Yes, it's a real Frankenstein. CCS was an overlay to a keystroke driven system. So it looks like windows but many links just go to these keystroke screens. Some screens propagate your info like the Pay Register which inserts your employee number automatically (after all, you just signed in so it knows who you are) but you go to Reserve Availability and you have to fill in five fields of personal info (that it already knows). Some links are newer like the the Trip Trading functions and are fairly intuitive to use while the Pay Claim link is downright kafkaesque and seems to be so intentionally to discourage its use.

APC,

The CCS "demo system" L-UAL is using now is VERY bad, and other than having the same nice menu at the top is nothing like the L-CAL version. It is simply a hyperlink setup with a multitude of redirects that occasionally take you to an old L-UAL Skynet or Unimatic page if you are lucky and have enough time to wait for it to get there.

Having recently come back from using L-CAL CCS to the old school green flashing Unimatic cursor with countless Cold War coded commands, and dare I forget the beloved dot-matrix printers - I will gladly take CCS ;)

Thanks again for posting the links!

V/R,

SP

Great and helpful post. Thanks for sharing that intel

God only knows why they cant buy an off the shelf system.

Logic, common sense, efficiency, ease of use, scalability, ease of change management.
You know, those silly things that don't come up at Harvard Law

Most guys on the L-CAL side would be glad to help. CCS is actually pretty good except for a few really old fashioned commands that I cant figure out why they haven't updated over the years.

All the CAL guys have been very helpful to me.

Here is some info on monthly bidding and displacements on the UAL side since were are going to start using that.
For monthly bidding, the company publishes openings each month, if they are available. There is no seniority contingency, where you can bid only if it puts you at a certain seniority percentage. You make your choice, and take your chances.
If the bids open up other fleets/seats, we call these "back-filled". That means pilots get bids that weren't published, but were caused by pilots leaving their seats to take the published seat bid. Unfilled bids means nobody bid it, and it goes to new hires.

Displacements work a little different. When the company sees too many pilots in a fleet/seat, they can publish a displacement bid. It says something to the effect that 10 400 F/O's will be bumped out of SFO. It should go to jr pilots first, but sr pilots can volunteer. You can bid anywhere there is a pilot jr to you. The results are then published. Big bumps will result in further displacement bids if too many pilots bump to the same fleet/seat. A big bump can go on for many months, until manpower has what they think they need.

Post SLI we will all start using this system. There will be no "flush" bid. But if UAL has been sitting too fat on 756 pilots, there might be a big bump off this aircraft.

Not any more---it changed with the UPA. It's now basically the UAL system with the CAL percentage option added.

IMHO, every CAL pilot should read 8-C of the UPA in its entirety while 8-C-3-b specifically mentions the inclusion of percentage bidding.

Also for clarification the vacancy (i.e. equipment) bids are run as needed, which is not necessarily correlated to monthly.

:D

Don't worry, NSA got a backup for CCS in case company's tracking is down. :D

Yes, just typical UAL pilot bashing CAL system, because unimatic is so advanced. I bet you still use 86-DOS, or perhaps an upgrade to MS-DOS.
Do you still hang out by the telex machine, or fax, or wait on the phone to submit your line bids? There is noting better then old fashion paper ticket in your hand when you travel, right?
CCS is not attractive graphically on purpose, any time there is an increase framing or graphics to make it look pretty, there will be delay in data transmission, CCS is for fast and effective communication in critical data. If you want pretty flowers, and flashing frames with rainbow colors, go to SKYNET.
I know you are going through guy's menopause, but enough already with your whining.