golden ⭐ days, blocks and conditions — lives in 4 · Bid Builder → Reserve Bid Group, right where you can watch the PBS lines build from it.
Then: 2 · Trips (shop & target) → 3 · Trip Groups → 4 · Bid Builder (your PBS bid, line by line) → enter it in PBS, or let Bid Transfer type it in. The numbered tabs across the top move you between these; your setup here stays put.
2
Shop your trips
sort & filter the real September pairings · tap a row for full detail · ☆ star the keepers, ★ target the must-haves next: Trip Groups → ⚙ Starting parameters — hide
LIST?
By trip
By date
SORT?
Best Match
Max Days Off
Credit / Day
Maximize Pay?
Commute
Rig
Fewest legs?
Deadheads?
or ⌘/Ctrl·click · Shift·click range · drag across rows
FILTER?
Len?
1D2D3D4D5D
✓ Within reach?
Commutable?
⚡ Optimal commute?
⌂ Home same-day?
No red-eyes
★ Favorites (0)?
FEAS SHOWS?
Last award
Historic avg
DATE RANGE?
→
SHOW
Any part in range
Whole trip in range
IDEAL MONTH — DAYS?
Mirrors the day strip over the trips: tap a day once to hunt trips flying it, twice to demand it off, again to clear. Tap the chips here the same way.
SEPTEMBER — TAP DAYS TO BUILD YOUR IDEAL MONTH?
Whole trip in my days
Any part in my days
tap once fly that day · twice day off · again clears
★ 0 favorites shortlisted sort them, then target the keepers
No trips selected — tap ☐ in the first column, or the header's select all.
Add 0 selected trips to
STARTING PARAMETERS?
YOUR SENIORITY?
Home — → LAX
PRIORITIES — RANK?
COMMUTE PROFILE
Home — → Base LAX
Policy: two-flight rule?
Sample schedule (live feed pending)
Policy: two-flight rule?
Sample schedule (live feed pending)
CALENDAR — SEP?
Tap dates to lock off. Open any trip and its days appear here.
3
Trip groups
?then: 7 · Review the bid → every trip you've tagged, in one place — build named groups (⌘/Ctrl-click trips on the Trips page), order them your way, then insert a group into your bid★ Favorites are your shortlist — they don't bid. ◎ Targets are what your bid actually asks for, in rank order. Click a column to sort; click a trip to expand its full detail and commute plan right here (click again to close); tap ⇆ on two trips for a side-by-side; use the buttons to promote or drop.
4
Build your bid
left: what you want (top = strongest) · right: the compiled PBS layers, updating live · finish with Export bid to PDF (an exact PBS-style copy) or Copy entire bid sheet → key into PBS then: Commute →INPUTS — SET IT, THEN PUSH IT TO THE ACTIVE BID GROUP →
Each tile below is one kind of PBS ask. Your work from steps 1 to 6 and the Trips page lands here automatically. Set a tile, then push it — its lines appear in the active bid group on the right (blue outline, exactly like the active group in PBS). Re-pushing a tile updates its own lines in place; it never duplicates.
PREFER OFF — DAYS OFF?
Tap dates into the selected set. Build several sets with different rules — each set becomes its own Prefer Off line(s), ranked top-down in the order shown (PBS fights hardest for set 1).
?
SET CONDITION — CREDIT WINDOW?
AWARD PAIRINGS — RANKED PREFERENCES?
AVOID PAIRINGS — HARD LIMITS?
AWARD PAIRINGS — TARGETED TRIPS?
pick trips on the Trips page → (★ Target) · ‹ › ranks · 📌 pins departures
Bid them as
?
TRIP GROUPS?
?
＋ NEW INPUT TILE — THE FULL PBS CATALOG?
Everything else PBS can ask that isn't a quick tile above — all 45 Award/Avoid properties, every Set Condition, Waive, and Instruction. Hover any option for what it does; click to add it as its own input tile with fillable parameters, then push it like any other tile.
OR JUST DESCRIBE IT?
Parses plain English into the tiles above — nothing touches your bid groups until you push. Copilot's applied chips land in the tiles the same way.
DREAM MONTH — ALL OR NOTHING?
What this does: creates BID GROUP 1 from your ranked targets, closed by Clear Schedule and Start Next Bid Group. PBS first tries to build your entire month from only those trips — a complete legal line or nothing. If it can't, the gate wipes the group and PBS falls to your next group, where the same targets are re-asked one by one, so a near-miss still keeps the gettable ones. Asking costs nothing.
RESERVE — A SEPARATE KIND OF INPUT?
Everything below shapes your Reserve Bid Group — the safety net PBS uses only if it can't complete a line from the groups above. It compiles to its own pinned output on the right.
YOUR BID — PBS BID GROUPS, TOP-DOWN
YOUR BID GROUPS?
The blue-outlined group is active — pushes land there, and every line stays editable in place. Drag a group header (or use ↑↓) to reorder; a sanity check runs on every change. Click a header to activate + expand it; use the ❯ chevron on any header (or ◎ Focus) to tuck groups away.
?
LIVE PBS PREVIEW — updates with every edit, exactly as your bid will look in PBS
PBS EMULATOR — MOCK AWARD?
Walks your bid groups the way the PBS Scheduler builds a line — negatives thin the pool, Award lines place trips with a legality check on every placement (overlaps · 12:00 between rotations · rolling 31h/168h rest · 99h/672h block, the buffered FAR-117 numbers PBS actually uses), gates and fall-throughs honored, line filled to your credit window. An estimate you can act on, not the award.
