What I'm not sure of is this: does 20 occurrences represent 20 days missed, or 20 trips called off?

In the PPM it says an occurrence = 1 call-off, i.e. if you call in sick for one 4-day, it's 1 occurrence. But I've also heard that if you call in sick for a 4-day, it's 4 marks on your record.

So far I have not heard of anyone getting canned for attendance issues, except the 2 guys a few months back, one of whom chose to quit by simply no-showing for a trip.

I have somehow managed to never call in even once, but this CN/PN nonsense is getting ridiculous. Everyone's getting assigned 92 hours or more per month, and the 'min reserve' numbers are artificially inflated by CS, meaning that:

1) You can't ever drop a trip. Ever. I can't even drop a single turn on a day with positive reserves.

2) Since everyone's maxed out, it's very very hard to get anyone to take your trip...I've had multiple cases of guys trying to pick up a trip I've posted, but are denied since they'd go over the max hours in 168/ etc.

3) The company's insistence on high reserve staffing means that there are far fewer lineholders to pick up trips, but you still can't drop trips because of 'insufficent reserves.' Their strategy appears to include the following: load up every lineholder with maximum legal hours even during the allegedly slow months, keep a large number of reserves, but claim that no matter how many reserves exist, the reserve staffing is inadequate.

4) Due to SKW's awful implementation of PBS, you will often be denied trips that your seniority could hold. This month I lost seven trips (7!) due to 'replaced/ not awarded due to line constraints.' This is PBS's way of saying "Sorry, you could have held this trip, but we needed to give you 92 rather than 91 hours, so we took those trips away and planted a bunch of trips on your schedule that you never asked for." With this sort of idiocy in place, seniority becomes somewhat pointless.

20 is not a lot, and I am tired of flying with sniffling captains saying they have a perfect reliability. The average person is sick 16 days per year and that is not someone trapped in a tube with carriers. I was well above 20 at one point with no call, but they are now checking up on people.

people coming to work sick just multiply the problem. Screw the reliability and call in if you're sick.

Sorry to hear all that and CN does, well, stink. But if you're getting PN pairings and replaced for line constraint reasons, it really suggests a bid issue. The helpline (if you're around when they call you back!) is staffed by other crew members and can be extremely helpful for issues like these.

I haven't been PN'd in a while, and my bid strategies have vastly improved since my last PN.

However I had seven standups (SEVEN!) "replaced/ not awarded" for November. (My bidding is simple: I put every single standup in P1, then every weekend local and 2-day in P2, and then every Friday-Monday 4-day or Fri-Sun 3-day in P3.) Anyhow, my standups were replaced, of course, with lousy CN 4-days.

Meanwhile these standups get assigned to guys more junior than me, who don't want them, and then desperately try to dump them.

I'm sure this makes sense to KH. To me, it doesn't.

I think we can all agree the PBS docs aren't the best. That is all the more reason to call in and figure out 'why' its doing what its doing to you: Is it something you can adjust, or are you just screwed by the machine.

Called helpline multiple times. They have been able to explain why I get screwed, or replaced/not awarded. Usually it goes something like "yeah you could've been awarded all your trips, but it would've only given you 86.35 hours, so PBS took all your really good trips and gave them to junior folks, so it could award you 88.15 hours"

Or my favorite when it awarded all my trips to junior people that would've given me Thanksgiving off a couple years ago. PBS Helpline: "You bid the same thing in all 7 layers" Me: Yes but here are the trips numbers I bid and all these trips would have met the coverage day requirements and given me enough hours for minimum line value. PBS Helpline: "Well I talked to KH and MP and they said it was because you bid all the same days off in all 7 layers" After talking slowly and making them write down the trips I should've had, I was promised a call back from KH after he called AOS. Despite several messages left for him, never got a call back and SAPA's response was "Well if it was me, I would call him every hour" Weird cause I solved it with one call to CS telling them I wouldn't make the trip.

As far as I know, yes. There were a couple others who passed on the retake, but three who didn't. I heard that the retake was a substantially shorter test with zero fluff.

Correction to this; not entirely sure, but I think we lost someone *during* systems, then two more to the test.

Is the training insufficient or were they slacking off and wanting to be spoon fed and it didnt happen?

If the other 59 people figured out how to pass, that makes me think its not a training department issue