Got it now. I don't claim any PBS expertise, but I'll offer my opinion based on buds at other airlines that use it and what little info I've picked up over the years.

First, IMO, PBS isn't a specific item that could be evaluated in a way to answer your question. PBS simply refers to a method of building schedules. An airline that builds schedules using that method may buy a software program from a third party that accomplishes the task or develop their own.

So, the answer to your question depends on the quality of the program FedEx might choose to replace what they currently use for secondary lines. Is it easy to use and understand? Does the resulting schedule correspond to the seniority and requests of the pilot? Impossible to answer without a specific program to evaluate.

Removing vacation buffers from the contract would obviously have to be negotiated like anything else. I'm not sure removing them from the contract would be something the company would see as a big gain. After all, the secondary pilot is only getting a one-for-one return on his vacation days and the planners have the rest of the month to use. Maybe there's more to that I'm missing.

Frankly, anything developed in the last decade would have to be better than what we currently use. A big part of the problem is there is so much mis-information out there about how to use our current system. Many pilots don't understand how it works because it's not very clear and there's very little information available. Did you know the planners actually still input each line of our secondary worksheet manually and assign an arbitrary point value to each line? Then the program runs and builds each line in order based on the point ranking. Total points for each pilot's worksheet is 1000. Oh, and it doesn't try to give everyone their number one choice. I've heard that one thrown around a lot.

Anyway, that's my .02