If every trip were open
At my seniority · 200 runs
Build your groups above, then ▶ Run. You'll get the projected line on a calendar, what each line awarded or skipped (in PBS Reasons language), every legality flag, and — in seniority mode — how often each of your picks actually landed.
HOW TO ENTER THIS IN PBS
5
Commute plan
every trip you hold or want, as a row — tap one for the flights each way, pick the ones you'll ride, and build the plan below ← back to the bid| REPORT | TRIP | DAYS | COMMUTE IN | RELEASE | COMMUTE OUT | WAIT? | GRADE | PLAN? |
|---|
| DATE | TRIP | DIR | FLIGHT | ROUTE | DEP→ARR | MARGIN? | OT | JS BOOKED? | NONREV LISTED? |
|---|
SENIORITY PROGRESSION — LAX 73N B?
Your category percentile over time (lower = more senior). Built from real retirement dates, plus your assumptions for hiring and upgrades. Reserve line and the "hold weekends" band come from the award data.
ASSUMPTIONS?
Upgrades = pilots ahead of you leaving the category for Captain or another fleet/base. In-category retirements alone barely move a junior FO (only 1 senior ahead of you retires within 5 years), so these two levers do the work.
RUMORED FUTURE CLASS?
Add a rumored hiring class into your category (numbers below you = your percentile improves). Adjust as rumors firm up.
HISTORIC BIDS
Every bid you save (💾 Save snapshot) is archived here by month — signed-in bids sync to your account; demo bids live on this device. Load any of them back into the builder as your starting point.
PERFORMANCE — AWARD DATA
What your category actually awarded, and (as your account accumulates award history) how your own bids performed against it.
📄 BUILD YOUR CATEGORY'S AWARD HISTORY?
Each month your airline publishes your category's award composite — who held a line, who landed reserve, and at what seniority. Upload yours and the analysis below unlocks for everyone in your category: single-month deep dives, aggregate trends, and "what goes senior" pairing intel that also sharpens ✦ Optimize strategies. The parser keeps facts only — names and employee numbers are detected and discarded on the spot, never stored — and a document only counts if it passes validation cleanly.
What did I get? The composite prints your full ID — your ID number with a leading 0 and two trailing 0s (586517 prints as 058651700). Enter either form; they match the same rows. Checked in your browser only, never stored.
YOUR CATEGORY
YOUR AWARDS
OPTIMIZATION STRATEGIES
Claude reads your seniority, commute, current preferences, and the category's award reality, and proposes concrete bid strategies. Each one has an Apply to current bid button — nothing changes until you apply it, and everything it changes is visible in the Bid Builder.
Tap “Generate with Claude” to get strategies built from your live bid, seniority, and category data. Deeper optimization — which pairings actually go senior, how your past bids performed — unlocks automatically as award data accrues.
You
My profile
Base, fleet, seat, seniority number and date of hire are pulled from the seniority list by your ID number, and re-checked every time you sign in — a new list updates you automatically. Set anything you like here and Save profile makes it stick: it overrides the category for a move the list hasn't caught up to yet, and the nightly resync will not undo it. ↻ Sync from seniority list drops the override and puts you back on the list. Your seniority number and date of hire always follow the newest list, because those are facts the list is the record of.
Seniority
—
—
Membership free
Your first bid cycle is free. Then pick a plan — cancel or pause anytime in one tap.
Commuting
Set this here or on step 2, Seniority: it is the same setting, and it saves to your account either way. A home airport is what the Commute page grades every trip against, so the page stays hidden until one is set.
From
→ base LAX
Airports you’ll fly into?
ground allowance
min
Trips are always checked against the airport they report at. Add others you’d fly into — JFK, LGA and EWR are one base but three different commutes. The ground allowance is your number, not a measured drive time, and it is subtracted from the margin whenever you land somewhere other than the report station.
Date of hire
Your longevity step comes from this date (PWA Section 3 A.9), and every pay figure in the app is calculated from it. If you're on the seniority list this fills itself in from the company's date and re-checks on every sign-in — you only need to type one if you're too new to appear on the current list.
Account recovery
Company mail systems accept our messages and then hold them internally, so a reset sent to a company inbox usually never appears. Add a personal address and reset codes will reach you. Any company address already on the account stays as it is — this only changes where a code is sent.
Feedback — it goes straight to the pilot who builds this
Broken, wrong, missing, or just annoying — say so. Wrong numbers and anything that blocks a bid jump the queue. A screenshot makes a bug about ten times faster to fix: attach one, drag it onto this box, or paste it straight in with ⌘V / Ctrl+V.
What kind of feedback is this?
Where in the app? (optional)
How is WidgetBid working for you overall? (optional)
0 / 8000
up to 3 · PNG or JPG · big ones are shrunk for you
What we keep: what you type, the screenshots you attach, which screen you were on, and your account so we can write back. Screenshots go to private storage only we can open. Nothing about your company login, ever — see Privacy.
Security & session
WidgetBid is an independent product of RNP Labs LLC — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any airline or any airline pilots union. It never asks for, sees, or stores your company credentials, and it never submits anything into PBS. A planning aid, not a guarantee of any award. Legal & privacy
ADMIN — WIDGETBID OPERATIONS
ANALYTICS
BID TRANSFER — LAUNCH SWITCH
SENIORITY LIST
ACCOUNTS
Every account, verification state, and membership. Suspend locks the account out of data (two taps — first tap arms).
PACKAGE LIBRARY
Categories live in the database — loaded by the desktop ingest workflow (founder) or pilot uploads (contributed, invariant-validated server-side).