AA negotiators kick a pilot anthill

[AA717driver]

If you've worked for AMR, you understand.

If you haven't worked for AMR, you CAN'T understand.

TC

P.S.--What does the USAir MEC have to do with this discussion? (AAA MEC?)

 

[nimtz]

Only advise I can give as someone who spent 10 months getting rapped by CAL PBS (even at 55% base seniority): STAFFING FORMULA! If you don't have the bodies to cover the flying, watch out. The program's default goal is to cover all the flying first and foremost. That's where pilot preferences come secondary and expected days off disappear...

 

[Bringupthebird]

Become familiar with the weighting of preferences (how often what you want or don't want occurs in a month) and then consider how much you desire what you put as DESIRE and how badly you want to avoid what you AVOID. Beyond that the quality of a line if based on the contractual scheduling restrictions on pairing construction. If they are allowed to build lousy pairings, they will. And lousy pairings become lousy lines which makes for a lousy job, PBS or no PBS.

 

[SkyWestCRJPilot]

Only advise I can give as someone who spent 10 months getting rapped by CAL PBS (even at 55% base seniority): STAFFING FORMULA! If you don't have the bodies to cover the flying, watch out. The program's default goal is to cover all the flying first and foremost. That's where pilot preferences come secondary and expected days off disappear...

This is absolutely correct. At CAL every summer we've been short staffed. What happens is a term called splat. PBS will build lines from top to bottom. When it runs out of pilots and still has pairings left over it goes back up throwing random crap pairings onto peoples lines. At CAL the splat went all the way back up to about 50% from the bottom every summer. It created very high time lines for everyone below the splat line, 87+ hours not including up to 10 hours of deadhead. That meant most guys would get only 12 days off and be required to fly 100 hours including deadhead.

CAL management just loves it. They can run the airline super lean. We have only 10% reserves. So if you are 90% down the list from the top you are guaranteed a line. Another problem at CAL is that say you want PBS to build you a line with a certain holiday off. If it can't give you that then you want reserve with that holiday off. Impossible at CAL. The only way you can make it do that is to bid a reserve schedule first.

PBS is a great concept but without the proper work rules and staffing it can really suck bad. At CAL we seem to suffer from both.

 

[AA767AV8TOR]

All great inputs. The simple truth of the matter – AMR can’t be trusted and this thing is DOA. It cost too many jobs and we already have too much stagnation around here.

We should be approaching an impasse in the next few months. It's going to be an interesting summer next year.

AA767AV8TOR

 

[pipe]

Well for starters you are spouting a contradiction--"90 hour months" along with no open time. How can you have one and the other. Here is the real story.

You NEVER have 90 hour months with PBS. The most it could ever be (usually in the summer) is 89:30. Of course many times of year it can be as little as 65. My Nov schedule is at 71.

As for no open time...that is the whole point, isn't it? Think about it. If you have a lot of open time left over after the bid run (with line of time or PBS) that is several more regular lines that you could have built, but didn't, thereby relegating a few more guys to reserve than otherwise would have been necessary.

No trip trading? Hmmm. I just traded a trip with another guy last week! (on our Pilot-to-Pilot Swapboard). I also have dropped trips, and picked them up. I also have picked up, dropped, and swapped, trips out of "normal" open time as well as the swapboard.

If your buddies have any complaints about no open time, then that is related more to the time of year (now, with a big drawdown in flying) than the system.

I have yet to meet five guys in the last three years who would want to go back to Line of Time bidding--and we had a good LOT system!

In fact I think if we announced the end of PBS, you would probably get a host of complaints.

Pilots by default are big proponents of "all change is bad, and the good ol' days were always better than now." But remember this: "This week's 'crisis' is next week's footnote."

You need to talk to a UA pilot. 95 hour lines whether you want them or not, little open time, trading is impossible. All PBS all the time.

PIPE

 

[JohnQ]

You need to talk to a UA pilot. 95 hour lines whether you want them or not, little open time, trading is impossible. All PBS all the time.

PIPE

The bottom line is that both the pro and anti PBS crowds have valid points.

Think of PBS like a razor-sharp knife. Used appropriately, with proper safeguards, training, and respect for what it can and can not do, it can be a valuable tool.

Used incorrectly, without proper safeguards (staffing formulas, rules on line construction, appropriate union oversight and ability to nix solutions) than it can be disastrous.

It has worked at DAL because of the safeguards and union oversight we have in place.

But absent those, and with a deep distrust of mgmt, I understand why AA guys would not like it, and why UAL and CAL guys don't like it. You must have strong union oversight before you even agree to the concept. Otherwise it will be a bad end result. With it, however, it can be very good.

 

[AA717driver]

All great inputs. The simple truth of the matter – AMR can’t be trusted and this thing is DOA. It cost too many jobs and we already have too much stagnation around here.

We should be approaching an impasse in the next few months. It's going to be an interesting summer next year.

AA767AV8TOR

Right you are. BUT! If we walk, it'll be shut down and PBS will be awarded by either the PEB or Congress or whoever gets to arbitrate this mess.

IMO, the company is biding their time, knowing they will get a friendly arbitration in the end. TC

 

[AutoBus]

Preferential bidding is not a good thing. It lets management manipulate your schedule. I've used it at two airlines now and definitely would prefer the old fashioned way.

Been working with PBS for 8 years, It is the single, most important life style improvement tool I have seen.

Correctly implemented, it reduces your bidding time and improves scheduling quality.

You guys really need to get your heads out of the sand, BTW the B707's and B727's are long gone, stop living in yesterdays world!


Can management play with your schedule probably not, might it take a trip you might of held and give it someone else, could happen. But most of us that have been doing this aviation stuff for a while,care about days off, credit, and report times. If PBS "steals" a 18 hour layover in CLE and gives me a 17.5 hour layover in IND instead, who really cares, if the end result is MUCH MORE SATISFYING than what I would have recieved line bidding.



I really don't understand the fear people have with PBS, Until you understand how it works and the control it affords you don't knock it!

 

[AA717driver]

One more time:

If you've worked for AMR, you understand.

If you haven't worked for AMR, you CAN'T understand.

AMR isn't JetBlue, CAL, DAL, NWA, UAL and it sure as He!! isn't TWA. PBS would be hellish at AMR. Get it?

TC