Thanks PBS!

pilot602

pilot602

If specified, this will replace the title that
They should just hand out a jar of Vaselline along with the "manual."

Top 1/3 of the senority in base and end up with (1) four day pairing while the rest of my "four day" trips are "two day back to backs" and "locals paired with two-day trips." On top of it all I managed only 2 day "weekends" all month for a whopping total of 10 days off in June.

Worst line I've ever had, anywhere.:crazy::panic:
 
Heh. Sounds like my line for this month. I've actually kinda liked the whole "home every other night" thing, but I'm probably gonna go back to 4 day trips next month for the bump in per-diem. The good news is they've been flying me so much I can't get JM'd or extended. The only reason I even bid this line was to get a 100+ hour credit month between flying and recurrent training.
 
pilot602 said:
I commute.
Click to expand...

In that case, you got seriously hosed.

Our screw-fest goes live in August. As of right now, I get just about exactly what I want. Odd thing is....so does everyone else. We're thinking the company is tweaking something behind the scenes to get us all "yeah, this won't be so bad" and then turn the screws when it goes live. I've got enough seniority in base right now to actually get what I want anyway (which is nice since I've only been here a little over a year). I'm more concerned about getting hosed as a reserve CA.
 
Here we have a contractual obligation from the scheduling department to make trips no longer than 4 days.

What do they do? They build a 3-day followed by a 3-day.

Yay.
 
About the same here. We've got a lot of 4 day/2 days on our bids. This month I had 3 2-day trips back-to-back-to-back twice. I have a feeling if the FAA didn't have the 24 hours released from duty in 7 days, we'd see people working 7 days in a row. I managed to get myself out of those with recurrent and a PC, but I'm still doing two 6 day stints this month.
 
I would say maybe 1 out of 50 lines has trips like this (and maybe one stretch in the entire month), and commuters tend to complain, but I tell you what. 3 on 3 on followed by 6 to 8 off isn't a bad schedule for a commuter.
 
The worst we get (at least where I am based) is a 4 day backed with an out and back. Of course, normally the out and back is a late show/late finish so that doesn't help. Also, our contract specifies that a 24 hour period must be a calender day, although scheduling will try to slide that one by some times.

I am SO glade we aren't going to PBS. I actually got my first choice line for next month. It still pretty much sucks, but at least it is a suck I kind of wanted.
 
pilot602 said:
They should just hand out a jar of Vaselline along with the "manual."

Top 1/3 of the senority in base and end up with (1) four day pairing while the rest of my "four day" trips are "two day back to backs" and "locals paired with two-day trips." On top of it all I managed only 2 day "weekends" all month for a whopping total of 10 days off in June.

Worst line I've ever had, anywhere.:crazy::panic:
Click to expand...

What base are you at? What aircraft are you in? What did you bid specifically in each layer? What was the breakdown for the month for each type of pairings (i.e. 40% 4 days, 20% 2 days, etc..)? Perhaps I can help.

I really can't complain about the schedule PBS gave me this month and next month. I'm in the bottom 1/3 of the list and I got 13 off next month with every type of 4 day I wanted from layers 1 and 2. This month I only had 11 (sucks) but PBS gave me a good compromise between the week and weekend I wanted off and the trips I wanted as well.

In ORD the pairings breakdown was 9% locals, 28% 2 days, 6% 3 days, 41% 4 days, and 16% standups. Bump the 3 day percentage up a bit and it's a pretty good split for both commuters and locals.
 
kellwolf said:
This month I had 3 2-day trips back-to-back-to-back twice. I have a feeling if the FAA didn't have the 24 hours released from duty in 7 days, we'd see people working 7 days in a row. I managed to get myself out of those with recurrent and a PC, but I'm still doing two 6 day stints this month.
Click to expand...

Did you still get the average 12-13 days off this month? 6 days in a row is tough, but if I lived in base all I would ever bid for would be back to back 2 day trips.
 
Can you 'pattern bid' or can you preference something like "AVOID TRIPS <3 DAYS"?
 
GaTechKid said:
Did you still get the average 12-13 days off this month? 6 days in a row is tough, but if I lived in base all I would ever bid for would be back to back 2 day trips.
Click to expand...

Nope. Minimum of 10 days off. With the price of gas, the less I have to drive to the airport in a month, the better, too.
 
Doug Taylor said:
Can you 'pattern bid' or can you preference something like "AVOID TRIPS <3 DAYS"?
Click to expand...

Yes, you can specify that you only want 3 or 4 day trips. You can also specify a maximum number of days in a workblock. i.e., don't give me 6 days beeotch. Personally, I usually bid a certain minimum number of days off and at least 3 days between work blocks.

I don't know how it is in other domiciles, but I've been relatively happy with my PBS experience. When I was at Eagle, I had to bid reserve lines so that I could get a weekend off to attend weddings, etc.

