Ray of hope for new PBS?
 

From June SSC report...

Initial Look at PBS Venders
The company's Crew Planning Group has initiated a review of PBS venders including
Jeppesen, and the SSC ensured we were a part of this process as required by the UPA. This
review is exploratory in nature to better understand new or improved systems which have been
developed in recent years. The SSC PBS subject matter experts are an integral part of this
process to ensure the United pilot group has the best PBS system available.

That would be nice because our current PBS system is garbage!!!

yep, garbage, about as user friendly as a cactus dildo.

We must understand that the true purpose of any PBS program is to allow the company to cover the flying with the minimum number of bodies. A by-product of PBS allows pilots to better preference their desires over the old pre-built line bidding. Of course, the more senior a pilot is in their category, the better their desired result will be. The quality of the output from any system largely depends on FAR 117, contractural work rules, the staffing in the particular category, the LPA, floor, and ceiling, and how much unassigned flying the company will allow after all lines are built.

The Jeppesen PBS supporters tout that what makes this program superior is the “optimization engine.”

The detractors claim the user interface is poor (which is true) and there are not enough “buckets” in each bid group (also true), and various other things.

I suspect the number one thing most pilots would like to see with the Jeppesen program is the addition of more buckets. Going from 7 buckets to 9 or 11 buckets would be great, but I suspect there would be much pushback, because the more buckets you add, the less optimization that will occur.

Those of you who remember the AD OPT PBS program will recall we had one bid group and assigned each criteria a point value of -1000 to +1000 to communicate what we desired. But, recall that was in the manual mode. There was also an automatic weighting mode that we were advised not to use because it did not allow you to define “shades of gray.” It had a desire low, medium, high, and avoid low, medium, high, as well as a neutral. 7 buckets. Sound familiar? Except, there was no optimization. If one compares the automatic mode of AD OPT to Jeppesen, Jeppesen wins hands down, but if one compares the manual mode of AD OPT to Jeppesen, slow down. AD OPT did not require optimization because your line was optimized at the time it was built.

Each program will try to give you the highest scoring line it can. Jeppesen actually converts H++,H+, H, N, L, L-, L-- to a numerical value because it is a mathematical program. Each program builds as many lines for you as it can depending on your seniority and what trips are left, and awards you the line with the highest value. With AD OPT manual mode, more than likely there would only be one line with the highest score. With Jeppesen, depending on how detailed one bids, there may be several lines with the same highest score. That is where optimization comes in. For example, lets say one wants to fly 3 day trips Wed thru Fri. Depending on how complex your bid is and how big your category is, there might be 4-5 trips departing each Wed, and you have them all in the H++ bucket. The solver can build you several lines worth the same value, and that is what allows the solver to optimize and improve the line of a junior bidder without hurting the senior bidder. Granted, that is an over simplistic example, and I would hope most pilots don't bid that generically, but you get the idea. It is much more difficult and time consuming to communicate “shades of gray” to the Jeppesen program largely because we are limited to 7 buckets.

Increasing the number of buckets would be a step in the right direction, but remember everything has ramifications. Because rather than having one bid group, we have 20, and each bid group can only have 50 bid rows, 25 of which can be “award”, it might be difficult to fully utilize all those additional buckets. And we would lose some of this glorious “optimization” we were sold on. The only thing left would be a generic program with a poor user interface.

Bottom line, I would rather be able to communicate my “shades of gray” easily instead of having my line optimized. Time to scrap Jeppesen. There are newer and better programs out there.

With any PBS program comes the option to define the parameters under which the solution is determined. While the program can be frustrating, it's the parameters that allow behind the scenes manipulation that seems to cause the problems. New software is only as good as the language that defines its operation.

Can we also get our schedules out sooner? maybe start process on 1st or 2nd day of month and shorten the window from 6 days to 4 days...getting a schedule on the 17th of the month is a little late..

This-

Does marketing have their Sept Schedule set? Seems they do since you can go into EmployeeRes and see info for Sept/Oct trips.

No reason why PBS opens on the 6th, closes on the 12th and is done working on the evening of the 17th!
How about opening on the 1st, closing on the 7th, out by the 10th!

PBS needs an overhaul.. As well as the STT system. Got to be a way to allow some sort of Trip trading while PBS is doing it's thing.
Next contract? 2020?!

Always
Motch

After talking with my buddies at Delta, I have come to the conclusion that their system is much better than ours. I wonder if we could use their vendor and tweak it for us???

No reason other than that's what the pilots ratified in the UPA. The company wanted the flexibility to make marketing changes late in the prior schedule month. ALPA gave and got in negotiations. So, to get am earlier schedule, it's going to cost you.

If we did our schedules earlier in the month, we would have just as many pilots complaining

"why do we have to do scheduling so early in the month. We aren't even halfway through this month. I am not sure what I want to do next month."