Lurked here for quite a long time, but finally figured it was time to post.
PBS.
Its not all bad, not only the top 10-15% are happy, and you can turn 1 week of vacation into 20 days off. Its all in the work rules and knowing how to bid, i.e. how the computer assigns trips.
Having used PBS at my previous airline I can say that even being below 60% up the list I would still get a line may not have been perfect, overall I would get close to what I'd want. Vacation months...even being just off reserve I was able to get 21 straight days off. Having training and vacation both in the same month, which happened to be a December, I only flew 2 days! I honestly had a great experience wth PBS. What we couldn't do is make money in vacation months like can be done here.
I'm not saying PBS is great, what we have now is certainly better overall, but its not because of line bidding. Its the freedom of dropping and picking up and re-organizing your schedule. The process of bidding a pre-built line without having conflict pay protection really isn't that amazing.
If PBS was in the next contract...my guess is that I'd be a NO vote. The right language needs to be present to protect the pilots from what COULD be done under PBS, and it certainly will save the company money and that would need to be monetized for us. But the blanket statement that PBS is bad, its simply not true.
A couple quick specifics of items that would need to be present:
Make vacation days worth 4.5hrs per day for people trying to make money and 5.5hrs per day pre credit for people wanting time off, only need to fly 36.5 hrs to complete month, still get 75 pay.
Set Calendar min day pay to 5hrs
No Globalization (equalizing lines, awarding senior trips to junior pilots)
ALPA controls pairings
Minimum 3 days off after trip unless waived
Max 2 red eye trips per month unless waived, red eye trips left over will go to open time and subsequently reserve.
Company sets target line value to be flown by each pilot, pilots can set their personal threshold to target +/- 20hrs