PBS
 

I hope improving our system or changing it is addressed by the negotiating committee.

However, that is not the point of my post.

My last trip, I flew with a former AFA LEC chair. We got to talking about PBS and the FA contract and the implementation of different sections. She said that even though the company wants PBS, there is no company that has the computing power that can resolve the months schedules for the entire FA group.

That means that after their merge, finally in Oct 2018, they will still be bidding monthly schedules.

Interesting bit of info, or starting a new rumor? Have at it...

I'll bite. I think there is more than enough computing power available to resolve the FA schedules via PBS. I mean, it can only require slightly more power than predicting the yield of a nuke :rolleyes:.

The shortfall is probably more along the lines of IT programming capacity. Plus, it would be wiser to get the groups integrated first before taking the next step. Give em an extra year or more, fall 2019 maybe?

I would have to agree. Lack of computing power is extremely difficult for me to believe. If Google can search billions of web pages almost instantly, I'm fairly certain a computer can run a PBS program with a data set 3 or 4 times the size it currently runs.

The only lack of "computing power" would be among the senior computer illiterate FAs who wouldn't be able to bid properly using a tool as complicated and ridiculous as PBS. I suspect THAT has a lot more to do with the AFA not wanting to push for PBS.

I've flown many time with one our 787 guys in IAH who is a pbs trainer and does some programming on the side. He's mentioned to me that the FO bid group takes 2 days longer than the captains because of lack of computing power. They can set it to run up and down the preferences 10 people at a time or top to bottom until it satisfies itself. So to speak. Now throw into that different aircraft, twice as many people, 5 different galleys, locations, international, speakers etc. I could see it being a problem. Also. They're flight attendants. Who gives a damn. Why are we talking about them?

They are running PBS using a state of the art Gateway 2000 Microsoft AT machine with an 8088 processor. I have no idea why they should have a lack of computing power.

If PBS was any more archaic we'd have to use punch cards.

I heard it takes 2 days for our SSC guys to verify no glitches in the captain awards run and to ensure FOs who avoid specific captains have not been paired on a ID.
With them...

"we're an IT company with wings"

"We're a lousy IT company with a worldwide flight department"

Or, "We put the Sierra Hotel in I.T."

If that's the company's line, fine. I hope the next contract we get smart make anything that looks remotely like a give conditional on the company successfully implementing our gets.

5 years later, and has the company completely implemented our current book? And they actually think we'd even discuss further gives? GMAFB.

The company isn't short on computing power, they're short on willpower. They always will be unless and until they're provided with proper motivation.

What specific sections of our contract are not being honored?