SWA lines

[Wedge]

Out of curiosity, does Southwest have hard lines or a preferential bidding system? Thanks in advance!

 

[chase]

Southwest does hard lines, no PBS at this time. It is something that the company will bring up during the next negotiations but currently the lines are built in the traditional ways that most carriers have used. Ours is optimized & modified to meet the contract obviously.

Our % of reserve lines is approximately 8% which is much lower than most carriers I understand. Reserve folks have 15 days off in a 30 day month or 31 day month. Days off for hard lines vary from as many as 19 to as few as 16 days off. Hope that helps.

 

[Pig]

I thought trip trading and dropping trips if someone else picked it up as open time was a form of preferential bidding. I really don't know anything though, just heard of this from guys in my reserve unit. Since that's not preferential bidding I guess, what is it?

 

[chase]

SWA figures the person who is most concerned about a pilot's schedule is not the schedulers but the pilot. Therefore the union in conjunction with the company have developed different strategies/policies/agreed upon contractual procedures that allows pilots to (1) trade trips with other pilots (2) trade trips with the company for other trips in a pool that are unfilled by the company for various reasons (trip pulls for military guys, vacation, etc) (3) post trips for all pilots to see & that any pilot can pick up & not necessarily have to "trade" their trip with you to get your trip...a straight giveaway .

In the strick sense of the word it can be "preferential trading" not bidding since this all occurs after one gets one schedule. It is more like "fixing" one's schedule or fine tuning it to make one's schedule more productive or increase the density of work while away or picking up trips up to the FAA maximum, something regular lines don't do obviously. PBS involves putting one's preferences down & then the computer builds lines based upon these request/preferences & seniority. The improvement of the lines for our 4400 schedulers/pilots is sometimes based upon seniority but other features don't require any seniority to accomplish the goal.

With the flexibility & with some or little seniority pilots can improve their pay, time off, amount of work done or whatever one's goal is in the month they are flying....being able to write lines for that many differences/variables would be tough....trading for it & being motivated to fix one's own schedule & having the tools to do that allows the company schedulers to do what they need to do, fill the holes & keep the airline flying when things come up. The rest of us will keep mama happy by adjusting our schedule accordingly. Hope that helps explain a little of what our scheduling system is like. Still would be greek to me if I was on the outside looking in but hope that helped a little.

 

[AA717driver]

pig--Pref bidding involves starting out with all trips in a big pot. The computer sorts out the preferences(days off, types of trips and overall type of schedule a pilot wants as indicated by either ranking or point system each month) beginning with the most senior pilot in a domicile, equipment and seat.

Now some programs are sophisticated enough to look back up the list and reshuffle trips. Say someone in the 50th percentile really wants a specific trip. The computer could say "that trip was awarded to someone already but do they really care if they get THAT trip or not?". If they don't have that preference listed, the computer can remove that trip from the senior guy, replace it with an equivalent trip and give it to the guy who preferenced it.

I hated pref bidding when we had it at TWA. Seems I was always getting hosed by some preference I put in way down the list that ended up being worth a lot more points than the stuff I really wanted. I hated it until I had to go back to the 1950's system that AA uses. Oh well, I don't have to worry about that anymore...

Anyway, that's a snapshot of one type of PBS. If you ever get the opportunity to use it READ THE ****ING MANUAL. You'll still get hosed occasionally but not as often as you could. Enjoy! TC

 

[saabcaptain]

Chase & SWA Guys...

My understanding is there are some commercial programs for the PC that guys at SWA use to bid their lines... sorta like a personal prefbid system that sorts through the mass of hard-lines for you to find the lines you would want to bid for based on your preferences. Does this exist and is that how most folks do it? I am coming to SWA from a total prefbid system and I remember when we used to use hard-lines how much time I spent to figure out which to bid for... and that was with far less lines.

 

[Chest Rockwell]

Saabi,

Wbid at figware.com.

 

[stillflyn]

AA717driver,

When you get hired at JB, your back to the pref bidding.

Good luck,

Stillflyn