PBS bidding in vacay month
 

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Anyone have advice on PBS bidding in vacation months so you don’t work for free if you pick up a trip?

Just make sure your line value is higher than your MPG. There is a document in PBS that outlines what your line award must be with vacation so you are not in the situation of flying for free during a pickup.

Or, if your line value is less than MPG, you get paid for not flying. Assuming no extra flying.

Pm me. I saved the union email as a pdf last year about this.

Why not just bid minimum and enjoy life a little? 2 weeks of Vacation in Oct pays 85.5 hrs. Many BES is 70 hrs min. 5 days of flying for 85.5 hrs.

You’re going to fly 15 hrs free so that you can pick up a day trip or something? Hardly seems worth it to me to fly a 4 day trip for 4.5 hrs of pay. Would you ever pick up a 4.5 hr 4 day trip?

Not if you bid a high credit line. If he wants to stay home he should bid low credit line. With a high credit line he wouldn’t be working for free. He’d have like 22 days off with the ability to pick up on non vacation days.

That’s the beauty of it....he can stay home with a normal or low credit line or work extra and still have a lot of days off.

Every minute over LCF up to MPG is free. But yeah, if you want to fly 15 hrs for free (in a 2 week vacation month) so that you can pick up some other trips then go for it.

I don’t understand. If he bids a high credit line he won’t be working for free at all.

If your LCF (Line construction floor) is 70 hrs and your MPG is 85.5 in a 2 week vacation month with 31 days,

You make 85.5 for a 70 hr line (some are even lower like 320 in IAH are 67.5 this month so even more extreme).

So you get paid 85.5 hrs for 70 hrs. Everything from 70-85.5 is time flown for the same 85.5 hrs of pay. IMHO that’s flying 15.5 hrs and not making one extra penny. So you fly your first 15.5 hrs for free so you can potenionally make something above 85.5 hrs.

If you only have 1 week of vacation it’s much less dramatic and if you have more than 2 weeks it’s almost impossible to get an awarded line high enough to not lose picking up trips.

But if you bid and are awarded a high credit line...say 86 hrs...every trip you pick up is not free because your PTC is above MPG. You are correct though if awarded a line below 85.5 hrs every minute between Mpg and 85.5 is free. There’s a very detailed union message about this sent out about a year ago.

My point was simply that any way you slice it, everything you have awarded above your LCF is you working for free until you hit MPG. Whether you do it in your award or after by picking up trips.

So it doesn’t matter if you have an awarded line of 70 or 85 hrs, you don’t make anything until 85.5. So something is free.

Awarded line 70 hrs. The first 15 you pick up is free. Afterwards all is paid.

Awarded line is 85.5 (you bid to give them a unpaid 3 day trip because 15 hrs free) and after you’re paid straight.

Was just trying to inform people as some get wrapped around the axel of “picking up for free” but they don’t even realize that they’re “picking up for free” already when they bid to fly above LCF. They get all worked up how they’re working for free picking up a trip and not being paid for all of it but they turn around and bid to fly free.

If you want to fly more than MPG that’s great. Just have to realize if you fly 90 hrs it doesn’t matter if it’s in the award or picking it up through trading, you’re only paid above 85.5 hrs.

On your Ipad in Content Locker>Scheduling (or New Content)>Bid Period Information pg.5.
October is a 31 day month, so you can check the value listed for your vacation days and then make your own choice about what to do based on your awarded line.

To be awarded a legal line, his vaca credit and protected time credit (PTC) must be equal to or greater than the Line Construction Floor (LCF). With one week of vacation in October, the vaca credit is 22.75. With a LCF of 70 hours, he'll need to bid a line worth 47.25 hrs (70 - 22.75). Each day you're available to work for the month other than vacation is worth 2:20 in MPG (October is a 31 day month). So in this example, if he was a awarded a 47.25 line, he would actually get 56 hrs in MPG (24 days x 2:20). Total pay in this example is 78.75 hrs. If he wants any additional pay he'll either have to bid a line that makes him fly at least 8.75 hrs more than the minimum or he'll have to pick up flying that exceeds 8.75 hrs. So he'll make the exact same pay working 47.25 hrs as he will if he works up to 56 hrs. Only beyond working 56 hours will he actually see more money. So there is not "Beauty" in this system. If, like UALinIAH said, you work one minute beyond the LCF your are working for free until you close the gap between (LCF minus vaca credit) and the MPG. If you want an additional 10 hrs of pay (88.75) for the month, you'll either have to pick up a trip worth 18.75 or bid a line that has 18.75 more flying built in. Either way, you're flying 8.75 for free.

Ok. I get your point now. For Viperstick....this is true. It’s also true that if you bid high credit and are awarded it any extra trips yo7 pick up are straight pay on top. You’ll get paid that value on top.

Horrible advice. Viper, please ignore golfer's post.

How is it horrible advice? Read the first line of the attachment and tell me how I’m wrong. (Sorry, not sure why the attachment is blurry but its the one in PBS). If you have a week of vacation and your MPG is 56 hours...as long as PBS puts 56 or more hours of LPV on your award, you will not work for free if you pick up additional flying.

