Originally Posted by Carebear

JetBlue and Spirit already have issues with bots. As stated before, it's incredibly easy to write a script or a browser extension to do it. You can even go on google and hire a programmer to do it for you. I'm not even sure how people are able to snipe trips in open time at 9am on Open Time day, because you can click "submit" at 8:59:59 and somehow still be 78 in the queue and the trip you're trading for is gone when your position clears. Then that trip is posted up for grabs an hour later by the person who grabbed it, if not asking for Hawaii trips.

Even if you tried to run a manual program, even if you did it first come first serve, people can create a bot to create forms to submit when trips come up so they're first in queue every time. Other issue is supposedly if you have T-Mobile, which is what the company uses, you get the text alerts first. You can also see if you're just on the crew access, you'll actually see a trip before pop up a minute before the text goes out. Best way to do this is when you get a text, hop on crew access and notice that trip is gone, and the trip the other crew member who dropped for it for is there in open time.

Originally Posted by Khantahr

It's not a hard fix. You run pickups/swaps/etc a few times a day. Each time it runs, it goes via seniority among those who have requests in. United and Delta both do it this way.

Originally Posted by clearandcold

That’s a negative on doing it by seniority.

Originally Posted by Khantahr

You'll never get rid of bots if it's kept first come first serve.

Originally Posted by clearandcold

Some people will never be senior due to the age at which they were hired. The behavior weather it was via a bot or just someone who is fast at picking up and then used the trip as currency for a better trip has stopped for now. The threat of a pilot or pilots breaking company policy is not a reason to give away first come open time trading or pickup.

Originally Posted by Khantahr

To each their own. I've operated under both systems and I vastly prefer seniority based. It's not even close, I never want to go back to first come first serve, and that was true even as a new hire.

Originally Posted by GoodJet

At Alaska you can't have a life outside of work to succeed at manipulating your schedule via trades on reserve or picking up work. You have to sit on your home computer with fast internet to succeed and constantly refresh the website to pick anything up. Somehow, we have gone back to a culture similar to when pilots only had land lines and rotary phones. Even though we have all this amazing technology.

Originally Posted by clearandcold

That’s a negative on doing it by seniority.

Originally Posted by Khantahr

You'll never get rid of bots if it's kept first come first serve.

Originally Posted by rickair7777

It needs to be done in some order, and seniority is what we use in this industry.

But what UAL does is once you get a pickup/trade in seniority order, you go to the back of the list for subsequent requests until everybody else has an opportunity. That way you don't get a few seniors hogging it all.



This ^^^^

Plus most folks don't want to be tethered to their devices 24/7.

Originally Posted by rickair7777

It needs to be done in some order, and seniority is what we use in this industry.

But what UAL does is once you get a pickup/trade in seniority order, you go to the back of the list for subsequent requests until everybody else has an opportunity. That way you don't get a few seniors hogging it all.



This ^^^^

Plus most folks don't want to be tethered to their devices 24/7.