More planes for ExpressJet

[Nevets]

I will let Steve answer that because I would probably screw it up trying to explain it. But I will say that smartpref only globalizes the bottom. So in your example, maybe the bottom 40 are under global constraints. It will not touch the lines of those above that seniority. And it does tell you, in real time, which seniority, whether you may be under global constraints.

 

[ratherbeflyen]

Will someone please explain something to me. I understand that with this "globalized" system, it can pull from more senior people to award to junior people. If I want to fly a 100 hour month and I have a schedule completed at that point, when it gets to someone junior to me, it can pull something from my schedule to complete theirs? Is this correct? Also, lets say 100 pilots are bidding. As you have stated the company decides the number of reserves. Let's say in this case 10. So 90 pilots WILL have lines. What if it gets to number 80 and doesn't have any more trips because many people senior to number 80 are bidding high value lines. It will go through the assigned lines and continue to remove trips from other people to complete those 10 lines? I don't see how the company can decide on the number of lines when they don't know how pilots will bid for the month. Therefore, if the company's estimate could be way off resulting in a lot of "globalization". Or will they decide that everyone will get an average line value to determine this?

One last question. Say it gets to the end and has to globalize. How does it work? Does it go from the most junior lineholder to the most senior, or does it start from the top down. And do you have anyway of preventing certain trips from being removed? I could see where some really junior people could end up with great trips and everyone in the middle is screwed. And how will this globalized solution work with "live" bidding. Will you know it while you are bidding, or will it be a surprise?

Depends on what system of globalization your using. Yes, there are systems that do just what you described.

Smartpref doesn't "steal" trips off other lines to make an end solution. What it does do it keep track of the average line value and duty periods left to be covered. Lets say for example there were a lot of open duty periods on every friday, and your bid was weekends off. The globalized part of smartpref would know it has lots of duty periods on fridays so it would build you a line working tuesday - friday. What it does is try to push people towards working on days that it needs covered within what they put for preferences. If you bid for friday's - sundays off, it would give it to you, seniority permitting. What you can count on is if you didn't hold weekends off, there will be no one junior to you that did. There are countless examples of how it could work based on what had to be covered and what you bid. What it won't do is ignore seniority and strip your line to make someone else's work.

The live bidding aspect of it is fairly dependent on standing bids to generate a good idea of what's left when it's your turn to bid. It is not a guarantee that what it looks like when you bid will be the end result when results are posted. What it does do is give a real time estimate of what your 3 most likely lines would be. Let's say you wanted a commuter line, so you bid show times after 10:00 and release times before 19:00 with weekends off. It could build you a nice day trip or two day line that would meet your preferences. You would be able to instantly see that and adjust your bid to add desire all trips to be 4 days. It also shows you exactly how many people senior to you that have and have not bid yet. Another nice feature is lets say you want Christmas day off at all cost. If you can't hold a line that has Christmas off you can set it up to put you back to reserve to get it. If someone senior to you changes their bid and it can build you a line that has Christmas off, it will and you wont be on reserve.

One of the best features of the program (IMO) is that all the parameters of the bid are visible. Everything that can be tweaked to change the bidding parameters are displayed on a tab in the bidding process. I forget everything that's on that tab but if something has been changed, like the minimum line value has been set at 83, you'd see that. It makes the bidding process a lot harder for management to hide manipulating the pilot group.

 

[screamingpax]

Depends on what system of globalization your using. Yes, there are systems that do just what you described.

Smartpref doesn't "steal" trips off other lines to make an end solution. What it does do it keep track of the average line value and duty periods left to be covered. Lets say for example there were a lot of open duty periods on every friday, and your bid was weekends off. The globalized part of smartpref would know it has lots of duty periods on fridays so it would build you a line working tuesday - friday. What it does is try to push people towards working on days that it needs covered within what they put for preferences. If you bid for friday's - sundays off, it would give it to you, seniority permitting. What you can count on is if you didn't hold weekends off, there will be no one junior to you that did. There are countless examples of how it could work based on what had to be covered and what you bid. What it won't do is ignore seniority and strip your line to make someone else's work.

