Annual Vaca Award
 

Anybody have an Enigma machine to break vacation codes? Is it so hard for our IT department to just put the month/day/year?

15/16-49?

Thanks

In CCS, goto Reports/Pilot vacation summary.

That has actual calendar dates.

thanks steve

You're welcome.

Was looking for the report to see what a friend of my wife's had been awarded and I saw that the 'everybody's vacation' report (can't remember the name) was gone and replaced with Pilot Vacation Summary, which thankfully uses real dates.

Despite being #4 in base I could not get awarded 14 days in September for vacation!? Seriously?

Thats sickening.

I'm a dummy and forgot to save my bid screen. Is there any way to look at what bid was submitted? My award got screwed up, and I'm guessing it was user error, but who knows with this ridiculous system...

You are too kind.

I just about needed a class to not screw up the bid. I didn't understand the question that started this thread. I just saw my results. Now I need another class or users guide to decipher the results. Ridiculous is putting it mildly.

Now if I could just figure out my pay register and PBS.........

Im top 30% in base and couldn't get a single holiday week or single week in the summer. Sounds about right.

I don't see what all the fuss is about. Why would you go to a vacation BID page to check vacation AWARD. If you go to the most logical page and that would be Reports- Annual Vacation Awards, the easy, unencrypted vacation results are there.

I will agree that most of the vacation system is pathetic

Why would we bid may to may
Why do we have to bid our 2nd vacation week without knowing what we got for our first
Why are we bidding in feb of 2015 for summer of 2015. Dont most people make vacation plans well before that
Why don't pilots take all their vacation

Enjoy your time off, you earned it

I gave up on the bidding system some time ago and hired someone to do my PBS. He now bids my vacation for me as well. Money well spent.

I have to put blame for this on ALPA. They are the ones that pushed for PBS at CAL and put this silly vacation bid system in to replace one that was simple, worked and everybody got awarded all their vacation if they wanted to bid it all - although not necessarily all the days they wanted.

Right up there with trip trading and min reserve levels/staffing for must fixes on the next contract. I'm all for giving seniority its due, but giving the senior pilots two cracks at vacation on the first round of bidding takes the most desirable slots off the table for most of the pilots. What's wrong with bidding for one block at a time on each round, even allowing two weeks to be bid together? Senior pilots will still get the slots they want the most, just not both of the slots they want the most.

That's because #s 1, 2, & 3 got BOTH the Holiday AND the summer. Under the old system while they were choosing one someone else had a shot at the other.

Is there any transparency in this IT w/ wings system that allows you to see what other vacations were awarded?

There is a name, domicile, seat, vacation award file you can downloaded on flight ops page, staffing, in flying together... 100% transparent.

Well I must not understand the system correctly. We can bid for more than one week at more than one time in the first cycle? I thought it was one week (or 2 consecutive) at a time.

Apparently you can. My guy just got me Oshkosh week in July and Thanksgiving week in the first round. Dunno how he did it tho.

You must be pretty senior. No offense, but IMO you should have had to choose between the two on the first round to give someone else a shot at the one you didn't choose. Seniority should have its privileges, but only to an extent. Congrats, anyway.

A vacation period and a vacation week are not the same.

"11-D-3 A “Vacation Period” is a consecutive block of vacation days that are bid and/or awarded."

Up to two "periods" can be awarded in the first cycle and up to three in the first two cycles, with a period being a vacation of any length.

"11-E-3-a. A Pilot shall be entitled to be awarded up to two (2) Vacation Periods in the Primary cycle. No Pilot shall be awarded more than three (3) cumulative Vacation Periods in the Primary and Secondary cycles. All remaining days in the Pilot's Annual Vacation Election shall be awarded in the Tertiary cycle."

So the number one bidder in the first cycle using two bid groups could get two weeks at Christmas and two summer weeks.

The third cycle has no limits on vacation periods awarded.

At the other end, let's say a bidder did not bid deep enough and was not awarded any vacation in the first two cycles, he can now be awarded unlimited periods in the third cycle. If he has 5 vacation weeks he could use 5 bid groups to bid one week each in Jan, Feb, Mar, Sep, Oct (if weeks are available) and get awarded 5 unconnected bid "periods."

I have no problem with PBS now. I just use this book.

http://i.imgur.com/2nd9qlC.jpg

I can't argue with your sentiment, having been junior myself once and paying the dues. Hopefully the rules won't change for you when you get 20 plus years under your butt and your pension flops.

