Originally Posted by
PA Slammer
I got my answer.
I didn't get a line because I was "available for a 3 day block of reserve". The junior guy that got the line ended his Sep with 4 days of reserve and couldn't do 7 days straight of reserve.
However now he starts the month with a 4 day trip and they won't be able to use him on the end of Sep reserve block because he'll need crewrest.
They said they weren't responsible for last month when assigning lines!
This sort of gobbeley-gook happens all the time. They look at a pilots potential need for crew rest and then that impacts what other pilots get visa-vi getting stuck on reserve. You may be senior to him, but because he may need crew rest he becomes more senior to you on the day the bids were run, therefore you lose your seniority.
Same thing happens with vacation months. If a reserve has two weeks of vacation, he could get a line, and suddenly get artificially inflated seniority because PBS can't fill his schedule with enough R days to make it work with in the constraints programmed into it.
There is truly a problem with PBS. It needs to be re-invented and re-named the seniority bidding system. Total overhaul required.