Pretty sure they’re just going off guarantee and hourly rates. They’re A350 CA’s making over $1m at DL when that fleet is short. I don’t know any line pilot who’s made that in a year here.

An obvious point that I don't doubt the company is trying to exploit is that DL has PBS. We don't.

They know full well how allergic we are to even the mentioning of the term. It's like our kryptonite. I think we've made it into a negotiating weakness for ourselves.

I think it's interesting that DL had not made obtaining line bidding a pillar of their negotiating goals. I don't think they made it a goal at all. I don't think any of the major airlines with PBS are attempting to go back to line bidding.

If PBS is, in fact, so terrible when applied with the set of contractual stipulations that places like Delta have, why were they not clamoring to go back to line bidding? I understand that a lot of the regionals where a large percentage of SWA pilots come from had terrible PBS implementations, but that doesn't necessarily mean PBS itself is inherently bad.

I think my main objections to PBS (aside from the vacation and overlap issues) would be that if we had PBS here, we'd have to rely on the company:

1) to administer it in the spirit of whatever contractual terms we agreed to and not manipulate the sh** out of it
2) to effectively implement the PBS technology

I don't trust them to do either of the above in a competent or ethical manner. SWAPA's recently told story of the company "team" cheering loudly when they won the "irregular operations" arbitration dispute is pretty telling, IMO.

And maybe the biggest takeaway is that since the trust is gone; since the managers here have flipped Herb's big idea of serving the internal customer into serving the Wall St and C-Suite customer; since the managers have essentially turned the SWA work environment into the airline pilot equivalent of an iPhone factory; since our peers at the Big 3, UPS, and FedEx outearn us by a wide margin over the course of our careers while flying significantly fewer block hours, takeoffs, and landings for no better reason than we're NB pilots when the RLA doesn't require us to abide by that metric --- then I require a considerable premium in career compensation at guarantee over that of my peers at the Big 3, FedEx, and UPS. I'm talking about 12-yr CA rates at DOS + 3 in the neighborhood of $550, which would require a nearly 100% rate improvement at DOS with 4% yearly raises thereafter.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve been told before that PBS at Delta in particular is unique because they overlay the vacation week after the line is awarded so they can take advantage of conflict drops the way we do. If that’s the case, it neuters the argument against PBS to some extent.

Thats really my only objection to PBS. Our vacation overlap, month to month overlap, (and if we ever are able to bid for training, let’s not forget training overlap) drops are a massive benefit both individually and to the pilot group. Financially and, more importantly, time off.

I firmly believe when they finally get around to modernizing our scheduling software they’re going to throw the PBS card again.

If you can overlay your vacation and training AFTER you get your line and then the pulls happen then I'd be willing to listen. But the company would want the "flexibility" of pre-awarding your training and vacation and then building you a schedule up to the bid window and filling it with crap you don't want.... it would be an absolute goat rope. So... hell no.

Alan Casher. FIFY..

PBS is just a tool. It's the rules surrounding how the tool is used that make it a net positive or negative.

I worked at an airline with PBS and it wasn't the apocalypse. The Union had some control over PBS options and input, so the resulting schedules weren't bad. Lots of commutable trips in every base.

The problem with PBS at SWA is they would never use it in a collaborative or efficient fashion. They would insist on loading PBS with pre-built lines because the brain trust that builds the lines would fight to the death before they gave that up (much like the OPC group). PrefBid here would just result in essentially the same bid packages with less vacation value for the pilot group.

nope. Vacation and training are pre-posted before the PBS bidding opens.

What BG does is madness and shouldn’t be used for comparison purposes. He practically lives at work. Very impressive income but it’s also very unhealthy.

Good to know. Thanks

There seems to be one in every base....