Of course if the union agrees (in exchange for something we find out later) we will vote it in by 68%.

It may work great on the 747 at NW, where you only have 100 or so guys in each seat in a domicile, and where you're only flying to 5-10 different cities, and going out on 3-5 day pairings. But for a system like Fedex, the MD-11 in MEM will have over 1000 pilots in each seat, flies to dozens of different cities, and has pairing that vary from one-day out-and-backs, to 15-day international, around-the-world trips.

For a system like that, a preferential bidding system would be an absolute nightmare for the pilots. Talk about giving the company carte blanche to turn the sodimizer loose, PBS would do it.

Also, anyone that thinks a PBS system might work at Fedex, should also look at section 7 of the contract that deals with bidding vacation with a secondary line. PBS would destroy one of the few good deals we still have left in our contract.

PBS is an absolute deal-breaker for me.

Secondaries are basically PBS. Since that system sucks, there is no way I would want it to create my line.

I will never sign off a contract that has PBS...as a member or (if elected) as an MEC rep.

20 years in the active duty and ANG were wonderful, but also taught me the value of CONTROL. If you bid a crap line that at least has a day off you need, or bid a great line but one that causes you to reschedule that family function--its YOUR trade off and call. Hoping that software and nice person in scheduling "make it work out" for me is a crapshoot. I know some guys have had great success with secondary lines, and many months I'd hold the #1 or almost always the #2 line...yet I do not bid them. Once you taste having a hint of control over your schedule, giving that control back to someone else seems miserable to me.

If you want PBS...then bid secondaries. If you like hard lines--stick with what we've got. Want better lines? Quit flying DPs and support your SIG, and give them legitimate feedback (not just whining).

Vote for Albie NOW!!!!

A PSIT guy inferred that the company is already started down this road in the MD11; because now, most of the pairings are built in such a way that they can only be built easily into lines in one way-- the company computer's way! Despite the pressure, they keep doing their best for us, month after month. The PSIT is trying to apply the ALPA motto: Schedule with Safety-- OUR Safety in mind. Too bad folks like DP flyers aren't respecting their efforts and cooperating in the effort.

Like was said above-- you want PBS (administered with company rules) then bid a secondary line. Afterwards, let us know how really good life turned out when compared with what you should have been awarded according to your seniority.

And as far as negotiating a better PBS deal-- get a grip; our company doesn't relinquish control of anything that gives them a strategic advantage. Hopefully, the MEC/NC is paying attention to this thread. After all, we are making our voices known before opening day this time. .

Shack!!!!! (...10 characters minimum)

I don't want PBS either, but the above statement is way off. I wish our VTO system had the user options of a PBS system-at the very least a user controlled scoring system.

Well could be wrong, but my understanding from talking to a SIG guy is that the company let the SIG decide what program they wanted to use for secondary lines. The programs are PBS programs. Just because we do not input the info the way you would like does not make them non PBS.

I couldn't tell you what programs are being used since it's transparent to us line pilots, but since most pairing generation programs also have pbs program interfaces, it's not surprising. In the end though, what we the pilot see for VTO's really isn't like using a PBS system. If you've ever used one, you know what I mean. You would never enter something like 'east coast commuter line' into a PBS system. More importantly, in PBS you can assign both positive and negative scores to items in PBS that you cannot in our VTO system. For instance, you can say '500 pts avoid duty day longer than XXX' where XXX is determined by you. That gives a -500 point score to every duty period your duty day is above XXX. Desire would give an opposite effect. You the pilot determine the relative score of items in your bid vs. saying that the items on line 1 are equally important and more important than line 3, 4, etc by some value determined by the company vs. you. The overall function set in a typical PBS system is mind-boggling compared to our VTO setup.

I've seen some VTO systems that allow you to do something like this, just not ours which was the main gist of my point. I don't want a PBS system for regular or reserve lines, but would welcome them making more of the functions of the PBS systems available to us line pilots for VTO's. I hate not being able to appropriately score preferences.

Unfortunately, the push for PBS will have nothing to do with this because most pilots don't understand that PBS does absolutely nothing to change the pairings created by the company. PBS is usually sold to pilots as a schedule improvement tool and pilots tend to get the
idea in their heads that they can create their own better pairings which simply isn't true. Also, it doesn't do as much for the senior as they believe because the PBS build is a 'global build'. What this means is that PBS computer builds the whole bid award at one time instead of building line 1, 2, etc like most pilots think it does. This means that it often takes good pairings from senior pilots and gives them to junior pilots and vice-versa so that the entire award fits the parameters set by the company. It's an electronic version of what the SIG says when they talk about why they have to mix the lines the way they do sometimes. Bottom line, it works well for secondaries, sucks for regular lines, and really, really, really, sucks for reserve pilots.