The live bidding aspect of it is fairly dependent on standing bids to generate a good idea of what's left when it's your turn to bid. It is not a guarantee that what it looks like when you bid will be the end result when results are posted. What it does do is give a real time estimate of what your 3 most likely lines would be. Let's say you wanted a commuter line, so you bid show times after 10:00 and release times before 19:00 with weekends off. It could build you a nice day trip or two day line that would meet your preferences. You would be able to instantly see that and adjust your bid to add desire all trips to be 4 days. It also shows you exactly how many people senior to you that have and have not bid yet. Another nice feature is lets say you want Christmas day off at all cost. If you can't hold a line that has Christmas off you can set it up to put you back to reserve to get it. If someone senior to you changes their bid and it can build you a line that has Christmas off, it will and you wont be on reserve.

One of the best features of the program (IMO) is that all the parameters of the bid are visible. Everything that can be tweaked to change the bidding parameters are displayed on a tab in the bidding process. I forget everything that's on that tab but if something has been changed, like the minimum line value has been set at 83, you'd see that. It makes the bidding process a lot harder for management to hide manipulating the pilot group.

Thanks for the info.

 

[pilotnbr1]

If Smartpref's globalization feature is as Ratherbeflyen describes and I understand it- Always honoring your preferences but trying to find a better whole solution- I don't have a problem with that kind of globalization.

Here on the CRJ side under Prefbid we already experience THAT type of Globalization.,. What do you think is happening when the union and the company meet trying to find the best overall solution? It is the union and the company tweaking parameters for the best overall solution... Of course preferences are honored but if you create loose preferences or are junior there is quite a bit of latitude in the awards created.

Under Smartpref I like the idea of viewing my possible award in real time and the transparency that offers. I like that the award created is final and there will not be more tweaking by other hands behind closed doors... I realize now that under Prefbid I can go back and research my bid history- which offers transparency and keeps everyone honest BUT that is all after the fact....

I do like the Smatpref feature which allows you to view awards in real time based on available pairings. It sounds much better than the 2 prelims we currently get under Prefbid. Of course as one poster mentioned, there ARE going to be bid snipers. If I am near a computer near bid close I will be watching my predicted award very closely and making adjustments as needed. The more senior the person making last minute changes towards bid close- the more those changes will cascade and ripple down the seniority list. Perhaps a staggered bid close window would solve some of this in both systems....

I have seen what a learning curve Prefbid was.. There are many caveats and gotchas that have required a real education to use it to its fullest potential. Initially when we were being trained to use it I think the trainers had a good grasp on how to sort trips but everyone was fuzzy on the logic in which the award engine works. It took a lot of trial and error with many months of bidding to figure it out. Even now I occasionally hear someone confused on how it works or why they got something on their award. I am aware of a few individuals who even pay others to bid for them... All that aside the vast majority is far happier with Prefbid vs our old line bidding. I think we got what we have through the tenacity of our MEC refusing to settle on certain points and some luck. To switch to Smartpref is a huge leap that we might not be so lucky on this time around. I don't think its potential advantages merit us throwing away Prefbid. Why don't we just tweak Prefbid?

Bottom line is the whole thing has become political... Neither MEC wants to appear weak to their members. The CRJ MEC also already has alot invested in Prefbid in terms of time, money, and systems in place to manage PBS. Ultimately I hope we also get control of pairing generation. Either system will create bad schedules if all it has to work with is bad parings...

 

[No Delay]

What he said ^

 

[mckpickle]

You guys have some really good questions and are really thinking this through. I'm trying to JS home but when I get some time this weekend I'll chime in on how the globalization in SP works.

 

[enuffalready]

Let's just smartpref this thing and move on. Can we do it as a loa for 2 years so if it sucks donkey balls we aren't stuck with it for 5+ years? Then tweak it after 2.

 

[Nevets]

Let's just smartpref this thing and move on. Can we do it as a loa for 2 years so if it sucks donkey balls we aren't stuck with it for 5+ years? Then tweak it after 2.

