mike sierra

This.

also a well written agreement that company cannot circumvent

captande

I heard it’s far more complicated than that, comparing WO

boxthrower

PBS is a potential way PSA could get duty and trip rigs. If the company wants it that bad the union could potentially negotiate to write it into the LOA.

arbalist1

An advantage of PBS would hopefully be less time on reserve. With reserve being as terrible as it is here, that would be a huge QOL improvement for them. Yeah, once you get a line it's not as great as SAP right now, but you'd have a line as a more junior pilot. Think of how amazing an improvement it is once you get senior enough for a simple, junk build up line under the current system.

That being said, SAP is incredibly valuable and shouldn't be gotten rid of easily. We should be able to have a window to vote SAP back in after 12 months of PBS if the company is abusing it. That way they're motivated to make it worthwhile to everyone and it would establish past practice so they can't bait and switch.

captive apple

PBS requires fewer pilots which will extend reserve time for those currently or close to reserve.
How would it shorten reserve for a new hire?

trvsmrtn

You have to look at it from a pre-COVID standpoint. By making the pairings more efficient there wouldn’t be a need for as many reserves and you could build more lines.

Looking at it now, we fear that the need for fewer reserves would lead to more furloughs, or just prolonging the amount of time until we recall furloughs.

Pre-COVID, it would’ve possibly been good for the pilot group as a whole, but now it’s just seen as a way for the big bad company to put more of us on the street.

Approach1260

The real trick is that the proposed garbage holiday pay agreement was classic PSA where they're so opposed to giving us even a miniscule win that they torpedo their chances of getting an agreement that'd benefit them as well. To put it simply the company doesn't shoot for win-win it's gotta be company wins pilots lose.

What I'm getting at is supposedly we're going to vote on whatever PBS agreement gets negotiated, which means that if there is any chance of the agreement not being dead on arrival then they'll have to throw us a bone or two to convince 50% plus 1 of the pilots that it's a better deal than just sticking with the devil we know ie SAP.

It'd be nice to get some updates from the Union on this, but I suppose being paid to do nothing but ALPA business all month is too taxing to fire off an email once a week or so...

SFDRVR1220

PBS does not magically make pairings more efficient. The efficiency of the flying that we do is dependent on what we get from American that month. Planning (and our ALPA guys now) plug all of that into the pairing generator and it spits out the pairings. PBS assigns those pairings in a way that will hopefully fit your preferences and shape itself around training and vacation.

The current system we have now, line bidding, takes those sweet 11 hour 4-days and stacks them into a month. You're then awarded that line of flying. If you have training, vacation, or anything else falling in during trip, then that trip then gets replaced by whatever TRN, VAC, etc, you've got and put in the OT pot.

Also, your premise makes zero sense. Lets say that PBS magically made pairings more efficient. Now instead of two 11 hour 4-days you've got one 22 hour 4-day. You'd only need one crew instead of 2. I don't understand how you've come to your conclusion that we would "build more lines." This isn't even possible with PBS because the whole point of PBS is to not build lines, but rather assign pairings.

mike sierra

Currently issues at PSA:

Reserve sucks
Company does not negotiate in good faith
LOA have gray areas that company uses in their favor all the time
Union not communicating.
Trip pairing and line sucks because we don't have any protection for that

Things that are great at PSA:
SAP
Flow (If it still true)

Possible Solutions:
Change in the Union office

Both the union/pilot group/company work together in the agreements and ALL parties demonstrate they are willing to negotiate in good faith.

If we get a PBS system, we NEED to have an option to go back to the past system of line bidding and SAP, otherwise it will be impossible for the pilot group to believe both the union and management that they are negotiating in good faith because of past practice.

Moreover, it's possible to still have SAP after PBS. My suggestion would be something like this, what I believe it's a good compromise from both parties

Straight drop button for green days
grid needs to be green 75% of the days, including two weekends.
4 golden drop days per year (can drop on red without any constrain but holidays....company might be able to block a few holidays)
Holiday pay of 200% for everyone including reserve.
Duty rigs and trip rigs
Min Day 4 hours, despite show and release time.
100% deadhead pay
Aggressive pickup on reserve.
12 days off on reserve.

If that doesn't work, pilots can vote back to older system after a while.


This is something I would support and believe it would be a win-win for the pilots and company, however I don't believe it will be possible to see this coming true anytime soon because it's clear some part don't wanna negotiate in good faith or compromise a little bit to have a bigger win.

My advice:

VOTE ON THE ELECTION, GET PEOPLE THAT ARE TRYING TO DO SOMETHING IN THE OFFICE.

JayBee

SAP is a red herring in the same way the blues use money to whip up the froth of the uneducated. the real problem that never gets talked about which the company finally broached in their holiday pay proposal - trip touching. It's the same reason we don't have 150 & 200 % open time and why rigs will never be on the table.

It's doubly hilarious that the company wants to get rid of their best recruiting tool simply because of the lack of transparency of what they really want. Can you say throwing the baby out with the bath water?

The truth is this place will always be a second rate hack until we do two things - change Management's old school US airways crappy outlook towards employees (yeah right...) And get rid of trip touching (yeah right...)

This place is good for one thing - getting in and then getting back out ASAP