Originally Posted by
ghilis101
Delta PBS guarantees a contractual 13 days off in a 30 day bid period and 14 days off in a 31 day bid period. At AA, PBS will only be required to honor your 10 day off contractual minimum. That's the reason delta has been largely successful with PBS, because their contract limited the amount of days away from home.
One drawback to the Delta system is, the ability to swap up to FAR max flying. That's the part that eliminated jobs, as I said above, for every three guys doing it, that's one less pilot you need in category. If we had closed some of those loopholes there wouldn't have been so much stagnation.
Another drawback is, if you are junior, you are going to fly both the crappiest trips, on the worst days (weekends and holidays). Under our old line of time bidding, if you were junior, you might get lucky and find a good trip over the holidays, or have to fly a bunch of crappy trips...but be able to get Christmas off.
Now...no way. The good trips will all be sucked up by the senior pilots, all that's left when the computer gets down to the bottom line holders, is crappy trips, every weekend and every holiday.
That's why guys now bid to be as senior as possible in category, because PBS makes Seniority matter more. Being senior got better, but being junior sucks more.