Originally Posted by
berge7f9
From the message that the ASA MEC sent to the ASA pilot group, these are the advantages of using Flightline over SmartPref
Globalization: In a globalized system such as SmartPref, for the globally constrained pilots, seniority can be overlooked if the solution does not meet the Company’s requirements. Even though a pilot may be senior enough to hold certain trips bid, those trips may go to another pilot because it could be required to complete the overall global solution. In a non-Global system like PrefBid, just as with Hard-Line bidding, pilot’s bids are not compared to anyone else’s bid when awarding their schedule. A big misconception about Flightline is that it “globalizes” with manual intervention, that assertion is incorrect.
· Credit Window Control: Global systems can easily restrict pilot earnings and schedule quality by limiting the credit hours a pilot can obtain. Pilots will lose money if the averages are constrained to 75 hours. Pilot surveys have shown individual needs for credit vary, with the averages being 80-85 hours credit. What other employee groups are forced to take a 20% pay cut from month to month based on the Company’s desires?
· Customization and System Faults: Here are a few:
1) Currently, CDOs cannot be broken out and awarded as a pure CDO line in the SmartPref system. Absent this capability, pilots could easily end up with a CDO adjacent to a 4 day trip.
2) SmartPref does not have multiple bid sheets and does not have an unstack bid sheet. Lack of multiple bid sheets could easily result in pilots being awarded trips that they did not desire.
3) SmartPref cannot currently extend vacation, whereas it is possible with PrefBid and Hard-Line bidding
Can someone give me a list of reasons that SmartPref is better than Flightline?
I don't have time to go into great detail. but those arguments don't hold water. If they looked into smartpref as they've said they'd know how smartpref does things differently.
Live bidding...doesn't require multiple bid sheets as you get to see real time what you're holding.
Vacation touching. Many ways this can be handles. IE blind bidding. The system doesn't know you have vacation till after the lines is awarded. You select pairings that allow vacation touching and those drop off. Their are different options available that would be customized with work rules.
CDO...this was not part of the demo and is easily changed to conform to work rules.
Credit window... Again, custom work rules dictate what the window can be. Demo is just a generic and arbitrary number.
Open-time. Smartpref doesn't have to solve to 0 open time, thus the feared globalization becomes fairly moot. Again work rules.
Nearly every negative coming from the ASA side about smartpref either has been covered or debunked. I don't even know if i'd vote for either but nearly everything negative mentioned is covered under work rules which need to be negotiated.