Originally Posted by
JustAnotherPLT
I think people are missing the point here. ASA management have always had control of the building of pairings. Contract says they can build anything between a day line to a 4 day. In line bidding the company also has control of how they build the whole month. With PBS the company NO LONGER builds lines. All pilots have control of the month. Now #1 guy starts off with his parameters and the system builds his schedule. By the end guy whatever is left they will receive.
I'm getting it just fine, and understand PBS just fine. What I'm getting at is this: If the the company doesn't build ANY 2 day pairings, PBS CAN'T award any 2 day pairings.
Originally Posted by
JustAnotherPLT
If you don't like your line you can DROP, TRADE, & PICKUP. You can try to DROP, TRADE or PICKUP anything from 1 leg to a whole 4 day. Once your line is built it's no different than it was with line bidding.
Yep, understand that just fine too. What I'm getting at is that PBS is about efficiency. Due to the drastic reduction in open time because it avoids conflicts, the availability of trips to trade with greatly reduces. What I was saying before was that the availability to trade for those 2 days just simply may not be there.
It seems that the PBS system is pretty good that ASA went with. But the question I asked on that other board, as well on our company mssg board is this: Do the ASA guys think the way this award came out will be indicative of the way it will always be? For the junior guys that got good schedules, will it always be that way or was it a temporary thing since some of the guys senior to you were technologically deficient and don't understand the system well enough yet to exploit it?
Again, the point I made before was that even when XJT downsized, and our pairings went to crap, we could STILL trade in the LIW's to improve our lines with the amount of time created. Even if those pairings weren't there on the initial bid but were there after crew planning made them from conflict, etc. With PBS, it's gonna give what it gives, based on preferences of course. But if the company is building nothing but crap sucking candy bar pairings, the ability to improve the schedule isn't as good.
Make sense?