Quote:
Originally Posted by SlammedItOn
Another negative is the negotiated vacation rules are not as good as our current vacation with line bidding unless you are on reserve. It’s common with our current contract to have 40 hours dropped on trip touching with vacation and 50-60 hours with a transition vacation. So that is 5.5-8.5 hours per day. If I understand correctly PBS will prevent trips from touching vacation and build a line around our vacation at 5 hours per day so the system will fill our schedules with all kinds of random pairings to build to the set credit threshold. If there are not enough pairings left to fill the schedule you will be awarded reserve. WHY renegotiate something the majority enjoy. KEEP LINE BIDDING AND CURRENT VACATION with 5 hours per day for reserves.
You are correct that PBS will prevent trip touching drops. You're also correct that the value of the vacation will decrease under PBS compared to current practice for many. Bear in mind that under our current book, the company has the option of increasing the frequency that pairings flying through your domicile, restricting how much credit you could drop through conflicts. Considering the industry average vacation day value with PBS is around 3.5 hours, our 5 hour day is a positive thing.
As far as PBS randomly filling in your schedule with pairings, that's not true unless you don't specify any preferences. PBS will attempt to honor your preferences as much as it possibly can. In other words, if you ask for days off around your vacation it will start by eliminating all pairings from consideration that operate on your requested days off. With what is left over in the pot, it will add flying to your schedule to get your credit to the bottom of the line construction window. If it can get there, you're done and it moves onto the next guy junior to you. If it can't get there, it will go into denial mode and start to deny your preferences in reverse order, trying to add flying at each step. At some point it will get enough flying on your schedule and then stop. The more senior you are, the more likely you are to get all your preferences honored. If it has denied all your preferences and still can't get you above the bottom of the line construction window, it's probably because you're not senior enough to hold a line anyway then it will put you on reserve.
If you end up with a trip on some days off that you wanted to include as a part of your vacation, then you'll still have the opentime pot to drop/swap with.