Disclaimer - I'm not a commuter and I think that I have more pairings that will work for me when it comes to line constructing time.

Next month, I got all 1 and 2 day trips starting after 9:00 (actually, I don't think that I start any of them before noon. I'm not a morning person) crediting 92 hours with 15 days off and 3 and 4 day workblocks. My days off are for the most part Thurs-Sat. I sit at about the 39% level in my domicile.

Sorry to hear that you got hosed...
 
Well, can you minimize the 'pot' of available trips with *negative* preferences?

Like this is what I did for June 2007:

1. Set Condition Pattern Between 6 and 12 Days On, with 8 Days Off (Minimum)
2. Prefer Off Jun 7, 2007 - Jun 11, 2007
3. Avoid Trips If Landings In AUA
4. Avoid Trips If Landings In ACC
5. Avoid Trips If Trip Length < 4 days
6. Award Trips If Trip Number 2024
7. Award Trips If Trip Number 2316
8. Award Trips If Landings In FRA
9. Award Trips If Landings In NCE
10. Award Trips If Landings In FCO
11. Award Trips If Landings In CDG
12. Forget 5
13. Redo From 6
14. Forget 2
15. Redo From 6
Award Trips
Award Line Reserve
Click to expand...

So then in the middle of the month, I do two back-to-back FRA's and a six day CDG trip with the first part and last part of the month off. (see attachment)

I guess it goes back to the final question of if you have "pilot friendly" PBS or "give crew scheduling a tool to cornhole you" PBS! :)
 
Doug Taylor said:
Well, can you minimize the 'pot' of available trips with *negative* preferences?

Like this is what I did for June 2007:



So then in the middle of the month, I do two back-to-back FRA's and a six day CDG trip with the first part and last part of the month off. (see attachment)

I guess it goes back to the final question of if you have "pilot friendly" PBS or "give crew scheduling a tool to cornhole you" PBS! :)
Click to expand...

As in fly to cdg one day and fly back 5 days later? K going wit' you?
 
Actually, if you go negative in ours, sometimes it works, sometimes it won't. If you use the "desire" column, you get points when the program gives you what you want. If you go "avoid", it gives negative points towards your final score. So, let's say you have "Desire weekends off" set at a 1000 point value (the highest it will go), but you have "Avoid consecutive days >3" at 500 points and "Avoid show times before 1:00 PM" at 700 points. Your max positive score in that case is 4000 (assuming there are four weekends in the month). Your max negative score....wow. For each instance of a 3 day or better, it's gonna take 500 points in the negative, same for each showtime before 1 PM. So, if you got two four days, you're -1000 already. Now, let's flip that and say you DESIRE trips >3 at 500 points. You're not gonna get weekends off. If you get three 3 day trips, that's 1500 points right there, which is gonna outscore you on weekends. Now, if you've got the seniority for BOTH, you'd be at 2500 points, but only the high seniority guys are gonna be able to pull both of those off.

The problem is, we don't know what kind of pairings are out there. If it's all 2 day trips, PBS is straight up going to ignore preferences for 3+ day trips. The pairings don't exist, so there's no way it can honor that preference. The company has been teasing us with offering us access to the pairing generator, but they want WAY to much in exchange. Currently, we can slide our vacation up to four days to match it up with days off, thus extending the vacation longer. They'll give us the pairing generator, but we have to give up vacation slide, which isn't gonna happen. If you know what pairings are out there, you can tweak your PBS settings every month to maximize the chance of getting what you want.
 
That sounds just like the garbage that we temporarily had to deal with on the DLX operation in MCO.

Navtech "CLASS" rocks. Those Canadians did a good job.
 
Doug Taylor said:
Navtech "CLASS" rocks. Those Canadians did a good job.
Click to expand...


Heh. Funny. I complain about how poor a job the Canadians do on a near daily basis, but it doesn't have anything to do with PBS and everything to do with climb performance. :)

I think we use Kronos for our PBS. Essentially, I think it was the cheapest program they could find. Our CrewTrac website has the capability to do automated drop/swap, but they won't turn it on. That would go a LOOOONG way towards generating goodwill from the pilot group, but for some reason management still wants their one overworked crew scheduler dealing with manual drop/swaps e-mailed to them.....
 
kellwolf said:
I think we use Kronos for our PBS. Essentially, I think it was the cheapest program they could find. Our CrewTrac website has the capability to do automated drop/swap, but they won't turn it on. That would go a LOOOONG way towards generating goodwill from the pilot group, but for some reason management still wants their one overworked crew scheduler dealing with manual drop/swaps e-mailed to them.....
Click to expand...

Red-tail management has figured out how to sustain their own life force by drawing on the misery of the rank and file employees, so all policies are aimed at making employees as miserable as possible.












Only half-:sarcasm:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top