How does Per Bid work at your company?

[Beechnut]

How does Perf Bid work at your company?

The regional I work for has begun looking into Perf bidding. Both the Company and the Union are interested in it.

What are the benefits and detractors of Perf Bid at your company?

How does trip touching and integration work?

Thanks,

S.

 

["GO AROUND"]

I think you mean Preferential Bid system?

ASA is looking for it in our new contract. Most who I talk to that use it like it and it usually benifits the pilots and the company.

 

[RP170]

I think you mean Preferential Bid system?

ASA is looking for it in our new contract. Most who I talk to that use it like it and it usually benifits the pilots and the company.

Works pretty well here at CHQ. Everyone that is a lineholder seems to get at least 14-15 days off per month. I mainly ask for late shows and 3-4 day trips since I commute. Every trip I received this month is a late show so it seems like it's working well for the most part.

 

[GFunk20]

I second that. Pref Bidding works well at CHQ. Most people seem very pleased with the simplicity of it. (Once you figure how to use it, that is).

 

[Beechnut]

I have to figure that days off has nothing to do with Perf Bidding. I'm curious about conflicts. How vacation bidding done with the bidding? If a trip touches your vacation, can you drop the entire trip? What happens during integration? What are the down sides?

S.

 

[sweptback]

I have to figure that days off has nothing to do with Perf Bidding. I'm curious about conflicts. How vacation bidding done with the bidding? If a trip touches your vacation, can you drop the entire trip? What happens during integration? What are the down sides?

Depends on what's written in your contract and how the PBS is set up.

I'd say most if not all PBS systems do not allow you to bid your line before accounting for vacation, and this is how you end up dropping 2 4-days to get 18 days off. If you account for your vacation before you bid, then the program can adjust your line as to prevent you from getting extra time off. They usually have restrictions like a max of 3 days off on one side of the vacation, and none or maybe 1 on the other side... ie, you're not going to get much time off. A similar theory exists for bidding checkrides and RGT.

PBS is meant to give the company more flexibility when scheduling pilots. There's very little in it that helps pilots, other than maybe ability to get one weekend off rather than a whole month of weekends if you're junior.

For the CHQ guys that brag about how they get 15 days off a month, I'd be willing to bet that the individual pairings are relatively high block, therefore necessitating that many days off to keep under the regs. If you start seeing junk pairings like 8 hour 2 days and 16 hour 4 days, you're going to see lines built to the min days off in your contract.

 

[wings421]

For the CHQ guys that brag about how they get 15 days off a month, I'd be willing to bet that the individual pairings are relatively high block, therefore necessitating that many days off to keep under the regs. If you start seeing junk pairings like 8 hour 2 days and 16 hour 4 days, you're going to see lines built to the min days off in your contract.

You hit the nail on the head. It's really all about how the pairings are constructed that give you the days off. I'm based in STL and we have some pretty high time pairings (company wise) and because of that we get more days off compared to other CHQ bases.

Some problems with PBS here deal with PCs and RGS. A lot of people are getting reserve that should be getting lines for their PC and RGS months.

In general, I like PBS. I'm not too picky though.

 

[Mike man]

At CHQ they have 100% control so they change and rerun the bids until they get their desired result, not the pilots desired result. As an FO last March I had 89 hours with 18 days off, April I had a week vacation pre-awarded which resulted in 19 days off and 88 hours of credit. Negotiate that pref bid builds lines, not the company. Negitiate and drop/trade/pick up system as part of the pref bid.

 

[maxcackel]

So do you get any choice of overnight locations or do you get what ever the system spits out?

 

[RP170]

So do you get any choice of overnight locations or do you get what ever the system spits out?

You can request where you'd like to overnight.

 

[DiverDriver]

Currently we are getting crap pairings and schedules and now the company wants Pref Bidding. People are thinking this will be great since what we are getting now is crap. Maybe it's crap so they can convince people they want to help us (doubt it). It's another carrot.

It's all about pairing construction NOT line construction! And most, if not all, Pref Bidding systems only address line construction and not pairing construction. This is not going to be the end all, be all of bidding. And if we are not careful in what is negotiated we will lose vacation trip touching drops for nothing in return. The company would love this.

Unless we get control over pairing construction and a way to do "schedule enhancement" I'm not too keen on it. It seems that you also need a sufficiently large pilot base to make it worth while. I don't think 80 pilots in base is going to cut it. Either way, I definitely want to see it in a trial BEFORE put thumbs up or down on it. Let's see what it can do in a parallel bidding situation with our current pairing construction. Maybe we'll like it. Maybe we won't.