Vacation is add pay. Im not sure why that document lumps in the 22.75 hour with the chart.

What Hilltopper89 said is also correct...btw. High time line will put a LPV higher than MPG on your award. Thompson just used a whole bunch of words to say the same thing.

Are we making this too complicated?

If you want to get paid more than MPG + ADD Pay in a vacation month then you'll have to fly trips (LPV/PTC) with pay credit totalling more than MPG.

Does it matter if those trips were assigned by PBS or picked up later? Isn't the end result the same?

Wow, I can see why you're still in the dark about all of this. It's been explained THOROUGHLY in this thread and you obviously haven't read any of it.

It's horrible advice because you're telling him that the way to avoid flying for free when picking up flying is to bid a line that has you fly for free. How is that helpful?

Read what UALinIAH said:

"2 weeks of Vacation in Oct pays 85.5 hrs. Many BES is 70 hrs min. 5 days of flying for 85.5 hrs. You’re going to fly 15 hrs free so that you can pick up a day trip or something?"

He then goes on to say:

"Every minute over LCF up to MPG is free. But yeah, if you want to fly 15 hrs for free (in a 2 week vacation month) so that you can pick up some other trips then go for it."



This explains it perfectly. If viper bids an LCF line, he'd be getting 15.5 hours for free. If he follows your advice and bids a line that exceeds the 85.5 hour MPG, yeah he'd be able to pick up trips without "flying for free" but only because he foolishly bid a LINE that already had him flying for free.

It's bad enough that there are people who have been here a long time who still can't grasp this simple fact but to then to see those people get on a message board and perpetuate this misunderstanding as "advice" to others is just maddening.

Okay, your condescension aside, I get what you are saying. The original post implied he wanted to pick flying up to make more money. Yes, we fly for free if you fly more than the LCF (that gap of time till LPV exceeds MPG) But after the awards come out, flying for free is self-imposed. If the original poster wants to get into the 90+ range (which is what I assume he was getting at) without “flying for free”...then PBS award needs to be higher than MPG.

ORIGINAL POST: Anyone have advice on PBS bidding in vacation months so you don’t work for free if you pick up a trip?



Flying LCF gives the highest pay to work ratio...but it won’t maximize the dollar amount. To each his own. Different goals have different bidding strategies.


As an aside, it funny that you say I’m in the dark about how our pay works. Then you go on to talk about an 85.5 hour MPG in your lecture. Someone certainly doesn’t know how our pay works...but I will give you a hint...its not me.

Palm meet head.

Sorry to be condescending but you're still getting it wrong. If the PBS award is higher than MPG (like you said) then he's ALREADY flying for free.

Avoiding flying for free BEGINS with PBS bidding. That's the point we're trying to make to Viper. Don't bid a line that's over MPG in a vacation month! Then don't pick up any flying in that vacation month. That's the only way to avoid flying for free. Anything you fly over LCF up to the MPG is flying for free, whether it was awarded via PBS or picked up after you're awarded your line.

Write that sh!t down and look at it every day cause it doesn't seem like it's sinking in. And stop giving people advice until you actually understand it yourself.

I understand it completely. You can disagree with my advice, but it answers Viper’s question. In capt Condescending’s world, you would advocate Viper not pick up anything in a vacation month. Like I said earlier...different goals, different bidding strategies.

I'm not telling him not to pick up in a vaca month at all. I just want to make sure he understands that he's flying many hours for free if he does. You're the one who keeps telling him that if he "bids" a line that exceeds the MPG he's NOT flying for free (you've said it 3 times now).

I'm trying to get you to stop spreading BS and you're dismissing that as condescension. I'm starting to understand why you're STILL not getting it.

As line holders you could say we all fly for free for the first 70 hours. Lets not get too bogged down with effective hourly rates. Some want to make money than they were awarded during their vacation months even if the hourly rate may be less than ideal. Maybe if we paid 5 hours a day for vacation less people would feel the need to pickup in vacation months.

It’s a convoluted system that doesn’t benefit the pilot group. The system of buckets of pay should go adios.

My opinion only.

I don't want to dictate that a pilot cannot do what he/she needs to do IAW the contract, but this issue does have another side that has not been brought up.

In general the company always wants us to fly more per pilot, so much so that they started the LPV plus up program on their own. This practice meant that if you picked up a trip in this situation, the LPV was "plussed up" to the MPG value and then the time picked up would go on top of that. Then, when ALPA wanted to actually codify the practice in the contract, they couldn't reach an agreement. So, the none contractual practice had to stop. If we are continuously picking up extra flying without the LPV plus up, why would the company ever agree to that? They would give up all that extra flying we are doing for free??

So, remember when bidding and picking up in a vacation month that there is also a long term view. If we ever want to have the contract reflect the practice of a pickup in this situation adding on to your MPG value (LPV plus up as it was called) then picking up trips today that have some portion of "working for free" is not helping our long term cause.

for example:
 

This gets more confusing the more I read these posts and the union message from last year. It's also pertinent to me this month.

