Speedtape
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2004
- Posts
- 1,973
Part 2
ASA has had many months where the minimum line was 85-90 hours. So EVERYONE had to have that credit value to have a line awarded.
There have been some months where the window was high. However, the high credit windows were forced or induced by poor planning. You cannot decide to hire and train for the summer starting in May or June. Hiring requires training pilots already on the property for transitions and upgrades. You cannot have 25% of your current pilots “unavailable” for the busiest time of the year because they are in training through July. A better decision would have been to hire and train earlier, or not at all. This created the strains on the system. However, in the end, the flying will be covered. It is either built into lines with higher line values, or it is covered by extreme measures of extending, junior-manning, and flying the heck out of the Reserves.
By the way, this can also happen in line bidding. If memory serves me correctly, in the recent past, legacy XJet was way understaffed by the previous management. This created mayhem. Your pilots were flying the limits, with all methods employed in extending and junior-manning, and also cancelling flights in record numbers. Thus, this is the reason for all the hiring over the last year. Has it gotten better? Personally, under either of the above circumstances, I would rather pick my poison and have the time placed on my line to the point I have no utility. Some would rather get extended or junior-manned at premium pay. I prefer some degree of predictability and would reluctantly prefer to have a pre-set schedule.
Meanwhile pilots on vacation….junior pilots were only required to work 65 hours of credit. Since the system cannot look ahead and see the end result people running the software has to select different methods of assignment called “sort biases”. So we’re leaving it up to a human being to determine what is best. Because in each sort bias a bidder will get different assignments (unless they are very very specific).
Everyone gets a vacation. Most pilots want one in the Summer when their kids are out of school. Our pilots wanted to be able to extend their vacation. I am sure from what I have heard, so do yours. But yes, the flying has to be covered by the remaining pilots. How does it work on your property because your pilots can conflict their trips out with vacation and extend their vacations also?
In Prefbid, a pilot’s seniority is always honored. If he bids enough, no pairing is assigned that he did not bid on. If he is not specific in his bidding, then the software attempts to award as many of the matched trips in a Preference that it can. However, if some of the trips conflict, because they start on the same day, and he does not further refine his preference to move certain trips up in priority, then he is basically saying all matched trips are equal to me, “software award me a trip.” Give me as many as you can. Sort biases are simply a way to select from the trips that conflict. There has to be a method to pick a trip. Under these circumstances, his seniority has been honored, and he has been awarded a pairing from the ones he chose, but showed no further preference. The pilot understands this logic and knows he can further prioritize those pairings if he chooses to make a specific pairing in that group more important. Otherwise, there is no mind reading, and some method has to be employed to award conflicting trips. It is not a bad thing. Personally, I would rather have pilots choose the methods versus any options that automation would choose that may not be in my best interest. If it bothers anyone that much, then bid more specifically so that no methods are needed in processing that pilot’s schedule. The Pilot has control if he chooses to exercise it.
A globalized system knows up front what is possible….Smartpref takes it one step further and will immediately display the results based on what more senior pilots have already bid or have as a standing bid.
Yes, that feature is nice. But what happens in the real world when GLOBALIZATION executes. That feature is greatly outweighed by the compromise of GLOBALIZATION. Again, GLOBALIZATION takes Power from the Pilots. It can affect the quality of your schedule in the pairings it chooses, and it can affect your pocketbook in the line value that you receive ($). Most of us desire the best schedule we can obtain, and control over the amount of money that we want to make. Likewise, it can cause you to fly more than you want. Bottom line, give me a bidding system that offers the most control that I can have in determining my quality of life by the pairings I choose, and the money that I determine that I want to make. That requires a system that honors seniority to the greatest extent possible and is available to all pilots on the list, not a system that utilizes voodoo logic in the form that cannot be explained or predicted!
ASA has had many months where the minimum line was 85-90 hours. So EVERYONE had to have that credit value to have a line awarded.
There have been some months where the window was high. However, the high credit windows were forced or induced by poor planning. You cannot decide to hire and train for the summer starting in May or June. Hiring requires training pilots already on the property for transitions and upgrades. You cannot have 25% of your current pilots “unavailable” for the busiest time of the year because they are in training through July. A better decision would have been to hire and train earlier, or not at all. This created the strains on the system. However, in the end, the flying will be covered. It is either built into lines with higher line values, or it is covered by extreme measures of extending, junior-manning, and flying the heck out of the Reserves.
By the way, this can also happen in line bidding. If memory serves me correctly, in the recent past, legacy XJet was way understaffed by the previous management. This created mayhem. Your pilots were flying the limits, with all methods employed in extending and junior-manning, and also cancelling flights in record numbers. Thus, this is the reason for all the hiring over the last year. Has it gotten better? Personally, under either of the above circumstances, I would rather pick my poison and have the time placed on my line to the point I have no utility. Some would rather get extended or junior-manned at premium pay. I prefer some degree of predictability and would reluctantly prefer to have a pre-set schedule.
Meanwhile pilots on vacation….junior pilots were only required to work 65 hours of credit. Since the system cannot look ahead and see the end result people running the software has to select different methods of assignment called “sort biases”. So we’re leaving it up to a human being to determine what is best. Because in each sort bias a bidder will get different assignments (unless they are very very specific).
Everyone gets a vacation. Most pilots want one in the Summer when their kids are out of school. Our pilots wanted to be able to extend their vacation. I am sure from what I have heard, so do yours. But yes, the flying has to be covered by the remaining pilots. How does it work on your property because your pilots can conflict their trips out with vacation and extend their vacations also?
In Prefbid, a pilot’s seniority is always honored. If he bids enough, no pairing is assigned that he did not bid on. If he is not specific in his bidding, then the software attempts to award as many of the matched trips in a Preference that it can. However, if some of the trips conflict, because they start on the same day, and he does not further refine his preference to move certain trips up in priority, then he is basically saying all matched trips are equal to me, “software award me a trip.” Give me as many as you can. Sort biases are simply a way to select from the trips that conflict. There has to be a method to pick a trip. Under these circumstances, his seniority has been honored, and he has been awarded a pairing from the ones he chose, but showed no further preference. The pilot understands this logic and knows he can further prioritize those pairings if he chooses to make a specific pairing in that group more important. Otherwise, there is no mind reading, and some method has to be employed to award conflicting trips. It is not a bad thing. Personally, I would rather have pilots choose the methods versus any options that automation would choose that may not be in my best interest. If it bothers anyone that much, then bid more specifically so that no methods are needed in processing that pilot’s schedule. The Pilot has control if he chooses to exercise it.
A globalized system knows up front what is possible….Smartpref takes it one step further and will immediately display the results based on what more senior pilots have already bid or have as a standing bid.
Yes, that feature is nice. But what happens in the real world when GLOBALIZATION executes. That feature is greatly outweighed by the compromise of GLOBALIZATION. Again, GLOBALIZATION takes Power from the Pilots. It can affect the quality of your schedule in the pairings it chooses, and it can affect your pocketbook in the line value that you receive ($). Most of us desire the best schedule we can obtain, and control over the amount of money that we want to make. Likewise, it can cause you to fly more than you want. Bottom line, give me a bidding system that offers the most control that I can have in determining my quality of life by the pairings I choose, and the money that I determine that I want to make. That requires a system that honors seniority to the greatest extent possible and is available to all pilots on the list, not a system that utilizes voodoo logic in the form that cannot be explained or predicted!
Last edited:
