Selecting and Adding Additional Criteria

Bidplus provides you with the ability to create a virtually unlimited combination of criteria by which to search. This is how it works. You simply decide what criteria you would like your LOFs to contain, then you create that combination of criteria, and finally you Search for the LOFs that contain that criteria. It's that easy. If you need information on how to select days on and off, please click here. That is covered under a different topic. Otherwise, keep reading to discover how to Search for the LOFs that contain exactly what you want.

Please start on the Criteria Selction screen. That is the first screen presented to you once you open up the bid package , and then close the newsletter. You will see the Month, Domicile, and the words (Primary or Relief) displayed in the middle of the screen.

Now look below the calendar. You will see the statement "Click Here for Search Catagories" displayed.

When you click on this statement, you are presented with the Criteria Selection dialog box.

There are 5 categories available to you. The Miscellaneous category is displayed first by default. The information contained in this dialog box is taken directly from your bid package and is specific to the domicile that you are bidding for,with the exception of a few generic items. The criteria indicating All-Nighters, Bk 2 Bk Trips (Back to Back trips), DHD Legs, and Shuttle Flts are always displayed, regardless of the domicile. However, the day length trips are always specific to the domicile. So for this domicile, there are 1, 2, 3, & 4 day trips available.  Also, since this is the ORD domicile, then the criteria "ORD Depts" is also listed. If this were an LAX bid package, then LAX & BUR Depts would be displayed. If this were DCA, then DCA, IAD, & BWI  Depts would be displayed. This allows you to indicate which co-terminal you would like to fly out of.

Also notice that the Sentence Completion section at the bottom says "I Want [   ] of my line to have 1 Day Trips". This is because the criteria "1 Day Trips" is highlighted at the top. If you changed to a different criteria, then the sentence would change as well. The blank in the sentence is to be filled in by you. Simply click on the down arrow in the drop box to expose the list.

This list is used to quantify your criteria selection, that is, it is used to determine how much of a particular criteria you would like to appear in your LOF. For example, if you choose 'All', then in this case, you would want 100% of the IDs in your line to be 1 day trips. If you selected 'At Least 50%', then you would want at least half of the IDs in your LOF to be 1 day trips. If you selected 'No More Than 50%', then the most 1 day trips that you would accept would be half the total number of IDs.

In the following example, we have completed the sentence to read "I want [All] of my line to have 2 Day Trips".

Now, when you click OK to close the dialog box, you will see that the Criteria Statement has added this criteria to be used in a search.

For this example, this will be the only criteria we use. Next, click on the Search button at the bottom.

Once the Search is complete ( in about 1 second), you can click on the View button (right next to the Search button). This will take you to the Review and Edit screen . This is an example of the type of line that will result in your search.

Notice that this line contains nothing but 2 day trips! We did not enter any additional criteria concerning days off, or back to back trips, or anything else for that matter. All we asked for is All 2 Day Trips, and that is exactly what the program delivered.

Speaking of additional criteria, here are the other categories that are available to you.

The Equipment category lists all of the airlplanes, both specific (example: 10H), or general ( Any DC-10 A/C).

The Layover category lists all of the layover cities that are specific to your domicile. If you are looking for a particular city, and you do not see it on the list, then you can quickly determine that there is no flying to that city for the month.

The ID category lists all of the IDs specific to your domicile. This is handy in the case where you find a particular ID you would like to fly, and you want to know which LOFs contain this ID. In that case, you would make the Criteria sentence say "I want [Any] of my line to have (ID#)." Then when you do a Search, all of the LOFs that contain this ID will be included in the Search.

And last, but certainly not least, is the Value Searches category. This is the category that contains criteria such as check in time, arrival time, credit time, # of legs per day, layover length, holiday pay, and much, much more. The Sentence Completion under this category is slightly different. Let's use the Check-in criteria for example.

In this example, notice that there are two parts of the sentence that you need to complete. The first part (At Least 80%) is what you have already learned about. The second part for this criteria requires that you say exactly what you want the Value of this criteria to be. So to break it down, this sentence is basically stating that for most of your line (at least 80% of the IDs), the earliest check-in that you will accept is 0900 (always use the 24 hour format). In this case, the other 20% could be any check in time.

So now that you have the basic idea, let's put it all together. From the Criteria Seletion screen, each time you click on the sentence "Click here for search categories", you will be presented with this dialog box. At that point, you simply create the criteria that you would like to search by. It does not matter the order of the criteria that you select. It is the combination itself that matters. That is what the program will use to locate your desired LOFs.

Please remember, the program is deadly accurate in searching for your exact criteria combination. If the combination of criteria that you have created is unrealistic, or it does not exist, then the results of your search will be zero, and there will be no LOFs to show you. It is best to add just one criteria at a time in between your searches in order to better understand the results.

Speaking of results, the number of resulting LOFs for your search are displayed to you in the blue box at the top left of the screen.

This is called a Bank. It has a big number 1 displayed indicating that this is Bank number 1. The smaller number (18) in the box is the resulting number of LOFs according to your search criteria. BidPlus allows you to add, subtract, and change the number and type of criteria all you want in between your searches. You may change around your criteria and do as many searches on the same Bank as you like before moving on to the next Bank . This allows you to play "what if" games until you get the exact combination and results that you are looking for. For details on what a Bank is and how it works, click here.

Also notice the phrase 'Line Number' in blue to the left of the Criteria Statments. This means that after your search is complete, when you click on the View button to see the resulting LOFs, they will be displayed to you in Line Number (numerical) order. To change this order to something else (like holiday pay order, or whatever), click directly on the phrase Line Number, and then make the change in the dialog box presented to you. For details on how the Line Arrangement feature works, click here.