Float that idea by your rep. Can't hurt.

 

[ratherbeflyen]

If Smartpref's globalization feature is as Ratherbeflyen describes and I understand it- Always honoring your preferences but trying to find a better whole solution- I don't have a problem with that kind of globalization.

Here on the CRJ side under Prefbid we already experience THAT type of Globalization.,. What do you think is happening when the union and the company meet trying to find the best overall solution? It is the union and the company tweaking parameters for the best overall solution... Of course preferences are honored but if you create loose preferences or are junior there is quite a bit of latitude in the awards created.

Based on the globalization aspect I think smartpref gets an edge on flightline. There are so many trips and an almost infinite number of outcomes, it's just not as efficient to tweak the bottom bidders at the end of the resolution.

With all PBS systems the top people will get what they bid for. At some point the software will see that the remaining trips with the remaining number of bidders is going to have some conflict. Lets for example say average line value has to be 85 hours. If the top X% of bidders bid for 75 hour lines, then at some point the remaining trips divided by the number of lines left will go over 100 hours. Of course that's not legal so the system keeps track (or is some systems go back up) and makes a point where no matter what your preferences are your ending up with a 95+ hour line. When you have to build a 95 hour line it becomes much harder to honor your requests. Generally speaking most PBS systems have a constraint around the 30% bidding seniority. If your above 30% get close to exactly what you want, after 30% your preference's start taking a back seat to an end resolution. The advantage of smartpref is that it knows from bidder #1 what its constraints are. It already ran one (or millions?) of resolutions before the bid even opened based on standing bids etc. So under the previous example of the 85 average line value, it will try to raise the average line value of everyone. With no globalization if bidder 1 bid max days off, lets say it built a 75 hour 20 day off line. With the globalization it would try to build a 20 day off line with highest line value it could. The result is the constraints that conflict with bidding preference's start occurring latter in the bid seniority. Usually around the 40-60% range and beyond depending on what the constraint is. If your in the top 30% you probably wont see any significant difference, but if your the other 70% it may be huge.

The other significant advantage is time. Because smartpref is running a live system, essentially you could hit the "stop" button at any time and bid awards are posted. All the lines were already completed while everyone bid. You don't have to take the time to then run the bid, post a prelim, run another bid, tweak some more, negotiate with management, and maybe flip a coin. I don't know what the actual time difference would be, but I think two weeks + is reasonable guess on how much sooner the final bid awards would posted with smartpref. I'm sure everyone would love to have two extra weeks to make plans.

I do like the Smatpref feature which allows you to view awards in real time based on available pairings. It sounds much better than the 2 prelims we currently get under Prefbid. Of course as one poster mentioned, there ARE going to be bid snipers. If I am near a computer near bid close I will be watching my predicted award very closely and making adjustments as needed. The more senior the person making last minute changes towards bid close- the more those changes will cascade and ripple down the seniority list. Perhaps a staggered bid close window would solve some of this in both systems....

Agreed, but no system will be immune to last minute changes by people altering the entire resolution. I honestly have no idea which system better protects you from bid changes.

I have seen what a learning curve Prefbid was.. There are many caveats and gotchas that have required a real education to use it to its fullest potential. Initially when we were being trained to use it I think the trainers had a good grasp on how to sort trips but everyone was fuzzy on the logic in which the award engine works. It took a lot of trial and error with many months of bidding to figure it out. Even now I occasionally hear someone confused on how it works or why they got something on their award. I am aware of a few individuals who even pay others to bid for them... All that aside the vast majority is far happier with Prefbid vs our old line bidding. I think we got what we have through the tenacity of our MEC refusing to settle on certain points and some luck. To switch to Smartpref is a huge leap that we might not be so lucky on this time around. I don't think its potential advantages merit us throwing away Prefbid. Why don't we just tweak Prefbid?

I agree that experience with flightline is a huge advantage. Murphy's laws of "If it aint broke don't fix it" and "anything that can go wrong will go wrong," are fitting. Combined with the astonishing desire and ability of this management to exploit loopholes. Using the tested working system does have merit. That's the exact logic the majority of the Lxjt pilot group is using to want to keep line bidding.

