Yeah some people like blondes and some people like brunettes, but nobody like 400lb double amputees. His point is well taken that the desirable stuff will go very senior.

 

The general premise is sound, regardless of a handful of outliers.

 

I think everybody wants weekends off if they can do it with good credit trips, but I’d say most people like myself aren’t going to pass up a 25 hour 4 day even if it falls on a Saturday or Sunday. We only have a handful of trips with that kind of credit in each base so you gotta take what you can get. I’m top 25% in CVG so im relatively senior. I can usually get a 24 or 25 hour 4 day on my initial award, but rarely do I ever see that in SAP. I would guess once PBS gets implemented I can kiss anything over 22 hours combined since everyone senior to me will have all those trips already. Which, in turn means I’ll have to work an extra day or 2 to reach the 65 hour minimum in SAP.

Currently, with line bidding and SAP there’s not much difference between the worst R1 and the best R1. With PBS, senior guys will have better schedules, middle seniority will have decent schedules like now, and the junior guys will be stuck with all the 15 and 16 hour 4 days that the senior people didn’t want. They will probably only get 15-16 days off to reach 65 hours. Even if SAP is still around nobody is going to be putting anything good into the pot since PBS gave the high credit stuff to people who wanted it.

I’m ok with all of this, as long as we get something in return which I think we will. Better soft pay and higher flow hopefully.

 

Better soft pay would be a huge long-term win and take the sting out of inefficient trips

 

If I may be so naive. PSA is my first carrier so I don’t have any experience with soft pay I’ve seen discussed. What does like 4:1 or whatever the standard numbers I’ve seen actually mean and how are they applied.

 

4:1 would mean for every 4 hours away from base you get a minimum of 1 hour of pay unless your block is greater. So if your TAFB on a 4 day trip is 80 hours then you’ll get paid a minimum of 20 hours.

Something like that or if we could have a min day of 4 or even 4.5 with no carve outs, and 100% DH pay like almost everyone else would be awesome. Those last two items alone would give me an extra 3-4 hours a month even if nothing else changed. Not to mention scheduling might not want to have all the reserves DH to other bases so much if the 100% DH pay counted towards your 75 hour guarantee.

It might be too late since it was essentially deleted in LOA12 but I would like to see critical or something similar added back for when attrition starts to pick up and we’re not so fat on pilots. Maybe even 200% since that’s industry standard now. Just back in 2017 (even after the arbitration) it was pretty easy to pick up critical trips. We’ll be back to those staffing levels eventually.

 

Agree with above. Another perspective. Soft pay is like a monthly guarantee but basically trip-ly or daily

Trip rig : for every X hours away from base, trip pays 1 hour. ie no more 14 hour 4 days

Duty rig: for every X hours on duty, day pays 1 hour. (Ie 3 hour sits become paid)

They can have unintended effects (scheduling might move from the 4-4-4-2 hour 4 days to 7-3-3-7 hour ones) which is why a min calendar day is important also

 

Man, y’all are crazy even considering PBS. Soft pay, 100% deadhead, trip rigs, ONE PERCENT increase in flow! Not good enough reasons to bring in PBS. Even if they “keep” SAP around. Ball is in our court so chill out on all this PBS talk.

 

Were all entitled to our opinions...

 

Maybe you haven’t read the union emails, LOAs, MOUs, or listened to the conference calls, but the only reason we’re talking about it is because everyone knows it’s coming. No avoiding it. And of course we won’t be voting it in for nothing. Luckily, it looks like we’ll finally have a say as a pilot group on whether its something we want.