I'd put my career earnings against their number 1 pilot in a heartbeat. I think the average age over there is 60ish... You really wanna debate TVM vis a vis USAir? Really?

Someone probably said the same thing about delta in the past. Look at FedEx. That was not the place to be. Now they have FO's that out earn some of your WB CA's. Top dog will not always be top dog square.

If anyone tops Delta, we're going to insult them on the internet until they're mad at us and then we own them.

If we go before the NMB, to make the claim, the company would have to state who the more efficient airlines were.


Which of the airlines are more efficient than us, Sailing?

Of course. It wouldn't be as fun if you didn't. We non delta guys get a kick out of it.

Again... read the post. I have earned far more for far longer than an old USAir pilot will. He can out earn me for the next 5 years, and I will STILL have more in the bank. It is that inconvenient truth about TVM... Why is it that some of you people want to acknowledge TVM when it comes to our loss of pay via concessions, yet when a real world example is right in front of you you cannot see it? What I think it is is that you look at a pay scale... and ONLY a payscale and think that is the measuring stick by which we judge the success/failure of a contract... Myopic is the word you should look up.

The other thing is that we NEED them to top our payrates... and soon. But guess what. That ain't happening, because all they negotiated was a me too clause. SO again, we have to do the heavy lifting.

The last year with full data was 2012. There was only one airline less efficient then us that year. It was HA. Probably lots of credit in inter island flying. We were well below everyone else.
There is a point made by another poster I did not consider. We had and have outstanding anti furlough provisions. That forced Delta to over man the airline and would impact those numbers. The data for 2013 hopefully will bring us more into line with other airlines.

PBS gains it's efficiencies by how it works.

If you are Joe-bag-o-donuts pilot, you learn to work the system. With a LOT system of bidding with "touching trips", it's fairly easy to cause a trip stack.

Unless there is some kind of system schedule change, the flying over the end of the month is nothing special. Same as the middle of the month.

BUT, that's not how bidding works. When you bid a LOT, you want to maximize pay, and minimize work (duh). If you can cause a conflict that's pay protected, that's what you do, and those month to month transition trips fall out and stack up.

With a LOT system, there is no provision for "unstacking", and those trips pile up in the "unassigned pile" UNABLE to be assigned to line holders. That means they are going to reserves. While you may have enough reserves for the rest of the month, that same coverage will be inadequate over the transition days, requiring staffing to match. That means you carry reserves that are "excess" the rest of the month.

The same is true, to a lesser extent, with the various kinds of absences: Military, vacation, training, etc. If you have a trip that touches a vacation day or a training day, that whole trip falls out during the bidding process, and goes into the "open stack". With this kind of time, it's more evenly distributed throughout the month, but it is still open time. You can use a bit of historical data to figure out what will get picked up, but you still need to make sure you have the reserve staffing to cover the excess.

It's very much like a jigsaw puzzle. When you do your first pass, you get the easy pieces to fit together, but you have a lot of pieces left over. PBS is VERY good at getting the pieces to fit together so that you have very few left over. PBS will NEVER award a conflict. EVER (unless something changes after the run starts).

Now what Sailing said was true...kinda (like a lot of things he posts). There is within PBS, essentially, a "parameter file" (at least at NWA). Beyond the PWA and FAR rule set, the parameter file essentially tells PBS how hard to work to make things fit, and much "open time" to leave at the end of the run.

Those numbers can adversely affect "bid quality" to a surprising extent. If you force the system to produce zero (or near zero) open time, then the quality REALLY stinks, because the system really needs some "float" to operate correctly. This is why any group who tries it (and has a NC worth their salt) includes a "kill switch" that allows them to unilaterally go back to LOT bidding. Faced with the prospect of giving up the productivity gains of PBS, most companies will at least attempt to play fair and keep the numbers "honest".

This is why you will get multiple runs of categories on occasion.

Make no mistake. PBS is "shiny". The same mechanism that allows the productivity gains permits high to very high "bid satisfaction" pretty far down the category list. It does this because everyone's desires are slightly different. It shakes the puzzle box to evenly distribute pieces.

This is very similar to the pay banding issue. Get better schedules (which affect me now) in exchange for fewer pilots required (may affect me later, or not at all if I'm senior). With Pay Banding...get more pay (which affects me now) in exchange for fewer pilots required (may affect me later, or not at all if I'm senior). Of course, the people who are in the percentage band that gets "optimized" don't fare so well.

The only question is if you decide to go down that road, how much do you charge for the "exchange" of pay for jobs, and what, if any, safeguards to put in place.

Nu

Thanks Alan for responding to Sailings ridiculous and nonsensical response to my question.

2012? What were the other airlines doing back then?

SWA/Air Tran
United/Continental
American/US Airways

We were fully merged, fully integrated, and flying every non-fenced aircraft fleet together. United just got their seniority list together.

Now that all of these other airlines have started the process to merge, I bet they will be less efficient.

(Compared to how the other airline mergers have been going, you should probably be making the argument that we are among the most efficient pilots in the world.)

With that being said, I wouldn't be all that afraid to go to the NMB to fight an efficiency argument that the company poses. IMO (for index :) ), we could easily win that one.