The back on forth on this issue is amazing. I am just gonna put this out there, as someone who is NOT in the know, and does not find pleasure in trying to divide our groups as to protect only their own a$$ and way of life. The OP's continued spouting of garbage is sad. Though he may think that he is in the know, I personally believe he knows someone in the know, and then warps what he hears to fit his preception of the little know facts that he gets. XJT APLA is not trying to hide anything on this issue. They worked hard, as it is required by an LOA in our contract, to look at PBS systems. They made all that information available to the pilots and even would do live demos with individual pilots to see how the systems worked. This included ASA's current system. When I asked a rep what ASA MEC has done like this with our system, or with other PBS systems....answer is they have done nothing.
Now lets get into the whole rewarding out of seniority order system and untested system stuff. For those of you that are not aware, XJT line bidding has 2 phases. 1st phase is to award pre-built lines by our system. Every pilot can bid this phase, regardless if your seniority holds a line or not. After it closes, pilot who bid and held a line get their line for next month. This usually happens within the first 8 days. So how bout that.....line holders at XJT know their next months schedule up 20 days prior. Then we have the Initial Line Improvement Window or ILIW, which is open for 24 hours on a set date, normally in the middle of the month. For those 24 hours, pilots who held lines may go into Sked+ and pick up, trade, drop, etc...trips to personalize their schedules. This is first come first serve, so seniority is not taken into account. After that concludes, and within a few days, the Secondary Bid window opens. This bid is for pilots who did not hold a line, and consists of Relief Lines (Crew Planning built schedules to cover open time) and Reserve Lines. Again, you hold what your seniority can hold. The relief lines are the wild card. The trips are unknown and, after the bid closes, are added to a relief line pilots schedule by Crew Planning. Crew Planning is to look at Requests of Relief Line pilots prior to building a line in seniority order. This is where the problem is and I will discuss later as it relates to "delcaring war on ASA pilots." Once all relief lines are built and set, the Secondary Line Improvement Window opens for the entire bid month, and all pilots, except Reserve, may trade, drop, pick up, etc...to improve their schedules. Again based on a first come first serve basis.
Let's discuss Relief Lines, and what XJT MEC is doing. Relief Lines as I said are built by our Crew Planners. Relief lines are built to cover open trips. During the process of building a relief line, Crew Planners are to look at Request submitted by relief line holders. Examples could be, Weekend off, commutable, need 24th off for anniversary....whatever you can think of. This look at requests is to be done in seniority order. However, and pay attention here, that is not always the case. Crew Planners build lines based on open time. They may look at requests, and then apply none of them to someones schedule. Yet, as they move through open time and further down the list, someone junior may get exactly what they want. So there is no seniority protections. Crew Planners build what they want and many times more senior relief line holders get worse lines than junior folks. XJT MEC is aware of this and found a solution......you guessed it a PBS function. XJT MEC and the company have agreed to use PBS software to help HONOR seniority, not take it away, by removing Crew Planners. This will only apply to relief line holders and will not affect the overall way we line bid. What it will do is allow live bidding for a set period of time, that rewards seniority amongst relief line holders, without Company human interaction. Once the window closes, we are back to our old system. How is that bad? This is probably what the OP heard about, in some water downed form, then twisted to meet his reality. I guess this is his form of war. XJT MEC looking at a PBS functional process to see if it works better. Does not apply to ASA, nor is it being forced on them. Apparently XJT wanting to implore due diligence, and not just say okay to everything ASA MEC and the company wants, is war.
Oh, and since a lot of people are all bend on a new system not being tested......this application applies a live test. So this system will see plenty of test every month until we vote. All the kinks will be worked out and company angles discovered. If the pilots do not like it, it can go bye bye. That seems a lot better than an in parallel approach ASA's MEC used before applying a PBS system you are stuck with. Yep, XJT MEC....hiding everything in plan site and telling you about it.
