Originally Posted by Timbo

Truth!

For years I have been trying to point this out, about PBS.

It was, and continues to be, a HUGE manning concession, over our old capped 75 hour line of time bidding system.

I estimate it has cost us about 20% jobs lost, especially in the wide body categories, which, due to how few 777/747's we have, has a big snowball effect of stagnation all the way down the list.

Most guys I fly with on the 777 are picking up to 90-100 hours if they can. Just going from 75 hours to 90 is a 20% increase in flying, per person.

Now multiply that by 2000 senior wide body pilots.

Now shrink the wide body fleet by 16 747's.

Now park some 757's.

Yeah, that's why you're stuck on the MD88 flying 90 hours a month, and that's why commuting to NYC to cover 3 airports is the junior position.

PBS had the added effect of allowing all the crap to settle to the bottom. Under Line of Time bidding, crew scheds built the lines, they would spread the crap around to make 75 hour lines. You might only have one or two POS trips on a line, but then some other good trips to balance out your month. Even the number 1 bidder might not be able to find a line completely free of that one POS trip, or a line that has every weekend off.

But under PBS, ALL the CRAP ends up on the bottom guy's line, because the top 50% of the bidders will pick all the good trips, on all the good days, leaving all the crap to the junior guys, flying every weekend and holiday. That's also why many junior line holders would rather bid reserve than fly a whole month of garbage.

30 years ago you had to be about 50% of the way up the seniority list to hold the most junior captain job, which at that time was the DC9 in ORD. Back then we had a lot more choices for bases and places to live, (DFW, IAH, MSY, BOS, ORD, MIA) so you didn't have to commute to ATL or NYC, you could live where you wanted to, and not worry about commuting. You sat junior reserve at home, not at a crash pad, which made every Captain bid go much more senior, especially in the smaller bases like BOS and MIA.

When I got my first Capt. bid (plug MD88 CVG) with 'only' 6 years at Delta, many people were shocked that there were now 6yr Captains, much like today's 14 month Captain awards 'shock'.

But, NOBODY I met in the training dept., LCA's or anywhere else said we 'unsafe', even though few of us had any time on the Mad Dog as F/O's. We figured it out...and then we got displaced off it as Delta sold off all their DC9's and those guys came over and pushed off of the MD88, back to F/O.

Fun while it lasted, but I didn't miss commuting to CVG to be the plug 88 Captain anymore!