Who's using PBS?

[shagadelic]

One of the great things about our current way of scheduling at SWA is the ability to turn one week of vacation into three. I don't do it much, the pay really sucks that month, but it's nice to have the option. I have heard from guys pushing PBS that our version of the system will not take vacation into account. After your line is out, then vacation will be laid on top and you can take any overlap drop at that time. I might be more inclined to support it if that is the case.

It does sound nice to build my own line, so I'll keep an open mind about it.

 

[PHX767]

There was some unhappy folks at HP when it started. After all the publicity, it was a way of building a schedule out of the exisiting cruddy trips.

It's very important to understand what weighting your bid does to the result. The program will attempt to satisfy you by giving the most points that it can. If you decide to assign 5 points to noon starts, and 5 points to weekends off, it counts each possible occurance of that event that it can build for you. If there is a way to get you a lot of noon starts, i.e; 18 LAS turns that start at noon or 2 weekends off, guess what it will give you to increase your score. The scheduling committee volunteers at HP did a great job in holding classes and spreading the awareness. It was a great schedule and a fun few months until the old dinosaurs came up to speed.

I didn't use it for long before I moved on, but I put in the effort to understand it and thus got a lot of satisfaction.

 

[Purpledog]

PBS is great for people with crappy work rules and vacation. I will fight it to my last breath at Purple.

 

[FlyChicaga]

I've used both systems, hard line bidding and PBS. We have hard line bidding at XJT, but are moving towards AdOpt, which basically is a line sorting program. A hybrid version of PBS. So far I like it.

The long and the short of it... you need to make the decision what is better for you. Quality of schedules month by month, or extending your vacation. If you work the PBS system, you can get good time off. I had 7 days of vacation my first year with C8 and got 13 days off which I spent in Hawaii. Definitely a good deal if you ask me.

I know the vacation deal at CAL can't be beat. But the idea of being able to manipulate your schedule to get all those days off you need with your family or friends is priceless.

We had a thing at C8 called "golden days." 6 per year, max of 2 per month. I think if you are going to negotiate PBS, you need them in there. They are untouchable guaranteed days off. Particuarly good for when you need to head to that wedding, or your son's championship hockey game.

Like I said, you need to figure out what's more important. The vacation time off you get each year, or the ability to manipulate your monthly schedule for QOL.