Originally Posted by
jayme
So you're saying the PAIRINGS are efficient and commutable. Perhaps your schedule would turn out just as good if you were bidding lines full of high quality pairings, too.
We (VX) have a pilot building our pairings. Who builds them at Alaska?
And I second Shyguy's question: without pay protection for pairings dropped in conflict with pre-assignments, where is the value in line bidding?
I'll start off by saying this; considering all of the airlines to work for, Alaska is one of the better places to be IMHO. I'm not in bed with management nor am I a chest thumping union gorilla. Every airline is dysfunctional and we have our problems, though not as bad as many out there.
One of the most frustrating things about working at Alaska is the schedule, more specifically the poor pairings and the inability to trade. When we had bulldog style pro-pilot ALPA scheduling reps, the pairing and lines were significantly better. I don't know where it all took a dump but the past few years, our lines and pairing have been in a steep decline in QOL. The company likes to blame the "optimizer" and our union is pretty much worthless. The company definitely has control of the pairing/line building. Guess what PBS would look like?