I would like to get some opinions of guy/gals who's company has Pref. Bidding.
Do you like pref bidding?

Thanks

It it horrible. I get less days off now, can never get a weekend or holiday now, and with it came the end of build up reserve and any chance to make more than guarantee. Did I mention I hate it? It's ok if you are in the top 5-10% of your bidding list but otherwise it is a major concession.

Not from personal experience, but from everything I hear.

Pros-Nothing
Cons-Everything

Thanks Avroman, I too hear its good the senior guys, and horrible for the Junior guys. I have also heard that is charaterized as "one's trash, is another one's treasure or visa versa? And can't the company tweek the settings, % of days off, weekends, ect....

I've used pref bid a two airlines and I wouldn't want to go back to line style bidding. You do lose out in months with vacation/training - trip drop stuff, but I like the fact that if you are #1 you can get exactly what you want.

I think our pref bid reserve at DAL is much better than when we bid reserve by published lines too.

YMMV.

Either system can be good or bad. Bidding lines you have to depend on the company/union input to build a schedule for the month that you would want to fly. With PBS you build you own schedule out of what is left based on your seniority. If the company/union only puts short trips in PBS, you'd better live in domicile. Often, PBS gets trashed because you can't conflict bid. You can conflict, depending on how your company builds PBS. If the vacation & training bids were placed after the PBS bids were awarded, then you would like PBS better. If they are placed in front of your bid, then you will have less days off. I've flown both systems. The more significant schedule improvement tool is to have a real time trip trade system. Otherwise, you better be #1 on the list.

Major airlines want it, pilots don't. Who do you think it benefits? I like to conflict VA, Trng., Bid overlap. These conflicts alone are worth many extra weeks off with pay.

Would you rather have three weeks off with one week of VA, or one guaranteed week?

I agree with what another said, there are going to be pros and cons with both. However, I like PBS but it is the only thing I know besides the crappy USAF stuff.

I'm in a unique position. I am in a junior base on the junior equipment and I'm in the 50% percentile. Typically, there are only 4-5 lines underneath me before the reserves lines start.

Even though my seniority isn't very high, I routinely get lines I am happy with. In fact, I tend to take the stuff that others don't want. And everyone seems to want different things, so it has a way of working itself out.

Now, when it comes to the big holidays that everyone wants, of course, seniority is going to come into play. However, even then, people at the bottom of the list can get lucky.

My company used to have hard reserve lines built. To me, that was aweful. If I needed some days off (for example a birthday here, a party there ..etc.), it was impossible. With PBS, I can put that in my preferences and PBS will do everything it can to build me a line around that. And now that we PBS reserve lines, I can get just about any sequence of or any days off that I want .. provided im not asking off major holidays or all weekends.

It must be good for the pilots, the union does nothing but defend it.

And it's intuitive, too. It has only required 27 Notepads to explain it.

The union says it great, so it must be so.

If you say something is great long enough and often enough, it will be so.

When I was flying purple airplanes, I didn't understand why pilots/union were so vehemently opposed to PBS......Now I understand.