"I work the PBS Help Desk nearly every month and I usually work “forensics” — the period after the bids are published. This allows me to see the problems crewmembers are experiencing. With November awards, there were 3 common problems.
Today’s Reality
All three of the situations described below are more common today than ever. The reason is the reality of our current schedules. Our flying has been reduced. We have more crewmembers doing less flying. The “raw material” from our partners is such that the resulting pairings often cannot be as efficient or as desirable. Thus, the best pairings go more and more senior, leaving pairings for most of us that might not make a line as good as they once could have. This requires more flexibility to get a successful bid. I often hear, “I’ve bid this way for years,” but it’s now frequently necessary to bid differently because our pairings are different than they’ve ever been.
Get the Holidays Off (or NOT)
Most of us want holidays off. Of course, there is an airline to run and many of us will have to work. But, for the November bids I saw many people who were assigned to work when they didn’t have to be. The reason is that these bidders did not give PBS enough other choices.
Take for example the relatively senior bidder who wanted weekends off, but also wanted Thanksgiving week off. This left three weeks in which this bidder was available to work a full schedule. It’s always difficult to fit, say, 80 hours into 3 weeks, but with our current pairings it’s almost impossible. Thus, this bid processed all 7 layers, awarding the pairings that were available, but they never added up to a legal line. (Important reminder: PBS must award at least 75 hours for RJ pilots and 80 hours for FAs and Brasilia pilots. Dropping to 62.5 hours isn’t until SkedPlus+.) Having failed all 7 layers, PBS was then left to its own to complete the line, which it did using that big empty stretch over Thanksgiving.
The solution, of course, is to relax the off-day requests a bit more, at least in the lower layers. This bidder was senior enough to get Thanksgiving Day off, but getting 80 hours in just 3 weeks with weekends off simply wasn’t possible. Being willing to work a few more days would have given PBS all it needed to complete the line.
PN vs. CN
“PBS gave me a pairing I didn’t bid for” is a common complaint. On your PBS bid award, look below each pairing and you’ll find a two-character code. It begins with a P or a C and then is followed by a number or an N.
If that second character is a number, it simply shows you from which layer that pairing came. If it says “P4” for instance, this pairing came from your layer 4. That’s easy. If, however, it says
“PN” or “CN” below the pairing number, that pairing didn’t come from any of your 7 layers, but came from the next layer, PBS’s layer, or layer “N.” The reason is that your 7 layers simply did not provide enough pairings to complete your line and PBS “fell off the end” of your 7 layers and had to find something to fill in the blanks to complete your line. In layer N you’ve lost all control of your bid and PBS does what works best for the global solution. You don’t want that!
(Also, at the bottom of your bid award, to the left of the total credit, there is an “L” and a number. That’s the layer in which your line properties permitted the bid to solve. It is common to get an award of higher-layer pairings that can’t be satisfactorily arranged until a lower layer — P1, P2 and P3 pairings, for example, but with an L6 line solution.)
Before PBS processes each bid, it looks ahead at the calendar distribution of the pairings it has left, and compares that with the calendar distribution of the available work days of the remaining crewmembers. If there is a “hot spot” where the number of pairings working on a given day equals or exceeds the number of remaining crewmembers available to work that day, PBS knows it has to start assigning those pairings working that day or it will end up with a lot of uncovered flying. These are “coverage dates” that are shown at the top of your reason report. It labels pairings working those days as “C” pairings indicating that they work on those “coverage” dates. If you bid for a pairing in your layer 3 that happens to be a C pairing, it will be labeled “C3” and it’s simply what you wanted. No problem.
However, if PBS identified coverage dates for you, you’ll be required to work on those dates wherever possible, regardless of the rest of your bid. Thus, if you’ve bid for a particular day off in all 7 layers that turns out to be a coverage date, your bid will fail all 7 layers searching for a coverage pairing that isn’t there. The resulting pairing will be labeled “CN” showing that it’s a coverage pairing from layer N. Your line award will also show “LN” indicating that it didn’t solve within your 7 layers.
As most of us have learned the pairings that PBS finds from layer N are usually pairings that we least want. However, even in this example you do have some control. I recommend to anyone who has ever had a CN pairing that by layer 7 you relax your off-day requests so that if PBS is required to work you on a particular day that you really didn’t want to work, you can at least have some say over the type of pairing that will be given to you on that day. I also urge bidders to consider using “Try to finish at this layer” to permit PBS to do some shuffling — again, under your control — if it must to get you to work on that coverage date.
Nesting — Starting a Pairing the Same Day a Previous Pairing Ends
PBS requires 9 hours in base between pairings; overnight or same day, it’s 9 hours. This was a point of negotiation between SAPA, SIA and the company in laying out the PBS rules and the compromise was 9 hours. Thus, it is possible to “nest” pairings, having a pairing end in the morning and beginning another pairing later in the same day. This is what makes nested continuous duty overnights (“stand-ups”) possible.
As recently as even just a few months ago, most of our pairings simply didn’t end early enough in the day, and most of our pairings didn’t start late enough in the day to make this inadvertently possible. However, with our pairings today, it’s becoming more common to see PBS award pairings that end in the morning and award another pairing that starts 9 or more hours later that same day. For many of us this can be a very difficult schedule. (Note that if you think it is unsafe given your individual circumstances, it is your responsibility to tell your chief and to get it changed. Do not work if you are unfit for duty.)
A suggestion has been made to create an “Avoid nested pairings” line property, but until/unless that enhancement can be implemented, there is a way you can bid to minimize the likelihood of getting nested pairings. The first way is to simply limit the work block size (number of consecutive work days) and the pairing length so that you can only work one pairing in a work block. For instance, bidding 4 day pairings and 4 day work blocks will prevent any nesting (or even any back-to-back pairings of any type). Obviously, this doesn’t work if you want to work shorter pairings back-to-back.
If you often do want back-to-back pairings, you can still prevent nesting by the careful use of release and report times. Choosing the pairing property “Release between 11:00 and 19:00” for instance, may prevent any pairings that end early enough in the day that nesting is possible. Similarly, bidding something like “Report between 08:00 and 17:00” might prevent nesting. In general, you’d only need to bid one of these properties. You needn’t bid both report and release times unless it’s necessary to cover your unique pairing choices. Obviously, to be effective, you need to look at your individual pairing choices to make sure that the release and show times that remain are acceptable to you while still preventing the nesting after 9 hours in base."
