Skywest PBS
 

Do you guys like your PBS vendor (AOS) ? We are getting them at Airways just curious about if it's well liked like Deltas or hated like Uniteds.

Nevermind.......

I don't. It violates seniority by creating coverage days for some people but not for people junior to them.
For example, everyone in your base wants christmas off. Pilots 1-50 get Christmas off. PBS sees there is a lot of uncovered trips over Christmas. Pilots 51-100 now have a coverage day on Christmas, being forced to fly a trip over Christmas. Now that some of those trips have been covered Pilots 101-125 gets Christmas off.

There is a steep and never ending learning curve with this software.

Well, that's it. I just withdrew my app at Airways.

I got Christmas off last year bidding 84% in domicile exactly like this. I had no idea how until some people senior to me who we're working on Christmas showed me their bid and explained it.

It's a big steamy pile... :eek:

AOS is absolute garbage! It for the most part only supports the company. It's protocol is "global need" and therefore will sacrifice seniority to satisfy company requirements.

AOS is not user friendly and if given the choice I would gladly go back to line bidding.

One of the big obstacles between ASA and Xjet is the PBS vendor, the only thing they could agree on was that there was no way they would use AOS!

My biggest reason for bidding Aspen was for the hard lines. My schedule was much better with hard lines. I'm out of ASE for the summer, nervously awaiting the May PBS award.

To be fair, when I was a relatively senior (30%ish) FO, I could bid for and receive some pretty good schedules. So I'll say that it maybe sometimes works okay, if you know how to use it. I've never seen any other PBS system, though.

I agree wholeheartedly that it is not user friendly, which is compounded by poor documentation. Horror stories abound of people not getting what they bid for, but a bigger problem is that a lot of people don't even understand what they bid for!

I flew with the number 1 FO in a base and he was complaining about PBS because he didn't get what he wanted. He didn't bid for the proper estimated credit range, so instead of giving him another high paying local it gave him some crappy pairings. It's too easy to screw up your bid and get a crap sandwich instead of what you should have held. I've had several months of good lines. I've been the super junior guy that got Christmas off because people above me got screwed. The awards just aren't consistent and it puts company need above pilot seniority.