Originally Posted by
dfwflyboy
4 days off is useless with PBS. I'm in favor of PBS, you can get way better, customized schedules, Union will choose vendor which is huge. You guys that haven't worked under PBS yet will see that you will build your own schedule. 3 days off, 4, 5, whatever you want, YOU are in charge, not the company. so 4 days off is something we should've given away to get extra minimum days off. The company knows we "perceive" it as value, but it has none in the PBS world. Everyone will waive it, you'll see. To get the schedule you want, and trips you want, you'll do 3 days off this week to have 5+ next week.
We need to read the language and see the minimum windows each month, that will determine how well we can control our days off.
This^^^ your pilots will figure out how to use PBS to their advantage and will also figure out that having 4 days off between trips is a disadvantage.
When I held a line I used to bid back to back 4 day trips twice a month. I knocked my commute down from 4 to 2 a month. This gave me 2 - extra days at home a month. It also opened up more trips that had late finishes and early starts:
Start a 4 day at 5pm commute in that day trip ends at 7pm get a hotel next morning start a trip at 9am that ends at noon commute home.
Normally I would have filtered out both of those trips because they were uncommutable.
If I want I can put all of my flying in the first half of the month and take the last half of the month off. There are several other examples of how you can greatly improve QOL, days off and productivity with PBS and I guarantee most, if not all, of your pilots will waive the 4 days off between trips, and any "value" that provision has/had will evaporate overnight.