JetBlast77

Ok thanks for the info. Is there an option where I could essentially bid for nothing greater than 2 days?

JustAnotherPLT

Essentially you can bid on anything you can think of, credit, duty times, amount of legs, where you fly to etc. Yes you can bid for less or equal to 2 days. There is about 18-20 options that you can adjust.

Mason32

Sounds to me like you all have relief lines, and you get to ask the company for your preferences.... but if their "pairings" don't fit, you get hosed.... and you no longer can get paid conflicts, paid vacation or training conflicts, and the company needs up to 15% fewer pilots to staff the airline.... so, you are costing people jobs, and upgrades.

Shaftoe

..................................

RamenNoodles

1) ASA

2) 25% in seat (ATL CRJ FO)

3) Only had vacation during the practice bids and not the live bidding for Feb, but each time I never had less than 20 days in a row with a single week of vacation. Had that been a live schedule, I would have been paid guarantee.

4) So far, yes. the PBS system is MUCH better than the previous line bidding at our company. Most people are holding better schedules with PBS than they were with line bidding.

5) I'm really loving the system. With line bidding, we had no flexibility except to swap trips in open time. Of course, ASA was very inconsistent with building lines, except that they consistently sucked. Most lines had 2 or 3 commutable trips and another that was not commutable. We were always having to attempt open time swaps and trip trades. Also, the average line values did not vary greatly in a given month. Now we have the flexibility to set our desired credit within a 30 hour window.

In my opinion, the PBS system is far better than when we were line bidding. One especially bad month for us was July 2010. The overwhelming majority of all lines were 4 days on, 2 days off. It was MISERABLE. I won't see that again with PBS because I have control over what days my pairings start. Opinions will of course vary based on how your company builds your lines. Our lines were terrible, so we are seeing significant improvements even though the pairings still generally suck.

As others have said, your schedule is only as good as the pairings the company builds. We really need some more control over trip construction to bring PBS to its full potential.

RamenNoodles

As others have said, what you can hold is very much dependent on what type of pairings the company builds. Considering your in-seat seniority percentage, you will most likely not be able to hold anything other than 4 day trips in the initial bid if ASA continues their usual trends with pairing construction once they have control over XJT's schedules. You'd have a better shot at it with PBS, but almost certainly not with line bidding.

Part of our PBS LOA states that only 60% of pairings can be 4 day trips; however, this is TOTAL PAIRINGS and not percentage of complete schedules. Let's say the company wants to build 60% 4 days and 40% 2 days. We'll keep the math simple and say 1000 pairings are available for your seat and domicile. Of those, 600 are 4 days and 400 are 2 days. Twice the amount of pairings are needed to build a complete schedule with 2 days than 4 days. Each person bidding 4 days is awarded one 4 day per week, which will make 150 schedules. Each person bidding 2 days is awarded 2 pairings per week, which makes 50 schedules. In reality, 60% 4 days still equals 75% or more of the schedules and this number increases when you consider CDO pairings and day trips. Granted, this example is dumbed down significantly but shows the principle of the 60% rule.

That's not to say that ASA will not change their ways, but I doubt it. They love 4 days and will continue to love 4 days for the foreseeable future. At least with PBS, you might be able to snag a few 2 days or CDO's in your initial bid run instead of getting a schedule of just 4 days as you would with line bidding. You can then swap the remainder of your trips with CDO's and stuff in open time.

I want to reiterate that the PBS system has NO EFFECT on whether or not you can hold 2 days. Its completely up to what the company builds for pairings. Generally, people are holding better schedules with PBS than without. In your case, you'd be better off with the PBS system.

dojetdriver

Question about your PBS, will it let you bid a normal/non vacation line that is less than min guaranty? By, can you tell it you only want say 60hrs credit for the month?

Because in response to the guy asking you the questions about 2 days, it could run into a conflict where the PBS simply could not meet his preferences/desires and deal appropriately with his don't wants/avoids.

Some of are bases as of yet have NO 2 day trips what so ever, like ORD. EWR has them, CLE has a few. Under the current line build system, in those bases they have to mix the 1 and 2 day trip with the 4 days sometimes just to get the line value to hit the min guaranty or line divisor.

But in those bases, if all somebody wanted was 2 days trips they may never get them based on seniority, or the PBS system trying to award them but is unable because it would take the pilot below min guaranty if that's not allowed. However, due to the LIW system the pilot can now trade for those pairings since they fell into open time due to conflict. etc.

JustAnotherPLT

Uhh, lol, sure man, whatever you say!

Cheers, you'll figure it out later I guess.

JustAnotherPLT

I think people are missing the point here. ASA management have always had control of the building of pairings. Contract says they can build anything between a day line to a 4 day. In line bidding the company also has control of how they build the whole month. With PBS the company NO LONGER builds lines. All pilots have control of the month. Now #1 guy starts off with his parameters and the system builds his schedule. By the end guy whatever is left they will receive.

If you don't like your line you can DROP, TRADE, & PICKUP. You can try to DROP, TRADE or PICKUP anything from 1 leg to a whole 4 day. Once your line is built it's no different than it was with line bidding.

As for credit the company has a cover sheet each month that has the amount they would like. For Feb. they had 65 -105 credit. You can bid anywhere between that. You can work hard or not at all.

The amount of lines has drastically increased at ASA with a 1 reserve to 8 lines.

dojetdriver

I'm getting it just fine, and understand PBS just fine. What I'm getting at is this: If the the company doesn't build ANY 2 day pairings, PBS CAN'T award any 2 day pairings.

Yep, understand that just fine too. What I'm getting at is that PBS is about efficiency. Due to the drastic reduction in open time because it avoids conflicts, the availability of trips to trade with greatly reduces. What I was saying before was that the availability to trade for those 2 days just simply may not be there.

It seems that the PBS system is pretty good that ASA went with. But the question I asked on that other board, as well on our company mssg board is this: Do the ASA guys think the way this award came out will be indicative of the way it will always be? For the junior guys that got good schedules, will it always be that way or was it a temporary thing since some of the guys senior to you were technologically deficient and don't understand the system well enough yet to exploit it?

Again, the point I made before was that even when XJT downsized, and our pairings went to crap, we could STILL trade in the LIW's to improve our lines with the amount of time created. Even if those pairings weren't there on the initial bid but were there after crew planning made them from conflict, etc. With PBS, it's gonna give what it gives, based on preferences of course. But if the company is building nothing but crap sucking candy bar pairings, the ability to improve the schedule isn't as good.

Make sense?