Quote:
Originally Posted by Sink r8
I remember it being established long ago, on a forum far, far away, that seeing what people bid, or having practice bids (I think FedEx does it) simply gives one more opportunity to game the system, by witholding their bid to the last minute. As such, it didn't work well, I'm told. What was your experience?
I agree that if the bidding is done with few/random large bids, a practice bid is really of no value because pilots will most likely change their bids when it is time for the real deal. That is why I like the monthly bid as you can get a better idea of what people are really doing as you watch it over time. The APA system we had was nice (not perfect by any means though) in the fact that you could pull up a list and get names of every person with a bid in for a particular position and where they placed it in order of preferences. Typically if it was listed as a 3 or 4 and higher, odds were that the individual really wasn't trying to get the position but was gunning for a different piece of equipment. I guess similar to what we have now with really only breaking it out by the top 3 and then overall.
As I sit here and type out a long answer, I am realizing that what we are really dealing with is the large transitions due to the merger and I guess that no matter what system we have/use the negatives are going to be witnessed at a much larger percentage during this transition compared to the relatively status quo we are used to (yeah, we each had base closures/realignments but by and large their wasn't as many large movements as we are going through now). Once we get back to some sort of normal, I believe that either system will be working fine and most of us wont really care much one way or the other. That said, I would still like to have it done monthly since it does put a little more control in the pilots life for getting out of a bad situation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sink r8
I agree that the preferences we see now are too vague to derive a clear picture of who might be bidding a category, but it's a necessary evil because it protects what I consider to be private info. I don't wan't people to see how I bid. I only want the pilots to have access to it after the fact, to make sure noone was cheated. Beyond that, it's not of anyone else's business, how I bid, or what I want. I look at it as proprietary info: if I spend hours sweating my PBS bid, I own it. Same for the AE.
Fine, I don't care if people see what I am bidding for or not, and if asked, I would tell them (I am not bidding anything for the next couple years). You do know that everyone can see exactly how you do your monthly bidding (yes, after the fact, but odds are you don't change your strategy all that much).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sink r8
I do feel, however, that the comapny has too much freedom with the AE system, and that it needs to be more transparent. I don't like the fact they can choose to backfill or not backfill certain categories druing the award, or that they can selectively not enforce every displacement, or that they can withdraw bids. In my mind, they say what positions are up for bid, and the slots are filled automatically, each vacated position being available to a lower seniority bidder, etc. I was told your APA required backfilling of positions, and I think that's an improvement we should seek.
Absolutely agree with your above comment.
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06-14-2016
