PBS and pairing quality are two different things. PBS gives you a degree of flexibility that is not available with hard lines, but you have to do your homework, and learn how to use the system.
If ALPA does its homework, takes the good things, and the bad things from other carriers, and puts them in the contract, then I think you'll like PBS.
As I said, pairing quality? That's a different subject.
The bottom third of the list gets the leftovers, but isn't that always the case?
Assume ALPA will not do its homework, and be pleasantly surprised if they do.
You're absolutely correct in saying that pairing quality and PBS are two different animals, but consider this example: I need certain days off next month, and my company has a hotline to assist in our 'transition' to PBS. I bid , but don't 'submit' until I call our resident hotline guru and tell him what I'm trying to do, and ask him to look over my bids to make sure what I bid will give me the best chance for said schedule. He gives me the thumbs-up, and compliments me on the fact that I 'did my homework'. The bids are posted a few days later, and I'm on reserve for the next month. To add insult to injury, I don't have ANY of the days off that I requested. I find out that there are several guys junior to me in my base that have hard lines, and a couple of them have the days off that I need. (Side note- this info regarding other pilots' schedules is not posted anywhere. It's obtained by chance encounters and conversations with other pilots in my base. In other words, if I hadn't run into certain individuals and discussed PBS issues, I would have never known that I'd been screwed) I call the same idiot on the hotline and say "WTF." He tells me that they're learning about all the software glitches through experiences such as mine. He assures me that it will be corrected. By the time I had resigned over a year later, this was still happening.
The above example had nothing to do with pairings. If I'm too junior to hold certain days off or pairings, then thats the breaks, and I have to adjust to it. But if the system implemented by the company, and endorsed by the union/association is full of flaws that take away my ability to bid and hold what I should, I don't want to hear your excuses- I want you to fix it. And when you don't, I want someone to be accountable for it. Let's face it, our schedules are our lives. What little control we have over our schedules, especially at the lower half of the senority list, shouldn't be taken away.
There were countless other examples similar to the one above that happened both to me and my co-workers. In my mind, it was inexcusable.
To be fair, not everyone had a problem with PBS. I ran into pilots who loved it- although more often I encountered pilots who didn't.
