Foodstamps

While that is nice, with PBS at VX I've had Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years off, every single year, as a junior reserve pilot...as a junior lineholder...and as a well established lineholder. I don't NEED conflicts because...there aren't any.

I can bid in five minutes and get every day off I want, every trip I want, commutability, every overnight, every bit of soft time, every start/end time I want and everything else you can imagine, that I have selected, within reason. Line bidding is great if you have PAID conflicts and decent pairings. Alaska has neither, so let's stop lying to ourselves and moving forward, negotiate what benefits us all. I'd rather our company and pilots be more efficient and healthier, in turn we get compensated accordingly.

If the uneducated guys keep us in this archaic system of having to dick around with our schedules all month long and having 12-14 days off a month until we've been flying at Alaska for three decades, we'd be better off quitting to go somewhere that values their pilots both monetarily, and by giving them a respectable QOL. 12 days off is a joke. I had more than 12 days off on reserve.

pete2800

This is true. The work rules at Horizon with their old line bidding system were better than Alaska with regards to conflicts. Vacation wasn't accrued by the day, but by the hour. Thus, any trip that touched your vacation got dropped, and you got paid for it if you had the hours in your bank. None of this nonsense where you have to pick up something to get yourself back to minimum credit for the month... I once had 25 consecutive days off while using one week of vacation, and I got paid for the full month.

One of the more senior people here, correct me if I'm wrong... I believe the trip conflict language was something that got Kasher'd as well? To be honest, the advantage of line bidding dissipates rapidly without being able to use conflicts to your advantage.

Foodstamps

I'm glad you get it Pete. Please, show some of these guys the light. There's nothing to be afraid of IF provisions are in place to run it right, and run it like a real airline, not a regional. I wouldn't want a garbage PBS in place any more than a garbage line bidding system, but having worked under both systems, I prefer PBS BY FAR over line bidding. I have better $hit to do than fiddle with my schedule all month to get it right.

I look forward to sharing beers and b itching about contract 2020 with you.

Klsytakesit

Hate to tell you this but you were bought and merged into a west coast regional. It has always been laughable when people call Alaska a legacy major....When the SEA schedulers are done meddling with the Airbus PBS it will build lines that
look just like the Boeing lines....If we get PBS it will build 12 day off lines and you will be fly the same $hitty stuff we have and you wont be holding weekends and holidays off...No one in corporate wants you to be happy with your schedule...They do not care about efficiency or productivity....We are cheap. And commuting, forget about it...we start early and end late....Not going to change in 2020....We have zero unity....If corporate wants it we dont.....It takes about 3 years here before people get it....

lowflying

So who works on the holidays? You make it sound like PBS magically makes everyone get the holidays off. I think the more uneducated of us think that PBS is going to fix crappy pairings and work rules instead of thinking that leveraging PBS during negotiations might fix crappy pairings and work rules.

waterboy

Amen. Someone who gets it. Thank you.

EskimoJoe

I don't know how many times some people need to hear this, but for the last time, we get it. You do not understand this management. WE THE NATIVE ALASKANS DO. Your life will be far WORSE with Alaska management controlling PBS. PBS in and of itself is neither good nor bad, it's the ethics of those in control that decide that. I will NEVER support even trying it here. They have forever lost my trust. That happened in May of 2005 and they'll never regain it.

AltoCumulus

The funny thing is when you talk to guys on the line, the senior guys that stand to benefit the most from PBS are the most dogmatically against PBS.

AS trading system sucks. I was 20 out of 150 in PDX and had a hard time getting a trade. It was hard enough that I would bid to guarantee the days off I needed while being on crap trips. If I had PBS I would have had both my days off and my choice of trips.

When I first got here 10 years ago it was a little better. Humans actually did the trades so you could get stuff. For example if you want a DCA 2 day and submit for it, in the “old” days you could put a note in the comments that said you were just looking for a 2 day east coast no red-eye on the 12th or 13th and you would get it if their was one available. Now, with the computerized system, if the EXACT pairing is no longer available (maybe the senior guy traded his DCA on the 13th for the DCA you submitted for on the 12th) you will be denied the trade. So in practical terms, as soon as the number one pilot submits a trade, the hours of scouring the open time for trips that fit are out the window. The farther down the list you are, the more of a waste of time trading is. The benefit to be a little more junior under alaskas system is that at least after a certain point on the seniority list their isn’t a point to even bothering with first step. At least that’s a few extra hours of your life back.

Keep up the fight for PBS, while the PBS haters are the noisiest, I have a feeling they are losing their majority. Get it to a systemwide vote and let’s see.

Foodstamps

You misunderstand what I'm saying. I would never, EVER advocate for a PBS these @sshats at Angle Lake could control. There need to be protective provisions put in place and the pilots/ALPA get to set agreed upon parameters that must be adhered to. There is no reason this couldn't be negotiated.

In that scenario the pilots win, the company wins. That's why we would negotiate getting it, while also getting something substantial in return. Saying you'll never support PBS that would drastically improve QOL for every pilot on property, just because you got f ucked in 2005 on a contract - 13 years ago - is a very ignorant way to move forward.

It's 2018, PBS, properly run (and contractually enforced) is WORLDS better than line bidding without conflicts. I'm happy to send you an example schedule of what I can accomplish in five minutes of bidding, if you'd like. Feel free to compare it to anyone, any seniority, who's line bidding. I have many friends at Alaska, it's no contest. It's night and day.

Foodstamps

Obviously someone works on holidays, but if you understand how PBS works, it basically creates a window. For this example we will use Christmas as Dec 23-26th. As long as you work within that window, it's basically the same as working on the holiday. So bid a trip that ends on Dec 23rd or starts the evening of Dec 26th and PBS essentially says "cool, he's worked the holiday" and it won't try to assign another pairing within that holiday window. Someone gets boned further down the list eventually, but in many cases, since we had holiday pay under our old contract, finding holiday coverage wasn't hard.

Our new JCBA does NOT have holiday pay, thus coverage will be mandated to those who are lower in seniority, but the beauty of PBS is that everyone wants something different. I'm single and don't have kids, thus I don't care about working early/late/weekends/getting Wednesdays off to coach baseball practice. I can get more productive pairings and fill my schedule with stuff more senior guys are trying to avoid for whatever reason, and since they'd rather have every weekend off than a holiday for example, I'll still get what I want and for the most part, they will too.

I bid in five minutes and have my schedule by the 10th of the month just how I want it, meanwhile my buddies at Alaska have to fiddlef uck around with their schedule for weeks to get it even close, and have garbage productivity and time off. How is this QOL not wildly apparent to the PBS naysayers? It just makes no sense to me.