Management has made it abundantly clear that their primary concern is cost. This of course is a sacrifice to quality of life as well customer service. Although the same situation may not happen on your side, QOL is not too high on their priority list and they will attempt exploit what they can to save a buck where ever they can( Big surprise I know). No need to have my head in the sand to see that. Just reality

 

Uhm, you do realize that's not a result of PBS, but is a result of a terrible contract, right?


Allow me to tell you guys this, although you'll probably just dismiss it as nothing:

ASA isn't my first airline. I came from another that had a PBS, had it for a very long time. While I was on reserve, I could build my very own schedule, got whatever I asked for off every month.

"How?" you might ask. Well, it was a combination of 2 things:
1) I bid smartly. I bid for what my seniority would get me. I knew it was unrealistic to bid for 1 day trips Mon-Thurs. Guys at ASA try to bid this, and get mad when they don't get it.
2) We had a good contract. I would bid for whatever reserve hard days and soft days I wanted, this is not possible at ASA due to a terrible contract with basically no reserve rules. I could pick up flying on my days off, which would automatically pay me 1.5x, and on top of guarantee. And reserve there was basically what would be known elsewhere as "relief lines", ie I would get reserve for the month, but many times, half of the month would be pre-assigned with the leftover open time.

Sorry for getting off topic. There's a specific thread for just this topic, and this isn't it. We can move the discussion over there. Just don't blame PBS for a late schedule and crappy work rules. I don't like it any more than you do, but let's assign responsibility to where it should be.

 

You do understand any major QOL changes require a vote right? Unless they go out of their way to make all 10 hour 4 days. In that case, we'll exercise our 600 hour sick banks

 

Ok, I'll respond to this and then leave the rest for the other thread. All ASA guys have the same argument simply because again, they don't understand our system. I'm sure PBS is great and working well for you guys compared to what you had. I have been a line holder for 5 years, and I have always done 1 and 2 day trips. Even when I was the very last line holder in base and all I could hold was 4 days over weekends. During line improvement, I would simply trade my four 4 days for a selection of 1 and 2 day trips that were dropped throughout the month due to senior pilot conflicts from vacation, training, ect. As a result, I would usually gain 6-8 more days off and I would get all my weekends off. I appreciated this as one of the last line line holders in base. The senior guys didn't need to trade for these trips as they were holding what they wanted. What don't you guys understand? You can have the schedule you want, even if you're the bottom of the barrel! Why accept a system that simply awards you what you can hold and thats it? Why force yourself to only bid what you know you can hold? In our system, it doesn't matter what line you get! You don't have to fly a single trip on it. You just need to have a punched ticket into initial line improvement. If you're an initial line holder, you can manipulate your schedule however you wish. If I was a junior line holder, I would rather get 10% of what I want and then trade into 95% of what I want, vs getting maybe 35-40% of what I want and then thats it. I'm stuck flying what I'm awarded. Your system is fine for phase II bidding (guys who would have been reserve but are awarded lines) but we will never accept this for phase I. What we have is simply too good, and once its gone we would NEVER get it back.

 

I want that.

 

So who flys the 4 days over the weekends?

 

The people who want to, secondary line holders, and reserves. Why is this so hard for you guys to believe? When the initial window closes, open time is all 4 days over weekends. Trips everyone drops.

 

In other words, the same people who hold weekend lines under PBS will hold relief lines or reserve and still work the weekends. It's not hard to believe, but if you look at relative seniority, the people who hold full weekends off will be at the same %, the people who hold partial weekends will be at the same % and the people who can't get weekends off will be at the same relative %. The end result is not going to be that different, except when the dust settles, you still have better trip trade/drop rules.

Don't mistake the line delivery system for work rules. Your work rules after the lines are delivered are awesome, your line delivery system not so much.

 

We were supposed to have ours by 20th too. But the company could care less when the schedule comes out and the union hasn't done anything to make the company pay for their stupidity and lack of respect for the contract. So your perception that the hard line bidding will prevent something like this happening again is simply wrong.

 

Right, but our work rules could not be utilized if all the lines were built at the same time because there would be no conflicts, ie basically no open time. This is what we are trying to tell you guys. If I'm 50% and can only hold partial weekends off, then thats what I get under your system. Our trip trade/drop rules mean nothing if there are no trips to trade! PBS eliminates these trips by reducing conflicts. Ive seen the system, I've done the research. I'm telling you guys over and over, your QOL will be astonomically better with our system. You have complete freedom. Sure you might not get as much of what you want initially, but I absolutly guarentee that you will end up with nearly 100% of what you want every month. If your MEC would just allow you guys to use it for awhile in a beta mode, you would see. There is absolutly no doubt in my mind your eyes would be opened if you would just see what this system can do. I'll say it again, it is impossible to fully utilize our work rules under a PBS system because there simply wouldn't be enough open time. If the company comes to us and says, we'll give you XJT work rules with ASAs PBS, it means absolutly nothing. With any less open than we have now, our trip trade/drop rules are literally useless. We are not trying to be stuck up or flame on you guys, we are telling you the Gods honest truth.