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Opinions on Flightline PBS

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buscap

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Posts
999
Hey people!!

I hate to barge into the majors board, but it's not flame or debate so please play nice!

Need some help here at ASA. We are negotiating with the company on the FLIGHTLINE PBS system.

Realizing that different work rules and contract knowledge make comparisons an apples and oranges thing, I was wondering if anyone out there actually uses FLIGHTLINE PBS?

What's your opinion on it?
 
Basic Primer on PBS ( Or anything related to Contract / Sec. Six ):

- If the Company want's it....YOU DON'T.

That said....It can be a very beneficial system, to both Parties.

IF, and ONLY IF, it is used as it was designed by the developer/manufacturer.

The basic pitfall is this - If the Company monkeys around with the parameters set forth by those who designed it ( and they will , and are able to do so ) it will become a MESS.

TWA, AWA, Continental, and many others have had their experiences with this.

I will let those "experts" speak to the above.

Good Luck.

YKMKR
 
TWA's pref bid was an excellent experience, but management was benevolent and worked with the union's pref bid committee each month to make sure the perf bid run went well.
 
If you guys vote it in it will be abused by the company and I WILL laugh at every post about how bad it sucks. Gee the company found all these loop holes, I never saw that coming. HA
 
I've had about 8 years experience with PBS and it's actually not bad. The trips are a function of your scheduling section of your contract, so that has to be fixed first.

Abuse is restricted by the computers ability to assign all the flying within its parameters and do so in a reasonable amount of time. If you wanted to build 100 hour lines for everyone, it would do it for the first couple of hundred guys and then crash. By asking it to be efficient with soft time, and build legal lines for the most number of pilots, you have to give it the wiggle room to do that and that comes with a lower line average. Ususally there is a schedule adjustment time following the bid to massage what you want out of open time (if there is any).

Pilot bids are disappointing usually because the bidder either has an unrealistic view of their relative seniority in seat/equip or they weight their preferences incorrectly and cancel out what they really wanted by trying to avoid what they really didn't. That only takes a couple of bids to get past that.

I would never want to go through the labor intensive process of trying to pick a line that gave me as much of what I wanted as PBS does. And it stores a standing bid, so if you forget, you still get an acceptable line.

I've been at the top and the bottom of the list under PBS and I still think it's better than lines and I was one of the most vocal opponents of PBS when it came out. When you realize the limitations of the computer are your friend, it makes alot of the apprehension go away.
 
Ask the people who are actually working on this for you if you REALLY want correct answers. There has been no one who has had the opportunity to negotiate the fine details of how PBS operates like we have at ASA. The Flightline software is being "reprogrammed" to handle the details for what we are getting, so no one actually has the answer because it is not the same as what our union is looking at. You can get the gist, but there is a lot in there.
 
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Ask the people who are actually working on this for you if you REALLY want correct answers. There has been no one who has had the opportunity to negotiate the fine details of how PBS operates like we have at ASA. The Flightline software is being "reprogrammed" to handle the details for what we are getting, so no one actually has the answer because it is not the same as what our union is looking at. You can get the gist, but there is a lot in there.

I agree about asking the ASA folks, but I'm looking for more than that. As my post indicated, I know it's apples and oranges.
 
Ask the people that are working on this at your airline how they will handle "unstacking". Unstacking occurs on holidays when virtually every bidder asks for the same day off. When the amount of un-awarded flying reaches a certain limit, the program "un-stacks" the flying and people get seriously hosed. (Flying is awarded out of seniority order)

Also, how do you currently get paid for monthly integration, vacation, and training conflicts. If you currently get pay protection, then you are insane to agree to PBS because the first thing that appears on your schedule is vacation and training and then your pref bid is awarded. No conflict, no extra pay.

I have worked under both systems. If my present employer could implement a PBS system and NO contract language would be affected I would be all for the change. Unfortunately, the entire reason they would want PBS is the fact that it benefits them more than the pilot group.
 
Some people will get hosed by PBS if there is someone who is junior and their unadjusted schedule would make them illegal. In that case a pilot with more seniority may be awarded something they otherwise may have not in order to make keep the junior pilot legal. However all the lineholders will get legal lines. They won't get a line that requires them to supplement their bid just to get to line minimum. They won't get stuck with a string of reserve-like days either, just to make up time (assuming you don't get pay protection for conflicts).

The senior pilot may be able to dump the unwanted trip into a trade with open time, if your airline allows that and there is sufficient open time to trade with.

PBS isn't perfect, but alot of negotiating capital can be spent on defending the conflict protection provisions that PBS would eliminate. If you think PBS is so valuable to them, negotiate higher pay in other areas more than the conflict protections are worth.
 

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