Example numbers:

I didn't bid with any specific strategy in mind, but was awarded a line of 89:54.

This is my vacation month and I get two weeks.

Vacation credit: 45:30
Total block flying awarded in bid: 43:57
Soft time: :27

With this information, can anyone tell me if I'll end up "working for free" if I pick up any trips? If so, how much? I want to avoid any "free flying" for multiple reasons. Someone told me that you can just look at the trip trade $ figures in crew companion, and if the amount goes up when you add a trip to your schedule by the expected amount, you're good... but reading this thread makes me think otherwise.

You already are doing the flying for free. So, whether you pick up or not, the free flying ship has already sailed.

Your MPG should be 2:20 times 17, which is 39:40. So, since you had a very high PBS award, you already are assigned all the free flying. Not sure what your minimum bid could have been for your BES, so can't say how much free flying you are doing, but it is likely substantial! If your Line Production Floor was 73 hours (for instance) then you are doing about 12 hours of flying for free!

But, if you want to pick up additional flying now, that will all be on top of the 89:54, so at least it won't be anymore for free.

Ugg... I'm looking for Line Production Floor. Where is that? It's not a term I'm familiar with.

I just use bidnav each month, and it spits me out a line. Out of curiosity, I just looked through my BES award package, and it looks like the majority of folks who had 2 weeks of vacation this month also had high time lines of about 89 hrs... does this mean that we're all "donating our time?"

To clarify, in a month that one has vacation, one should consider getting a min time line in order to avoid any "free flying," and then don't pick up any trips?

This whole thing couldn't be any more confusing. It would seem like it's in our best interest to clearly spell out how to avoid this.

Thanks for your insights.

A lineholder "flies free" for his first 70 hours every month.

"Flying free" is just how some refer to the flight time (LPV/PTC) from zero up to the month's MPG. All it means is that you don't get any additional money until you've flown more than your MPG.

The only thing unique about a vacation month is that you can often get low-time lines where your awarded LPV/PTC is significantly less than your MPG. That doesn't happen often in non-vacation months.

Still, to be paid extra, you have to fly more than your MPG just like in any other month.

Just bid reserve...you'll never fly for free

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

You keep outdoing yourself on the "display of ignorance" thing.

You want to explain how something called "minimum pay GUARANTEE" doesn't benefit the pilots and needs to go adios?

Other airlines have a min pay guarantee without all the crazy that our pay system has. It shouldn’t be that hard.

It’s not hard. You get the greater of 3 buckets. If you can’t do 7th grade math then you have no business flying airplanes. The union has beat this horse to death trying to help pilots understand it. It’s your fault if you haven’t read everything the union has given you or if you can’t be bothered with going on the ALPA site and doing a little research.

It shouldn’t be this hard to be a union pilot.

You can imply I lack intelligence if you want. The long and short of it is we have four pages talking about this. If there is that much confusion surrounding it, a better system is needed.

As I have been on reserve pretty much my whole time here I haven’t had to worry about working for free in a vacation month. I do know the reserve rules pretty well though.

My point was that our contract is set up to ensure we get the most pay we can by providing protections on 3 different levels. Our union has provided everyone with the tools to make informed decisions yet we still have people that come on here and ask basic questions that have been covered by numerous emails and is also readily available with a simple search on the ALPA site.

The bucket system isn’t the problem. It’s a solution to loopholes that were exploited previously.

If you’re a half winger, I get it, but those are questions to ask your ALPA mentor, not an open forum where there are too many spouting off wrong answers.

Or at the very least ask these questions on the other forum where many ALPA SMEs are answering questions and you know where the info is coming from.

Absolutely a better source of info. All I did was express my opinion that the system is a little complicated.

Fair enough. Sorry I came off harsh. This thread is so full of misinformation that I let it get me frustrated.

Maybe it would help if we knew how others do it ...
Delta? SWA? Jetblue? (just as an example)

What happens when you over fly leg one.. (overs that goes towards our LPV).
Then the rest of the trip is unders (LPV/PTC don't change)

Next trip cancels after you show.. (LPV goes down but our PTC stays the same)
Then you pick up something after not getting used on AV... (our LPV/PTC goes up)

That new trip gets delayed and you end up with Late Pay (Add Pay)

As others have mentioned, the real problem is pilots NOT understanding how our pay works.
Is it confusing... sure. But so it our lifestyle and schedule.

For those of you complaining, what is the solution?
Once you figure out our pay, you learn when and when NOT to pick up flying, and when overs help vs. overs not meaning anything.

Motch


PS-
LPV means Line Pay Value. What the trip should pay as a minimum, if you fly it.
PTC means Protected Time Credit. What your line will pay if YOU do nothing to change it.
MPG means Minimum Pay Guarantee. The min we will get paid if we are available to fly.. 70 for line holders, 73 for reserves.
ADD Pay means extra for certain things, international override, late pay, etc..

PPS-
The 'Key' is to get as much PTC as possible, while getting the low LPV.. plus getting 'ADD Pay'.

Nicely explained! You took the Horrible out of Horrido!