Change is inevitable, and as general whole people fear and resist change. Resist or accept, not all changes are for the worse.

Bottom line is the whole thing has become political... Neither MEC wants to appear weak to their members. The CRJ MEC also already has alot invested in Prefbid in terms of time, money, and systems in place to manage PBS. Ultimately I hope we also get control of pairing generation. Either system will create bad schedules if all it has to work with is bad parings...

I agree 100% with this statement. This whole debate stopped being about what's right and became about who's right.

By the way I'm not affiliated with the MEC, LEC or scheduling committee. All the information I have, I learned from xjt alpa. I would love for asa alpa to put out some information on their beliefs and decision logic on flightline. If it is really the better system tell my why. Convince me to vote for it. I defiantly want the better system and care less who's right or wrong.

 

[OCP]

I for one am over this nonsense. There a so much bigger things going on that we need to worry about. We need to get a contract done and one list ASAP.
SmartPref doesn't sound all that bad. I'd rather just fix loopholes in Flightline because I really like that software. But at this point it will pretty much be the same thing in the end. I'll be expressing this to my reps as well. (ASA guy)
I really encourage all other ASAers out there to do the same. This line in the sand thing is just stupid. Look around at what is going on at other companies, this is small potatoes!

 

[79%N1]

At this point, and before its too late I'm suggesting we force both sides to put out a comprehensive report selling their system, we investigate both and then vote on which one to include. This is bordering insanity. Let the masses decide, if it sucks the winning side has nobody to blame and the other side can say 'I told you so', but at least we moved on. Consider my call to my rep done...............

 

[ratherbeflyen]

At this point, and before its too late I'm suggesting we force both sides to put out a comprehensive report selling their system, we investigate both and then vote on which one to include. This is bordering insanity. Let the masses decide, if it sucks the winning side has nobody to blame and the other side can say 'I told you so', but at least we moved on. Consider my call to my rep done...............

Democracy, what a novel idea. I second this.

 

[mckpickle]

Will someone please explain something to me. I understand that with this "globalized" system, it can pull from more senior people to award to junior people. If I want to fly a 100 hour month and I have a schedule completed at that point, when it gets to someone junior to me, it can pull something from my schedule to complete theirs? Is this correct? Also, lets say 100 pilots are bidding. As you have stated the company decides the number of reserves. Let's say in this case 10. So 90 pilots WILL have lines. What if it gets to number 80 and doesn't have any more trips because many people senior to number 80 are bidding high value lines. It will go through the assigned lines and continue to remove trips from other people to complete those 10 lines? I don't see how the company can decide on the number of lines when they don't know how pilots will bid for the month. Therefore, if the company's estimate could be way off resulting in a lot of "globalization". Or will they decide that everyone will get an average line value to determine this?

One last question. Say it gets to the end and has to globalize. How does it work? Does it go from the most junior lineholder to the most senior, or does it start from the top down. And do you have anyway of preventing certain trips from being removed? I could see where some really junior people could end up with great trips and everyone in the middle is screwed. And how will this globalized solution work with "live" bidding. Will you know it while you are bidding, or will it be a surprise?

Let me take the easiest one first. The reserves lines are determined by line average. If you run the average too low then you force the system to create more line holders, thus less reserves. If you run it too high you create less line holders and more reserves. The software does have a way to say "force reserve after xx number of line holders". But by doing that you take away some of the logic of the system. Allowing it to "float" will allow the system the most flexibility for situations when pairings are added/remover or bidders are added or removed during bidding. Because, keep in mind, the system is dynamic and it allows the pairings to account for flight retimes and changes to pairings even while bidding. And it also allows the bid list to be adjusted so you won't get someone awarded a schedule when they should be on some sort of leave. But it's still driving to the line average and will not say "you can't have a line because 25 senior guys all want to fly 100 hours."


As for globalization, to answer your question, if you are in the restricted group, yes, there is a chance that a pairing that you want would be awarded to a junior pilot in order to complete the solution. Now lets talk about how it determines who is in the restricted group.

