Originally Posted by
Ravenwing
I heard NavBlue was busy building PBS for Alaska and Sun Country. They won't build our software until they are done. It's going to be 12-18 months before our PBS is ready for a 3 month trial of parallel bidding. You won't see any fun changes for over a year. But I'm sure there will be lots of grumbling in the pilot group anyway.
PBS won't affect anyone's vacation plans until at least 2026. Although I personally think the 3 vacation extension days will work out well, especially since you don't lose pay using them.
I remain skeptical about the 3 vacation day extension vs. DTS, as well as the ability to build the schedules we want. Most of our trips are low block hours, and they aren't using the trip rigs in the credit to build a line using PBS... so if the company comes out with an 88 hour bid divisor for DFW CA for instance, Navblue will try to build a line between 83 and 93 hours (I believe). When you're only blocking 18 hours for a 4 day trip, that comes out to 4.888 4 day trips required to meed the average 88 bid divisor. That's actually 19 days of work in a 30 day month, leaving only 11 days off, and then you get into an area where it can't build the line and your requests go right out the window.
For vacation, the FAs get 4 days, we get 3, that in and of itself is b.s. IMHO. BUT the scenarios they put out basically give you a big block of days off only when your seniority allows you to fully control the specific days off. If you're able to get say Tue-Thu off every week, but can't add another day or so to that before and after what would be your vacation block, it's going to put something right on either end of that 10 day off block you get with your magic 3 days. If I can bid any one of 100+ lines that conflict with those days off, I can end up with 2 full weeks off using DTS. They gave in and lowered us to 3 days because most pilots are only using 2.something days of DTS because the majority of guys here only want pay and hours so they can move on. That's fine, it's a majority vote, but I prefer max days off. Hell, if they'd offer it, I'd take a part time line every month for the last 8 years of my career and be happy.
There just seemed to me, during the presentation by the union, to be a lot of belief that the union will have more control over PBS than I think they actually will. When I spent a decade working under Navblue, only the most senior guys really benefited from, and had the ability to, make their schedule what they wanted. The rest of us ended up in denial mode more often than not because they company would set unreal bid divisors.