Does anyone like PBS?
 

My company does not currently have PBS but we are seriously considering it. I jumpseat alot and have never met anyone who has PBS who actually likes it. Does anyone that has PBS like it? Is it any better than lines of time? Pluses? Minuses? What are some protections that you would suggest we incorporate? Please discuss.

Nova, Frontline....Jim Lehrer. Who doesn't like PBS?

you beat me to that one

Management at any company loves PBS!

I think PBS is great. It's complex and requires a lot of trial and error but once you get it down it's an incredible system. You can ask or anything you want. I've never taken vacation time simply because if I want a week off I just bid for it and make it my first item on the list. If you want weekends off then make that first. When you're very junior its nice because you can bid reserve and pick your days off. If you commute then it's the best option simply because I'll put something like So that way I just told it to give me commutable 3 day trips. It will award you the best trips that you can possibly hold if you tell it to. It can be no more manipulated than other bidding systems by companies. They key lies in your trip trade system.

Personally I think it's the best option especially if you're a commuter.

There's too many variable to sum it up as being that easy, or that great.

Examples;

The quality of the software itself, the quality of your CBA if applicable

How well your scheduling committee is able to oversee it's operation since it's not like traditional line bidding and it's easy to tell if seniority was honored or not

How well the software operates in the parameters it supposed to.

Ask the CAL guys how much they like PBS bidding. When the get done complaining, if there's any time left, ask them if it honors seniority.

PBS only works well if the trip pairings put into the system are good.

In the case of my company, we just started using it and most are unhappy. The main problem for us is the very low staffing levels!! We could hire a couple dozen people and maybe it will make a difference.

My experience has been the same as most. My lines have been ok at best. Very few days off and somewhat commutable.

IF you are in the top 10% of seniority you will love it. Other than that ...good luck!

Very true! :D I rode on a CAL jumpseat from IAH-PHX one night and heard nothing good about PBS.

You need to be senior and have strong contractual language to make pref-bid good from a pilot's point of view.

Even for the top 10% it still takes a lot of work to get what you really want and even then it pbs findsnew and inventive ways of not doing it.

Having had both line bidding and PBS (at different companies), I'm a much bigger fan of PBS. If nothing else, it allows a better opportunity to get the days off you want by avoiding predetermined blocks of days off.

I'm about 40% in base and my trips are all commutable for the most part with 16 days off. The only time that changes is if I bid for something like a week off for snow skiing or something like that. When I ask for a week off it still has to build my 82hr line so then I'm more lax. Perhaps it's because of our contract but I can't imagine anything better. Being able to say "I want trips that start after 10am" is a HUGE plus for anyone not living in base.

I'm on the top 30 out of 170+ . I bid CDO's and get the overnights and days off I want.

I wanna know where you commute to/from where you can start your trips at 10 AM and commute in and finish at 8 PM and commute home.

In my base if you start before noon you aint' commuting in and if you finish after about 4 PM you're not commuting home.

Some commutes are better than others. I commute PHL-ATL. On almost any day of the week I can be to work by 8am and the last flight home leaves just before 10pm. If I want to commute in the night before, there's an 8pm flight to ATL. There are also several backside-of-the-clock flights per week on UPS for those diehards out there.

HOU-STL. If you don't cross time zones it's pretty easy. When I went to CMH it was a real pain esp since it was an outstation base. If you're based in a hub things are much easier since those flights don't normally start until after all the outstations bring the pax in. First flight gets me to work at 8:45am. Last flght going home is usually an 8:40pm but lately they've been fiddling with that making it an 8:10pm. Because of that shift I have a day trip I'm going to try and sluff off. The only problem is on a Sat where I think the last flight out is at 5ish pm.

I'll reiterate what higney said, and add that your airline must have adequate staffing. PBS will take whatever flying it has and spread it out amongst all the pilots, even if it means the senior 20-30% still only get 11-12 days off just like the junior guys. That's exactly what is happening with us right now.

I have been senior, and I have been junior using PBS.

If you are in the top 10 percent, PBS is great. If not, it mostly sucks.

PBS won't have anything to do with that. No more than bidding lines. That's based on pairing efficiency. For instance in STL we started getting a lot of DAL day trips that rolled in from CVG. These trips aren't near the quality and thus go to the lower bidders. If everyone got 27hr 4 day trips then you'd only work 12 days a month :D It's all about the pairings. The system just awards them in the way you bid. Every time I've gotten a bad schedule it was because of some mistake on my part or someone above me bid for the trips which sent me into denial mode. I'm glad we have it. Lets the people living in base bid that way and the commuters bid their way. Also gives you the option to avoid working with people you have issues with. I don't see that as a problem in my base but the option is there.

Again, depends on the software and parameters. Again, just ask the CAL guys how good it is. It will disregard seniority to spread the flying out equally.

I commute from PWM or BOS and can be to ATL (where i am based by 9AM) and can commute home on the 830 PM flight and it ll work but I am curious if the PBS is good for mid- lower junior guys for getting weekends or even one weekend day off each week per month...or is it posible working weekends for us to get at least commutable trips if we work over the weekends.....jsut lookin for feedback, thanks

I have bid both at the top and bottom of a list using PBS and in both cases I always had a better line! The trick is to understand the system and bid realistically.......

With PBS like it has been said before, you have to have protections in your contract and the union overseeing bids. While this system is no where near perfect, I have had line bidding and PBS...PBS ranks higher. I used to cross time zones for commuting from MCI-DCA and I would use the parameters for check in >915 out <730 and only got stuck on 1 end or another 5 times in a year (I was around the 60% in base). So it definitely can make life better once you get the hang of it, if you have an operation Flica or some sort of trip trading system that helps a good deal as well.

