Originally Posted by
ATLRJDrvr
I'm going to catch a lot of grief for writing this I'm sure, but I came from a regional that had PBS and I actually liked it.
I don't understand how we can want legacy pay, 401k match, profit sharing, ect and not get what every legacy has for bidding (Hint, it's not line bidding). I understand that trip dropping will go away and you can't double dip to pad the pay check, but god forbid when you senior guys are making 250k you actually take some time off and enjoy your vacation. If you want days off before or after vacation than just list them as a preference, pretty simple. Also, if we get to the size we are planning on getting, I don't want to be fumbling through 60 pages of lines. I'm scared many of you have 0 experience with PBS and have just heard about it through the FAs. I assure you, it's not that bad.
My time at the regionals we went from line bidding to PBS and the only people that seemed to care/got upset over it were the senior ones stuck in their ways. I would bet that holds true here, and considering the young guns are starting to outnumber the senior folks, I would start talking about when we get PBS and not if we get it.
It's a hard thing to sell to your FO that's making a regional pilots wage to vote no based on PBS. "Please give up a 40% pay raise, 16% 401k, profit sharing, 100% DH pay, ect because I don't want to learn a new bidding system. Don't worry though, I'll buy your beer tonight."
Just my opinion though. Let the scathing begin.
Maybe you had excellent contractual provisions for PBS. I did not. My experience with PBS is that you can "preference" anything you want (like days off around vacation). It certainly doesn't mean you are going to get it. If the system doesn't have the available pairings by the time it reaches your seniority number, it ignores your preferences and starts shotgunning the scraps to your line; including trips on days right around your vacation that you "preferenced" off.
At Frontier, even a junior line holder can bid a crap line, that just so happens to work well with their vacation, and end up with a really nice stretch of days off.