Let’s say you’re a 2 year CA. You get a primary vacation which drops any trip it touches. Let’s say May 15-22 for the sake of discussion. You bid for a line that has a trip that ends May 15 and another that starts May 22. Both of those trips get dropped. Which is great, if you can afford to lose 2 trips for the month, you basically end up with 21 days off work.

If you can’t, you’ll pick both of those trips back up at 1.5, make a few extra bucks, and be back to your original 7 days of vacation.

The pilots that have nice nest eggs and paid off student loans and 3 primary vacations a year love line bidding because it gets them basically a month off.

PBS is a different way of bidding. You basically put in preferences and it generates a schedule that tries to respect those preferences as much as possible. This leads to more efficient trips and depending on your seniority a better overall schedule. At bare minimum if you’re junior and need a few specific days off you’ll likely get them (although the rest of your month may suck). However, you lose trip touching. So now your primary vacation is just those 7 days. Basically it’s a loss to the senior pilots and a gain to the junior ones.

 

I’m not expecting much. This way, I won’t be disappointed if it isn’t a good TA.
And anything with PBS is a no vote for me.
PBS is a concession and a deep one at that.


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+1

PBS removes transparency from the bidding process and allows the company to be more efficient (work pilots more for the same cost). It would be a huge concession for all seniority levels in the company.

 

This is correct.

Although I no longer have a dog in the AWAC fight, a major key to PBS is how trip pairings are generated. If the company continues to use the same pairing generator they use now under PBS, the schedules will be no better and likely worse.

On the other hand, if they allow the PBS system to build the segments and pairings itself, then the potential is much greater to see some improvement.

Just remember, PBS stands for Preferential Bidding System, with the key being PREFERENTIAL. Not guaranteed, just preferential. I can see scheduling’s response now

ID

 

No dog in the fight either, but having used both I highly prefer PBS over line bidding. The ability to tell the system that I want certain days off, award/avoid certain pairing lengths, particular layovers etc etc...is worth the PBS switch.

Knowing that Awac loves mostly 4-day trips, I’m not sure how useful PBS would be.

 

There are pilot groups out there that like PBS. But there are also others were it did not work.

The only way it would work is if the PBS software was “unaware” of vacation awards. In other words, everyone bids on PBS, the pairings and lines are generated, and then the vacation drops are added.

It’s still a net win for the company because they can manage training, monthly integration and other known absences.

The only way the pilot group could trust this is if the Union was given the same PBS software and the same preference bids the company receives, and runs the software in parallel with the company. Both the company and the union should get the same result.

Also, the PBS software the company purchases is very important. There is some cheap stuff out there that just doesn’t work. ALPA National should be well versed on this topic.

Just my thoughts from my previous carriers where we implemented PBS.

 

Unless it is implemented in a way that allows conflict bidding for vacation trip touching, it would be a no for me. But till we see the TA it's all speculation.

 

Am I missing something with trip touching? Those trips go unpaid right?

 

First, there’s no way this TA has PBS in it. Read the email the MEC put out. Small pay raise, minor changes to the last TA that was voted down.

Trip touching: the trips are dropped without pay but you are still paid guarantee for the month.

Example: I am awarded a line with 85 hours of credit with three, four day trips. I have primary vacation that touches two of those trips, both of them worth 22 credit hours.

I get paid for 75 hours for flying 43 hours (a “loss” of 10 credit hours), anything I pick up is paid on top of guarantee.

 

Guaranteed pay, but if you wanted more than guarantee there's always picking up trips at 1.5x or 2x pay. I've had a few vacation months I picked up work and credited 150+