ColdWhiskey

With line bidding, one of the big advantages is when we have vacation in the month to be bid. With line bidding, it is possible to bid a line that assigned vacation days touches multiple trips. Any trips that are touched by vacation are dropped and pay protected (unless they come back through domicile and can be split).

With our current base structure, many trips leave domicile on day one and don't return until the last day. If you can touch one of these trips with your first vacation day and another trip with your last vacation day, it is fairly easy to turn one week of vacation into 3 weeks off, while getting the vacation pay in additional to pay protection on the affected trips prior to, and after actual vacation days.

In addition, you can slide your vacation up to 3 days either way. Basically, with strategic bidding, we can triple our actual assigned vacation days, while getting pay protected for all of the trips that vacation may touch.

This also creates a lot of open time drops, that can then be used by other crew members to add, drop, or swap trips to enhance their own schedule. If you are a line holder, this allows huge schedule flexibility or modification.

Many crew members also elect to pick up flying on days that were cleared by vacation and associated conflict drops, thus adding more credit.

A similar thing can be done with transition and training conflicts.

Gary et al

I agree that it is simplified, a lot of the time I just don't feel people care for me to post long explanations but I am happy to

First, I know that my own experiences with PBS were better than most. I was at ASA before F9, and it is clear that ASA's PBS system and rules were/are better than most. Even as a junior pilot I would typically get at least a couple trips that I wanted. ASA had 3 different "bid sheets" basically if the system couldn't award you a line after going through your preferences on the 1st sheet it moved to the second, then the 3rd. So the 1st sheet was always your dream month, rarely ever unless you were senior would you be awarded based on the 1st sheet. The 2nd sheet was your realistic bid, and 3rd was the catch all. When making sure you bid what you could hold on the 2nd sheet again there were typically trips that would still be left over that would get you what you needed. You need Saturday afternoon and evening off to go to a wedding but you're the most junior line holder? You'd probably get it on the initial award. You'd likely bid in a way so that you would allow a trip that ends on Saturday morning and then allow trips that start Sunday. Chances are even as the most junior guy that there would at leat be some crappy 2 day starting Friday and then a junky 3 day on Sunday that while they aren't perfect you lock in that day off from the beginning. You are junior and you know you'll probably be working weekends anyway? You'd bid so that you hopefully start trips the day and time you want, maybe Thurs-Sun works better for you or maybe you are a Sat-Tue bumped into a Thurs-Sun type so you get a couple long stretches...you'd probably be able to do that too, they might just be a little lower credit or less commutable. Either way issues we still deal with being junior here. But I being junior under PBS I always got awards that were acceptable to me and better than what I expected given the seniority level.

In the end so much depends on the work rules, trip construction, what kind of trips there are in your base, etc. With our current rules you may or may not get that Saturday off depending on the drop grid. You do have a chance of making it better in open time, but even then the good stuff that drops due to vacations and training conflicts often gets snatched in monthly, which outside of super seniority, goes in seniority order and is tough to get as a junior guy. If we had a round 1 and 2 of monthly that allowed some of the senior people's swaps to get picked up that would be great with our current system, but we don't, so it just goes to relief. The way we do the MOT process is confusing at first for having to have all the combinations on each bid line which I'd say burns everybody at least once. Once daily is shows up, at least for me, there was/is rarely anything that I cared to pick up or swap into. My line already has things that are ok and maybe I could get more credit but then I loose commutability, or I can get an extra day off but it'll cost 6.5 hours. So in my experience our daily open time isn't really different from the open time I saw at ASA working under PBS.

Again, I agree and mentioned that with Indigo at the helm there is mistrust. There should be. And its good we are being careful. My own experiences with PBS were positive, overall I prefer that method of bidding to our current line experience, both junior or senior at either place. The problem is that there are certain things we can do to make more money with our line bidding and we must be compensated accordingly. From what I have seen, while there are some positives in this AIP, the overall package is lacking and we can do better. Especially if we are going to consider PBS, I'm leaning no...

ReserveCA

Again, if PBS is in any TA , EVERY OTHER section must be industry average +....... including profit sharing, overrides, ......

monkeybrains

Well, PBS is part of the deal and profit sharing isn’t, so we get it, you’re a no vote.

ReserveCA

Ok we’ll forget profit sharing, what about perdiem? Health care? LTD own occupation? Updated ask? Retirement 15%? Min day? Overrides? 14 day off reserve? Etc. etc. etc.

I’ll wait for the actual language, but with PBS it needs to be.......worth 12 yrs of scr€wing

salmiaboy

But

When will the actual language come out?

PulledBreaker

Mañana.

(Filler)

Burton78

Just my opinion and worth what you paid for it, but you guys would have to be off your rocker to willingly vote in a substandard contract along with PBS while your company is making huge profits. (I'm still stunned NK pilots did). I UNDERSTAND, it's a large pay raise and its difficult not to bite, but just don't let the top pay numbers blind you to what you're giving up. United and Delta guys may drive by here with the PBS isn't all that bad speak, but honestly as a SWA pilot, I would never trade contracts with either aforementioned airline especially in regards to PBS. I routinely turn one week of vacation into 3+ consecutive weeks off with pay. From what I understand, you can kiss that bye-bye with PBS. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong here). There's a reason PBS was conceded while the legacies were in bankruptcy; It's a pilot QOL concession and benefits the company, not the pilots.

Just my 2 pennies.

CantStayAway

2 things...

1. Tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed. They said their goal was sometime near the end of the week, but it wasn’t a solid deadline. There is much to be done and I expect it to come out sometime next week (hopefully the first half).

2. When the initial information is released it will likely only be bullet points and pay scales. The full language must still be finalized and vetted by both sides. That process will likely take another 2 weeks. Hopefully we’ll have the full TA by the end of November.

Silver02ex

You can still have that with PBS, if vacation or training events is only implemented after PBS line award. So if you have vacation or training the first week of the month, you can tell PBS to load your schedule at the beginning of the month, causing those drops and pay protected. This only works if that's how the language is written. It's still possible to still have "vacation touch" or whatever you want to call it. I believe ExpressJet had this around 2006-2007.