Originally Posted by ShyGuy

If pairings remain the same, then why let the company build your own line? Why not try and build your own line that suits you? Our guys do a good job with the pairing optimizer and the results usually are pretty good for pairings. It sounds like the underlying issue isn't the fact you don't want PBS, it's the management building inefficient pairings?



Well, if you are talking about VX (Flica PBS) and Delta (Navtech), it does not disregard seniority. There is a process for what you are describing. For Flica PBS it is called unstacking, Navtech is shuffling/globalization. Basically the problem is everyone can ask for Christmas 24, 25, 26 off and PBS can build lines that way until finally all it is has is a bunch of Christmas timeframe trips and now it can't build full legal lines.

So, there is a process called unstacking. First the company runs the solution award without any stacking. Then they see the day(s) where large open time remained, say, Dec 24, 25, and 26. They can put all trips that touch those days into what's called a stack. At some point in running the award, a pilot will be forced to work out of this stack, meaning a Christmas time-frame trip would be assigned forcefully and then the rest of the schedule is built. Maybe some senior guys want to work over that time frame and that's great, it will be one less trip in the stack. Senior and mid level guys don't get stacked, but the junior ones do end up working the stack period (usually holidays). Advantage here though is that if you are junior and have to work the holiday anyway, why not get say in the trip? Say you just want Christmas morning off, and can accept a trip that checks in after 3pm? You can set your stack sheet that way and try and get trips that meet that requirement. Or vice versa for Thanksgiving, say you don't want to work Thanksgiving but if you must, you'd like to be released by 12 noon on Thanksgiving day. There's so much flexibility in terms of what you can do. The equivalent in line bidding is "you're junior, so you couldn't hold any line that had Christmas off." So isn't this guy working the holiday anyways? Advantage here is you can still bid your own holiday trip that maybe suits you better if you are forced to work the holidays. And once unstacking starts at a pilot, it goes from that point on to the most junior line holder. In line bidding terms, it's guys who couldn't have held holiday off lines.

But remember, not every situation requires the company to unstack. Sometimes people bid in a manner that doesn't require unstacking. As an example in the NYC base for FOs, Thanksgiving day for 2015 and 2014 was not unstacked. This meant ANY pilot in this base/seat who could have held a line (even the most junior line) could theoretically have held Turkey day off. It turned out enough people bid to work Thanksgiving because they wanted the following weekend off, and vice versa guys who wanted to be off on Thanksgiving but wanted to work the weekend. The company didn't have a disparity of remaining Thanksgiving trips and the award was published without any need for having to run the unstack process.

A big tool you have is the bid audit view which comes with Flica PBS and Navtech. Using this, you can see why you didn't get a pairing. Usually it's because "awarded to senior bidder" but there could be other reasons (117 conflict, etc). But there's ALWAYS a reason in the bid audit view. This isn't like Emirates where some human sits down and says hmmm, this guy has 7 days off in a row so I'm gonna throw a 2-day on him. It's all computerized and the final result can be completely audited and you will see exactly why you got what you got, or why you didn't get what you thought you should get, etc.

The other concern is that VX has a lot of commuters versus AS especially in SEA and ANC where it can be a fairly large amount of locals. If you're local, who cares if it's a 1 day, 2 day, 3 day. You're driving to work and can usually deal with that stuff anyway or trade out with another local. But a commuter may only want 4 day trips and ideally only 3-4 times per month. With PBS, commuters can set their bids up to get exactly those kinds of trips. What are the chances someone at AS knows that a pilot would love a 4-day trip starting with a redeye for 4 occasions of the month? It would seem that if you are commuting, letting someone else use pairings to build a line is a bad idea when their idea of commuter-friendly trips differs from your definition of it. Unless someone in management has commuters in mind, they can build any kind of line they want and it may not be commuter friendly. When I was commuting to SFO the ideal trip was a 4-day trip that had a redeye day 1 (check in after 8pm) and day 4 release by 12 noon (usually meant early morning flight from east coast that landed west coast between 10-12 noon). Now I couldn't hold that all the time being a very junior lineholder, but even twice a month meant half the month would be commuter-friendly, no hotels, and travel same to work and home on same day.

To reiterate the point, line bidding has its value when conflicts are dropped with pay protection. Without it, and having to add back to your schedule to get back above min 75 hrs anyway, why give away your ability to use pairings to build your own line (especially as a commuter). People's definition of a good line differ based on individual circumstances. If management controls pairings, shouldn't pilots at least be able to control their own line-building?