I like PBS . . .
 

My post is not intended to invite any flames, although I am sure it will.

In my personal opinion, PBS at Skywest works very well. I have never been in the top 20% of either the FO or CA seniority lists and I am happy with what PBS awards me. The handful of months where I felt like I "got the short end of the stick" because of PBS, it was MY FAULT in how I bid.

You live, you learn. You screw up your bid, you learn.

No, we do not have a "union" in the traditional sense at Skywest to oversee the bidding process. (Thank goodness). What we do have, however, is a good working relationship between our management and our pilots.

PBS will work very well for you if you learn how to use it AND your expectations about your potential award are realistic.

If you don't take the time to thoroughly learn how your specific PBS works, believe it or not, you will get what you bid for.

I really hope your not talking about PSA or PDT. PBS would just make things worse. The new contracts would have to have really good language and even then I am sure the companies would just ignore it anyway.

I have to second several other comments on this thread. First, PBS is worthless if the program has terrible pairings to work with. The lines at the bottom of the list will generally be worse than what you would see with hard lines, but a junior person will usually be able to get a specific day off if that is their only concern.

On the plus side, if the pairings are decent, then the guys at the top of the list will love it. Another advantage of PBS is that it will automaticly compensate for planned absences, i.e. vacation and training events. This translates into about a 10% increase in the number of hard lines and fewer reserves.

Lastly, with PBS you need to know how your program works and remember that garbage in means garbage out. For example, I have seen senior guys get screwed because they asked for max pay and ended up with 10 days off and 95 hours of credit when they really wanted max pay per day. just make sure you learn your program.

In conclusion, I liked PBS at my previous carrier since I was so senior and could ask for almost anything I wanted. I would be terrified if my current carrier started using it since I think it would mean never seeing a weekend off.

If you have a busy homelife PBS is invaluable. The flexibility more than makes up for the small downsides. When we had hardlines I couldn't schedule things during individual weeks unless I wanted to work weekends all month. With PBS you can mix and match your work week to line up opposite of what you're doing at home. It allows me to do normal things like play softball and go to my kid's practices. If the pairings already suck PBS will not make it better but it won't make it worse either.

you all can have your PBS.. never heard anything good about it!!!

No PBS has everything to do with that... when we had "hard" lines, they built a mix of schedules. The senior guys got pretty good lines, the junior ones not so much. The very next month, with virtually the same parings to be allocated, almost everyones schedule went to ****.

I'm glad to hear that at some companies PBS works well; ideally it should, and can help a lot of people. PBS does not work well everywhere, however.

For the guys that like PBS, is it able to give you at a minimum 17 days off, and at times 26-28 days off with one week of vacation use, with no hit in minimum monthly guarantee?

PBS is generally good for the top 10-20%
Even very junior bidders can usually get the days they want off.
If the pairings from the company are crap... Nothing can fix that.. not even line bidding.
BID realistically. When I was at RAH I was the BASE FO rep for S5 and MOST of the time when guys got crappy schedules it was because of unrealistic bidding. The MORE restrictions you put out there... eventually the systems gives you the finger and just starts assigning trips. ONLY very senior guys should be asking for specific pairings on specific days. Middle of the road guys might throw one or two curve balls at the system trying to massage their schedule. But the junior guys should ask for specific days... and maybe a restriction on show or release times ( but that could backfire )....

I have done both and both have advantages.

PBS bites ! Why did people junior to me get Christmas off ? My bid couldn't have been more explicit-"Prefer off Dec. 25th".The company can manipulate the system to get the results THEY want."Award Report Time before xxx.."-"not considered"..."Prefer off weekends"-"not considered"-still people junior to me get it.Bid what you want-at the top of the results page you'll get hit with "Affected by denial mode","Affected by unstacking" or my personal favorite "Manual Assignment"."Set min sked " means an 88 hour line with 12 days off with 4:30AM show times.My last bid had "honored" after every request,but not one request was honored-see "denial mode" and "unstacking " above.It ought to just say "Seniority-not considered " and be done with it.

PBS is great if you know how to work the system and are flexible. You also need to know what you are able to hold with your seniority. I was holding atleast 15 days off when I was in the bottom 5% of lineholders. My monthly line value was min guarantee but I didn't care. One month I did 2 4 days and a 5 day and I was about 5 from the bottom out of 200 line holders which was also 1 month before I was furloughed.

If you bid for stuff you can't hold you will get really really really bad trips.

true but that is not the spirit of a pbs. It it being used as a manipulation tool rather than a scheduling & line matching tool. Real PBSs are created as a replacement for paper bids and rogue programs that do line sorting and stuff.

I typically hold 18 days off and with vacation had 22 days off and my 75 hour guarantee.

i'm just 2 days too late

It's a great system, but make sure your management buys all the software options for most flexibility. We had teething problems. Contracting a trial period before accepting it gives you more negotiating power to hold over management before signing up for PBS.

For the most part I like PBS though it could certainly be better. I am a junior (60%) line holder who does not commute so I am easily able to get weekends off and even get some of the layovers I like. If I commuted, I would certainly have to sacrifice my weekends in order to get a more commutable line. If your company is considering it, make sure you do not give them a blank check! It is imperative to get very clear parameters set with regard to pairings, number of reserves, adequate staffing and some percentage of uncovered pairings in open time. Get the rules in writing or you will be sorry!

Yep!!!!!!!!!!!!!