Good idea, I just went back and lloked. Reruns aside, the 14th is the latest the Captains have gotten their schedules this year. A few months it looks like I didn't get the FO text, but the latest I saw was the 15th.
It would be interesting to see what our schedules would look like if that's what we got. There is a fair amount of toying with coverage and the threshold during the bid process. I would be good to know the PBS chairman thoughts on this.



They have three NB fleets, we have five, so there is more complexity there. Knowing Delta, they have the Deltamatic running at full 486 speed, optimizing fleet type on every leg. I do think getting the packet a day earlier seems reasonable. Then cut out a day of the bid window and we get them two days earlier. Not sure how much QOL would be produced by getting them much earlier than that.

I may have missed it, what is UALs timeline for schedules?

 

I don’t get why cashing out is such a big deal. We get so much sick time (past about year 3) that unless you just have major medical issues you’re never in fear of running out of sick time. And if you do use it up, then “poof” you get a full bank again come May 1. I don’t see the company ever allowing us to bank huge sick numbers each year. From the survey it looked like a good middle ground might be to have a better (and I can’t remember the exact term) sick disability bank. In other words we should be able to bank a smaller number of hours each year to have in case of a large disability event.

 

20-C-1 Timeline.

20-C-1-a Schedule bidding shall open no later than 1700 CT on the fourth (4th) calendar day

of the month and shall close at 0800 CT on the tenth (10th) calendar of the month for Captains

and at 0800 CT on the eleventh (11th) calendar day of the month for First Officers.

20-C-1-b By Equipment-Base, Captain monthly schedule awards shall run prior to First Officer

monthly schedule awards. Captain schedule awards shall be completed no later than 2359 CT

on the thirteenth (13th) calendar day of the month. First Officer schedule awards shall be

completed no later than 2359 CT on the fifteenth (15th) calendar day of the month. Monthly

schedule awards for each Category shall be published in PBS when completed.

Our FOs can put a “Don’t fly with X” so they can’t start running until after their CA BES is awarded.

 

Question. Does your PBS system still use a "globalization" parameter? When we went with PBS 20 years ago (!) that was a no-go item for DALPA.

For those of you wondering what globalization is (at least as I understand it), it is a PBS parameter that may violate a senior pilot's seniority and bids, in order to create a set number of lines. Or, it will specifically not build an extra few lines (thus relegating more pilots to a reserve line, even though it could have created a few extra lines) once again, to create an exact set number of regular lines as decreed in advance by the company. At least, that is my understanding of how some other PBS systems work--or at least used to work.

If globalization is still a thing, that would certainly allow the company to speed up the PBS award processing--though not in the pilots' favor.

 

How about allowing us to change things via PCS before the 20th?

 

I had a friend who was in a PBS working group in a former life. It doesn't take the company THAT long to run an individual BES bid. But I'm sure it does take time with Delta's staffing model of if it takes 5 people to run a department, staff it with 2.

I'd be okay cutting out 2 days from the bid window. I'd say I'd be okay shortening the award window but I don't know if doing that has any real benefit over current business

 

Thanks for posting that.

For the Captain side, so far this year our schedules have been published on the 13th for two months and the rest were the 14th. I suspect CA bid will be published today. FO's were the following day except for one month where it took a second day for some reason.



Valid point. I forgot they had the G-line, which sounds great in theory, but if it globalizes the bids, that isn't always a great thing. This is why during CQ bidding, your seniority does not always mean you get what you can hold.


I would love that. Having set days (before the 17th) that our schedules have to be published would be great and help in moving up that PCS. It seems like if the CA/FO bids are published separately, we could even move the CA PCS start up a day as well. Not sure if there is any reason they have to start on the same day.



This is true, the individual runs are pretty quick. The company has quite a bit of control of moving the threshold to get the results that they want, so they likely do multiple runs, you can sometimes see it in the code at the top of the page of the wides. We generally benefit from them taking some time to get it right. My guess is individual categories could have their published early as they finish them, but knowing pilots, people would lose their minds that x has theirs and they don't.

 

If we can get our schedules sooner, we can also move up the 20th PCS run. I'm a serial swapper so I'd love to be able to tweak my schedule sooner

 

Are you super serial?

I see absolutely no reason why PCS shouldn't start 24 hours after the bid release deadline

 

Thuper therial