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Feasibility

Feasibility

Feasibility answers a single question: given a pilot’s bid, which trips can actually be awarded to the pilots junior to them? In a Preferential Bidding System, awards flow strictly down the seniority list. When a senior pilot’s bid is locked in, it removes some trips from the pool and frees up others — and the junior pilots’ feasible sets shift as a direct, systemic consequence.

Feasibility is the concept that ties the others together. Read it first, then Seniority, Bidding, and Credit Hours will make more sense.

Why it matters

Crew schedulers and pilots both want to predict the downstream effect of a bid before it is awarded. “If I take this 4-day trip, what opens up for the pilot below me?” Feasibility makes that ripple visible instead of leaving it to intuition or, worse, to Microsoft Paint in a Teams call.

How it works, step by step

  1. Order all pilots by seniority (most senior first).
  2. Award the most senior pilot’s preferred trips first.
  3. Mark every day those trips occupy as unavailable for that pilot.
  4. Move to the next pilot. Their feasible trips are the ones that (a) still exist in the pool and (b) don’t overlap days already committed.
  5. Repeat down the list. Each award narrows or widens what remains feasible below it.

A trip is infeasible for a junior pilot when a more senior pilot has already been awarded an overlapping trip, or when taking it would push the pilot outside the legal credit-hours range.

See it live

In the visualizer below, place a trip for a senior (upper) row, then switch on Feasibility mode to highlight which trips become available to the junior (lower) rows. Move the senior trip and watch the junior feasible set change in real time.

Trouble loading? Open the full-screen visualizer.

The grid shows one bid period (31 days). Feasibility recomputes from the top of the seniority list down every time a bar is added, moved, or resized.

A worked example

Suppose pilot A (senior) and pilot B (junior) both want a trip covering days 10–13.

  • Before any award, the trip is feasible for both.
  • Award it to A (seniority wins). Days 10–13 are now committed for A.
  • For B, that exact trip is now infeasible — but a different trip on days 14–17 may have just become feasible, because B’s calendar is still open there and no senior pilot has claimed it.

That shift — one award changing the feasible set below it — is the entire point of modeling feasibility.

Related

  • Seniority — the order awards flow in.
  • Bidding — how preferences are expressed.
  • Credit Hours — the legality bound on a feasible schedule.
  • Bar Types — what can occupy a day on the grid.
Seniority