Since the jr Capt is around 10000 and we have about 5000 seniority list Captains I think your 8500 people ahead of him number is exaggerated. With that there are also at least 20% fo’s that can make more $$ AND have better monthly qol and vacation bidding bringing that number closer to 4000 or less. That being said, bidding a jr Capt position at first option and beotching about rsv is ludicrous.

 

I don't ask for the unpossible. Up until last month, my last bid group before reserve groups was waive everything, award work. Still no dice. Got lucky with a line in Dec, but still below the g-line for Jan. So you are correct... I have (almost) 2 years seniority at EWR 737 and can't guarantee a line. I expect with this vacancy bid, that might change in Feb or Mar. With all the recent hiring, I hope this won't be a trend item for new hires.

I understand some choose to be on reserve, but don't mark us all as incompetent bidders if hiring numbers and PBS simply doesn't allow it. I'm happy for the young guys at SFO that can hold lines. If i didn't live on the east coast, I'd probably be commuting to SFO for the seniority.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk

 

I'm spending way too much time on this, but I went ahead and pulled up the 2017 (dated 1 July) seniority list. The junior EWR 737 FO on that list is #353 in base seniority on the Dec PBS awards and was awarded a line, as were numerous pilots below him.
If you've been on property for almost two years, you should be above him and the many other Dec EWR 737 FO lineholders.

If you correctly waived everything in one of your bid groups, you absolutely should have been awarded a line. You should have grieved it. I called to grieve not getting a line a couple of years ago and when the ALPA volunteer looked at my bid for that month, he told me the error that I made.

 

Tinygiant,

Your wording suggests you might also be submitting reserve bid groups in addition to your line bid requests. Be very careful as that will usually get you a reserve award.
There’s a recurring “don’t be a line donor” warning in the monthly PBS wrapup I get from ALPA that addresses this.

 

^This post above ^


I think there is some pilot error going on in the bidding here or we are talking past each other. If you are above the G line you "must" be awarded a line and senior line holders can not have their PBS request lines improved at the cost of knocking you into reserve. Unless... You also place a Reserve request under your line requests. In that case, you may be removed from the line award calculations to allow senior line holders to have better requested schedules, and this occurs because you also requested reserve. Don't ever request reserve if you are above the G line and prefer to be a line holder. Be super careful with sets and waives. Think of PBS as the proverbial Artificial Intelligence paper clip factory. you tell the AI "Make as many paper clips as possible". The AI then decides to round up all the humans and process them to get more carbon to make more paperclips. Be careful what you tell PBS to do, counter intuitive results may seem absurd but they are supported by system logic that is easily understood with observation, research, bidding support, etc.

 

All good advice for the what is the worst bidding system I’ve personally seen. Sure guys argue it’s ok. Cause they’ve gotten good at using it ,and I typically get decent result with outside help , doesn’t change the fact that it is a POS old system .

 

Dear God! TWO years of reserve! The horror!

 

You are on to something.....


If you think about a pilots QOL before PBS and after you start to get the picture.


At Continental pre-PBS we had 4400 pilots. After, we attrited it down to 4000 while adding block hours.

I believe at Legacy United you guys didn't have PBS at that time so nothing to compare it to.


Before we go further we need to "buy in" to a way of thinking. Management wants to market PBS as a flexible scheduling tool to the pilots. Management retains the keys to the car and decides when, how and where to drive it. ALPA can watch and observe. But there are no contractual teeth to be chomped during the sausage grinding (line construction).

The pilots lack a few things when it comes to PBS.

1. We lack realtime control and accountability
2. We lack a minimum mandated staffing formula/solution

We can only beotch about the result after the result. We can't be preemptive or proactive.


At CAL, we lost our 10% contractual minimum reserve compliment. So, the QOL at CAL while being on reserve wasn't that bad. With 10% reserve you didn't feel like you were running on empty so to speak. You had a life, your family saw you a good bit, and the trips got covered. win-win.

PBS is not a flexible scheduling tool we should be enamored with. It's a staffing tool that management utilizes to put pilots in seats at the lowest possible cost. In fact, it's not even that.... It's an absence management system designed to deconflict pilots known absences in advance to mitigate staffing short-falls and minimize the need for reserve coverage.

So, why is a pilots QOL craptastic on reserve or low in his BES? Because PBS is doing what PBS is allowed to do. You really have to understand the genesis of how and why PBS came on to property at CAL.


In contract '02, the union was still being run by scabs and scab sympathizers and that was because so many junior pilots at CAL were furloughed that there wasn't simply enough votes to counter-act the voting block strength of the scabs. The tolerance of scabs was mind-blowing, but further it was a sort of Stockholm syndrome. They convinced the FMR's, peoples express, lots of pilots to come over to their way of thinking. They also used the instructors as negotiating tools to preach to the pilots to accept the concessions or else.


Interesting, of all the employees at CAL, the only ones to freeze their retirements was the pilots. Also, the only ones to get PBS force-fed to them by their employer and their union was the pilots. That's right, the union, led by the scabs forced PBS upon the pilots without negotiating any safe-guards, or QoL language such as minimum staffing levels in each BES. Moreover, the incompetence was so ripe that they ran mock bids without absences such as jury duty, vacation, LTD, sick leave, and military duty factored in. The result: an abortion of biblical proportions.


So, post merger, UAL gets the CAL PBS. Every time you bid, make sure to thank a legacy CAL scab for the gift that keeps on giving. They got to freeze their retirement and keep their lump sum. Oh joy!

Odd, you have to waive everything in order to get anything.....

This was a 750 million dollar concession at that time. I wonder what the real value is to the company. I would scrap it, and start figuring up how much money the airline owe the pilots and start from there and re-negotiate. If NAFTA wasn't good enough for America today, then likely PBS isn't good enough for UAL pilots today. Get a better deal.

 

Right.

What he likely thought would happen would be six months on reserve.

You never know when the music will stop. You have no control over how, when, and why the company staffs. You don't know the company's marketing plans and how far out they will shut that plan down and re-shuffle and realign the flying.

The fallacy we fall victim is this: ALPA tells us you will only be on reserve for a short time so suck it up butter cup.

That's not true.

We have several bases, two seats, and several airplanes. The logic that you'll only be on reserve for a short time is false logic. Just looking at my 25 career. Three different jets as F/O, three different reserve experiences. One jet as CA, but two reserve experiences, one pre-merger, and one post merger. By my Cajun math that is 5 separate times. So, I think we can de-bunk that false logic.


Geeks love PBS, it gives them something to figure out, something to dissect. If we put a bunch of computer loving techies in PBS committee who also see the company's logic and point of view, then we are screwed. We need some bulldogs in this area. I would prefer some non-techies who just want to enforce the contract and give the pilots full compensation value for their concessions that led to PBS being on property.

 

Some people are just wired differently. If you gave my oldest son a rubics cube he could solve it pretty quick. He's also the youngest person ever hired by the FBI as a forensic accountant.

If you gave my youngest son a rubics cube he would go into the garage, grab a hammer and smash it, then reassemble it with all the colors on the panels.

Both kids solved the puzzle.

We have both types of pilots at UAL.

Some "get PBS" and have figured out how to make the solution work for them each month (floating G line). Some say screw it and just bang in sick. That's the ultimate hammer after all. If a pilot needs off, he will be off somehow.