If I recall correctly at CAL, not all the vacation periods were awarded on the first go round, so senior guys would have to make some choices on the first go round.

Say hello to your new boss, not the same as your old boss.

You can actually hire someone to bid PBS for you :eek: ? I thought I was lazy when I hired someone to do the landscaping ;).

Honestly, I don't think the computer vacation bidding is any less complicated than the old "books and cards" we used to use, but just my opinion. I think people resist anything new and unknown when they're comfortable with an existing system (myself included). I had the old PBS system pretty much nailed, and it took about 6 bid cycles to reach the same comfort level with the new PBS system. Now if I could just get used to Windows 8 :)

I'm hoping the rules change back to bidding for one block at a time on the next contract. I honestly don't understand why we're bidding the way we do under the UPA.
That does kind of ring a bell. That made no sense either.

Wish list.

1.Bid for vacation in the fall. Vacation year starts at the same time, May. I'm fine with that. Just bid earlier for it.

2. Vacation days to be worth 3:45

3. Crew meals provided by Kleins Deli.

Available on Amazon, or downloadable? Do I have to bring my own crayons, or are they included?

I would buy it if it was available.

Bravo, Sir, outstanding production values, and one of the funniest things I've ever seen here!

If you seriously made one, it would sell like hotcakes in the Mainliner store.....if not for vacation bidding, then for comedic value.

If I were put in charge of PBS I'd just make it easy to use. Obviously a potentially powerful system, with the worst User Interface I've ever seen in a product so widely used. PBS shouldn't need a user-manual. It should be intuitive.

We need PBS to be a tool, not a programming language.

I'm afraid Sir, that you have just proven yourself wholly unfit for Flight Office and managerial duties. Now just go find your hat and get back to work.
:D

That's a great idea. I suppose you have developed such a system and are ready for all the UA pilots to beta test? Wait you would not need a test because you would have built the perfect system. Your talents are wasted posting on a forum.......

One of the few "green shoots" I have seen in a while was a few months ago we had a "base meeting" and there was a furloughed pilot that was hired by IT.

Strangely, and refreshingly, he seemed to have a vision of where we are, and where we are GOING. I am sure the empty suits on Wanker Drive are trying to get rid of this treasonous fiend as soon as possible.

I asked him if we would ever be able to log in with one password. He said less than six months.

In just shy of 20 years here, I have never before felt like I only know 40% of how to do my job. I don't like that feeling.

Couldn't agree more.

And, to the point of this thread, I'm 14% in base and got 5 weeks of vacation all of them being my first choice. That is NOT right. I know it's utopian to think, but really seniority should not have that kind of power. We all signed up for piloting knowing it meant some weekends, holidays, and summers, but with our current system the spoils all go to a select few.

I'm 62% and got nothing I bid for. Looks like January again for me in 2015/16.

I bid Feb for the skiing. Guess what, I got it lol.

Man, the hours of my life spent working on this and PBS. Time I will never get back.

Wadr, we signed up for this job knowing that "seniority is everything." You want weekends off for the family, then stay senior. If you need the money or whatever, then bid up and accept the consequences.

"Select few"!? Its a seniority based system. That's what seniority is all about. If you think its wrong, then don't bid and let those junior to you get what they want. I got news, lots of guys could be in the top 10% in their category, but they really wanted that Captain upgrade, or that WB FO, or that 767 FO.

You get mostly what you bid for on your monthly preferencing every month right? Do you complain how unfair it is and think that some months other pilots should bid first?

If you don't think seniority should "have that kind of power" then go volunteer for ALPA and change the seniority system to some other kind of system. Until then, its all about seniority.

While I'm not happy with January vacation I also am not complaining about it. I knew the system was pure seniority (and knowing how to work PBS) when I came on. I realize that at some point in the future I'll get mostly what I ask for and the guys at the bottom won't. I'm fine with it. Actually, I prefer it compared to the "merit based" system I had in the military where 70% of the folks who got promotions and accolades deserved them...but that 30% who didn't but got them anyhow really irked me. Seniority basing is easy. I never have to think about and fret over it. Just wait.

Cheers,

HT

All true and no one is disputing that. What I'm questioning is the weighting of seniority in our current vacation bidding. Giving pilots two shots at vacation before the next guy gets a chance might be what you're used to, but it's new to the Ex-Cons. The question isn't whether seniority should have weight, it's how much weight we want to give it.

It's not a lottery