The first thing it does it evaluates where the critical period is. It takes everything such as preassigned absences (vacation, training days etc) to see that there may be a period where there are less pilots available. Then it looks at the trips to see if they are stacked up anyplace. So how does it combat that? Since it knows where the "critical period" is it knows that it's going to try to cover those trips/days with pilots who are not in the restricted group. So lets use the example that you want 4 day commutable trips with the weekends off. A very general bid. The system reads your bid and assigns trips in the best way that will cover the solution while still honoring your requests. Of course you could tag trips (request specific pairings) or be very specific on the order in which you set up your bid and pilots in the non restricted group will certainly get them if no one senior has taken them. So the system is looking ahead trying to cover that critical period and thus reducing when the restricted group starts. The key, like in every globalized PBS system is giving the system flexibility through work rules. The reason CAL was so angry wasn't due to globalization, it was because their work rules sucked. 19 hours for vacation, zero credit for training and award logic that would not leave open time.

It doesn't get to the bottom and work it's way back up because it doesn't need to. Once in the restricted group it builds 10's of thousands of combinations of lines in an attempt to best meet the bid parameters. It constructs roughly 10 lines a time then evaluates if the solution will complete inside of acceptable parameters. In our stress tests where everyone bid for the same day off the ONLY time a junior bidder got a day off he requested when a senior pilot didn't was when the senior pilot had training days and giving him the requested day off would have violated 2 in 7 off.


Here is another thing to consider. Lets say you're in the bottom 25% of lineholders. And lets say that you're also in the restricted group. In every other PBS system out there you have no idea what you can possibly hold. Unless you're in the top 10-20% you're not bidding for specific (tagging trips) pairings anyway. So saying "well I wanted that trip but a junior pilot got it" is kinda a silly argument. Because at that level you don't know what you're bidding for. You don't know whats actually available to you....except in smartpref. In any other system how are you supposed to construct your bid when you are junior and you want pairing xx? Because even if you possibly get pairing xx you don't know if the other remaining pairings will give you a complete legal line, and flightline is the same way. In smartpref you can see it right away. You can still bid it however you may not get that pairing because the combination of that pairing and the other remaining pairings is not enough to give you a legal line.

Anyway hope that helps out. I'll be in ATL all week if someone is really interested in taking a look.

 

[COOPERVANE]

I'll be in ATL all week if someone is really interested in taking a look.

When and where exactly?

 

[screamingpax]

It helps and it confuses. There are a lot of new terms. I don't understand it still, but some stuff if starting to make sense. I would like to see it in action but won't be anywhere near ATL this week. Not that any of us regular line guys have any real say in it anyways. The couple of things that I am not very sure about/uncomfortable with are phrases like "system flexibility" "average line value". To be clear, when this system is creating lines, (forget guys with vacation, i'm talking just normal monthly bidders) it drives every line toward an average value? Is there no way to control how much credit you get in a month? Secondly, what I do like about Flightline is that it is fairly simple. When its your turn for an award, it looks at what is in the pot when you are up. Then it goes through your preferences. In order and assigns until it hits the threshold, or you are no longer legal ( or window minimum if you do it right). If one pairing is in your pref #1, its yours, then #2. So if you set up your preferences properly, no person junior to you should ever get a trip that you would rather have. Unless it isn't allowed legally because of a pairing that's on your schedule as a result of a higher preference. You don't get to see and tweek your bid, which would be nice but it seems to allow for more "pilot" control, vs computer/system control. Under Flightline, I basically program the system to complete my bid and once I submit it, I am done worrying about it. It seems Smartpref may allow for more tweaking but require more time spent looking at your live bid and adjusting. Which to means seems like more work then just programming the bid. An hour or so of my time and I can create my schedule. I don't know it until its published, but assuming I didn't make any mistakes, it will be what I want/the best I could hold based on my desires. I do think that with Smartpref, you could catch your mistakes before bid closes, but honestly I am not perfect but that has only happened to me one month. And it was a simple mistake that I normally don't allow but forgot because I was in a hurry at the last minute. Not trying to discredit Smartpref, just trying to understand the advantages. Hopefully a system will be picked soon and we can get this contract done. It is better for everyone of us to be a single company.

