Originally Posted by
Barley
So what's the argument against prefbid? I know everyone is scared to death of it, but I've yet to run across anyone that can articulate why they don't like it. More importantly they have zero experience with it. I've worked under it and it was completely fine.
I'll take a stab: Caveat - my experience was at Mesa. So feel free to take all this with a block of salt...
We had paper bidding almost identical to F9 for years, of course we didn't have any flexibility post award like F9. Then one day the union gave it away for Pref Bid and it did suck badly. Obviously the top 10% of the list fared well, but they always fare well. The vast majority of us hated it.
PBS could literally spit anything out at you. Sometimes it would ignore everything you put in and give you something 180 degrees out of phase with your "preferences." Opening up the award was downright frightening, and more often than not, my heart would sink and/or my blood would boil with what I would see.
There was no end to the barrage of emails from angry pilots to the union, the company, whoever would listen asking what "happened this month"? For all the promises, over the years, nothing was ever done to improve it.
With paper bidding, there is no surprise, and IMHO for that reason alone it is better. With paper, if you need a certain day off for whatever reason, well then you just don't bid a line that works that day. With paper you can always sort of tell which of your choices will act as a safety net, or a catch all, in the case that one of your dream choices doesn't grab. With PBS you honestly don't know what the hell is coming.
We are all influenced by our experiences. And I might be running scared for no reason because an F9 pref bid might not resemble a Mesa pref bid at all. But I do know one thing... Paper bidding at Mesa was way better than Pref bid at Mesa.
I'll give Pref bid one plus. For bidding reserve it was better because you could specify exact days off, and with a little seniority usually get them - that's as far as I'll go.
Maybe as FAULTPUSH mentions, strong contractual language can make the difference, but I'd be more worried about how Pref bid would impact all the positive features we have currently wrt to flexibility. And really from our perspective as pilots, what is the point of PBS given the swap/drop flexibility we already have?
IMO, I believe companies want PBS because it represents PILOTS WORKING HARDER FOR LESS.