The process of submitting monthly schedule preferences is called what?

• A. Plan
• B. Bid
• C. Schedule
• D. Vote

Answer: (B)

Submitting monthly schedule preferences is called bidding. In airlines, crew members enter bids to express preferred trips, days off, and pairings within a defined window. The roster is then built by allocating available trips to bids, typically using seniority and other rules, so as many preferences as possible can be honored. This is different from planning, which is a broader operations forecast; scheduling, which is the actual set of flights assigned; and voting, which isn’t the standard method for assigning monthly rosters.