 

[mckpickle]

I get in tonight and will be at the Atech all week. PM me and maybe we can grab a beer someplace with wifi.

 

[OCP]

Take notes for those of us who can't get to see how it works. I'd like to see it my self.

 

[Nevets]

It helps and it confuses. There are a lot of new terms. I don't understand it still, but some stuff if starting to make sense. I would like to see it in action but won't be anywhere near ATL this week. Not that any of us regular line guys have any real say in it anyways. The couple of things that I am not very sure about/uncomfortable with are phrases like "system flexibility" "average line value". To be clear, when this system is creating lines, (forget guys with vacation, i'm talking just normal monthly bidders) it drives every line toward an average value? Is there no way to control how much credit you get in a month? Secondly, what I do like about Flightline is that it is fairly simple. When its your turn for an award, it looks at what is in the pot when you are up. Then it goes through your preferences. In order and assigns until it hits the threshold, or you are no longer legal ( or window minimum if you do it right). If one pairing is in your pref #1, its yours, then #2. So if you set up your preferences properly, no person junior to you should ever get a trip that you would rather have. Unless it isn't allowed legally because of a pairing that's on your schedule as a result of a higher preference. You don't get to see and tweek your bid, which would be nice but it seems to allow for more "pilot" control, vs computer/system control. Under Flightline, I basically program the system to complete my bid and once I submit it, I am done worrying about it. It seems Smartpref may allow for more tweaking but require more time spent looking at your live bid and adjusting. Which to means seems like more work then just programming the bid. An hour or so of my time and I can create my schedule. I don't know it until its published, but assuming I didn't make any mistakes, it will be what I want/the best I could hold based on my desires. I do think that with Smartpref, you could catch your mistakes before bid closes, but honestly I am not perfect but that has only happened to me one month. And it was a simple mistake that I normally don't allow but forgot because I was in a hurry at the last minute. Not trying to discredit Smartpref, just trying to understand the advantages. Hopefully a system will be picked soon and we can get this contract done. It is better for everyone of us to be a single company.

I think he meant that, like any PBS, it's about work rules. It needs to have flexibility for the award logic to work efficiently but not so much so that it turns into CAL's system. For example, if we had a work rule that required it to solve to zero open time, you have taken some of the flexibility away and will end up with worse lines. But on the other hand, you also want to have as high as a credit value you can negotiate, assigned to vacation and training, as possible also.

As for line averages, you can set it up to give you maximum line value, up to the contractual or legal limit, or you can have it build you a line down to MMG. Of course it depends on your seniority and what the line average of those more senior to you have compared to how much open time it needs to cover with everyone below you in seniority.

Lastly, if you don't want to "worry" about your bid, you can just take your whatever time it takes you to bid, see in real time if you made any mistakes or you bid something your seniority could hold, and be done with it. No need to come back to it later. You can just wait until your line is final as you do now.

 

[Oakum_Boy]

I think he meant that, like any PBS, it's about work rules. It needs to have flexibility for the award logic to work efficiently but not so much so that it turns into CAL's system. For example, if we had a work rule that required it to solve to zero open time, you have taken some of the flexibility away and will end up with worse lines. But on the other hand, you also want to have as high as a credit value you can negotiate, assigned to vacation and training, as possible also.

Just write this junk into the filghtline software. Why bring in this POS. Why? Ask yourself. Why. Give me ONE good reason other than your MEC says it the best.

If it's so good, why are you volunteering to be the guinea pig. The laboratory mouse. Why.

Flightline is a quality system. It honors seniority. ACEY PEOPLE WAKE UP

 

[Tarzan]

Yup, its being hidden by our MEC. The information was in the white paper along with everyone being told to go watch videos, bid, etc here.

http://www.crewingsolutions.com/

The XJT guys accuse our MEC of hiding things from us yet it all seems to be there for those willing o either read or click on a website and spend sometime watching videos.