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Originally Posted by Grishka
Yup, and the reality is our pilot group's lack of experience with PBS will result in growing pains. Hitting a home run right away with this transition is unlikely, and would probably entail multiple contract cycles to get right. The never PBSers will come on here and tell us I told you so.
In regards to why Delta didnt priortize going back to line bidding, it's probably because they have and are continuing to work out all the issues with PBS over many contracts including the very last one. The system itself isn't the problem. It's how you use it. Knowledge is key.
I’ve been at DAL for a few contract cycles and this, to my knowledge, had never even popped up as a topic of conversation. The product that DAL uses is fairly mature, but there are periodic issues that come up. The vendor transitioned from one user interface to another, despite a fairly long transition time (several years) and that caused problems, but the underlying “back end” has been mostly stable. “Bid errors”’do periodically occur, and those are handled in a via the contract.
With PBS, like any system, people who take the time to really learn the system can leverage that for better results. With line bidding, you get what you get, but PBS allows multiple bid strategies in a single bid to work out alternatives to get to the desired result.
As was pointed out above, the key to PBS is good contractual language that provides for a union side PBS committee that has the power to stop the show. Having control of the parameters is key. Any PBS committee needs people who are not only technically savvy, but understand the contract and schedule construction, annd also have a very good dose of customer service skills.
The vacation, training and other absence issues are separate, since they can be made to work with whatever system you choose, but as someone pointed out, the big attraction for the Company is the increase in productivity that PBS provides. Vacation certainly is one of those, but it’s dwarfed by the month to month transition problems that are solved, and that accounts for the lions share of the gains on the company side.