If you're bidding PBS the classic way — building one long generic bid and hoping it solves well — you're leaving a lot on the table. Eric walks through "sharpshooting," a bidding method built around the BidGrid tool that helps pilots stop wasting bid layers on trips they were never going to hold in the first place, and instead put their energy into the trips they can actually win.
Sharpshooting is a combination of a specific bidding method and the BidGrid software that supports it. Instead of bidding broad categories of trips and letting PBS sort it out, you break your preferences into three tiers — an A list, a B list, and a C list of trip types — and within each tier, you bid a specific layer followed by a generic layer. The pattern across your first six layers looks like this:
In the example bid, a pilot wanted 2, 3, and 4-day trips. BidGrid immediately shows that 2-day trips aren't realistically holdable for him — so rather than bidding for trips he can't win, he skips straight to what's actually in reach: 3-day trips with weekends off.
The system shows he held 10 of those last month, and with more flying scheduled next month, he's projected to hold 11. That's the target for tier one. But there are 399 pairings that meet the basic criteria — so which ones go into the bid?
Two filters do the heavy lifting:
From there, it's a matter of tagging the best ~40 of what he could hold (some pilots may tag fewer) and splitting the bid:
Repeat that specific → generic pattern for tiers two and three, and by layer six you've built a bid that's entirely made up of trips you can realistically hold — with layer seven left wide open purely as a safety net.
The core idea: if PBS shows 100 pairings that BidGrid says you can hold, and you've bid all 100 across your layers using this specific-then-generic structure, you're going to solve with a strong award. Eric notes BidLiner hasn't seen this method fail to solve within the first few layers when followed correctly.
Eric shares his own July numbers as the proof point: under classic PBS bidding, he would have needed to bid roughly 900 pairings to cover his preferences. Using the sharpshooting method, he bid just 61 pairings — and solved at position 26. Fewer pairings bid, better result, because every layer was built around what he could actually hold rather than what he hoped for.
Hi, everybody. This is Eric with Bidliner. I'd like to talk a little bit more about sharpshooting your bid using the BidGrid. Now, I've done videos on this before, but we continue to gain insight into how to leverage the product, and it's getting a lot of interest, so I'll delve into it a little bit more today.
If you're not familiar, sharpshooting your bid is a method we've used that helps pilots bid the best of what they can hold. It's a software tool and a method combined to do that. So with that said, let's, let's get into, that explanation. So what we have here on the screen is a basic bid, two, three, and four-day trips with, weekends off, and then two, three, and four-day trips flying on the weekends.I'm gonna go through this sharpshooting method on the first two layers, but you're gonna do this method on, on the first six layers. You're gonna have three tiers. Your, your A trip search criteria, which is your favorite trips, your B trip search criteria, and your C trip search criteria. You're gonna put your A trip search criteria in there, and then, that will yield a certain result.
So let's look what they did on the screen. This pilot wanted, two, three, and four-day trips. Two-day trips, he can't hold. Two-day trips, he can't hold. So let's not waste our energy with those two-day trips he cannot hold. So what can he hold? He can hold three-day trips. That's his first tier. And so with the first tier three-day trips, he wanted weekends off.The system said he can be expected to hold 10 of those, or he did hold 10 of those last month, and with, more flying next month, he should hold 11 of the three-day trips with the weekends off. That's his first tier. But there are 399 pairings in that group. Which ones does he bid? Well, he can look at the history of what went junior to him of three-day trips with weekends off and look for a pattern he either likes or doesn't like.And, I've looked through these. I don't see a strong pattern, one way or the other, so maybe early, if anything. So I'm gonna say, and in the absence of pattern, which I believe is a good thing, and I won't go into why I think it's a good thing, but I believe it is a good thing. I'm just gonna sort on what I like. Let's minimize our time away from base. And it shows that of the three-day trips with the weekends off, he can hold something with 52 hours' time away from base and, and more. I think that's significant because there are some super efficient three-day trips that it doesn't look like he can hold. We'll keep that in mind. And now we've got 399.
We've looked at the history to think of what can we hold and what are we gonna consider, and we said we're gonna consider time away from base. There's 399. We'll call up this. Now this says 399 trips that meet the criteria. We said the 19 off for my w- our wife's birthday.And, and now we're gonna sort this on time away from base. Oh, guess what? There's some really attractive looking three-day trips that have very little time away from base. But it said we couldn't hold those, so it may not be a super efficient use of our bidding power to bid those. That's your choice. But we know we're probably gonna solve around 50 hours, so what's the best that we wanna search for of what we can hold? And this, seemed like 50 hours is a good place to start. So we're gonna go through and tag, 40 of the best of what we can hold. Now, you can use an, a much smaller number than that if you want, but you need to put the balance of those in the second half of your first tier bid, which will be your layer two generic bid.So let's say we tagged, in this case, we tagged five pairings. We're gonna bid those up to maybe 40, of those specifically in layer one, and that'll complete our layer one bid. And then in layer two, we'll bid generically three-day trips with weekends off. So that's a specific bid which is the best of our first tier generic criteria, and then the balance of the first tier generic criterion in layer two.
So it's specific, generic, specific, generic, specific, generic, tier one, tier two, tier three. And if you'll follow that method, and if you do so, and on the PBS bidding page, there's 100 pairings that the bid grid says you can hold and you've bid, then you have successfully sharp shot your bid.We've not seen it fail. Layer seven, you're going to keep wide open as a safety net and that'll keep you safe on your bid. But if you'll follow this, you're going to solve in the first couple layers.
I went from using in July of last year, 24, there were, I should have bid using classic PBS instruction, 900 pairings.I went from that to bidding 61 and I solved at 26 because I bid the 61 I could hold and it happened to solve me after 26. And I love that month. It was a great month of flying. And I'm glad that I did that. And it's just, I put my energy into what I could hold and got the very best of what I could hold, not tried for things I just can't hold because other people see them and they're going to, those senior guys are going to get them.So thank you for listening. Fly safe and have a good day.
