11.18.15 – (LUS) – JIRC Weekly Update – K Position Pairings, PBS Award, Crew Portal

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Wednesday, November 18, 2015

 

• Searching for the “K” Position Pairings
• How to Understand Your PBS Award
• Crew Portal Scheduled Enhancement Release

 

Searching/Bidding for the “K” Position Pairings

“K” position pairings search:

1. Navigate to the Pairings Tab in PBS 
2. Click on the Search Pairings button 
3. Click on the Add More Search Criteria button 
4. Find the Prefer Position Order property 
5. Enter FK in the blank field 
6. Click Add to Search Criteria. 

 

This will display all pairings with a “K” position. 

Adding additional search criteria:

If you would only like to see the TI (Transoceanic International), you can select the Add More Search Criteria button, click the property Prefer Pairing Type, select Transoceanic International from the drop down list, and click the Add to Search Criteria button. 

If you would like to see a specific aircraft type such as A321 pairings, click the Add More Search Criteria button, click the property Prefer Aircraft Type, select 321 from the drop down list, and click the Add to Search Criteria button.

Add any other desired criteria to the search. As long as the Prefer Position Order – FK is included in the search, you will only see pairings that include the FK position. To bid for desired pairings select the desired operating dates from the mini-calendar to the left of the pairing details. Pairing will display on the large calendar in the chosen layer.

Bidding for “K” position pairings:

Bidding for FK pairings does not require a Prefer Position Order to be put into the bid because FK pairings are a separate pairing number from the core positions and the FK position is the only position available. 

If bidding “K” position pairings and core position pairings (i.e., pairings including FA, FB, FC, FD, FH…etc) in the same layer, you can include a position preference order if desired. If you choose to use Prefer Position Order, it is necessary to include ALL THE POSITIONS you want PBS to consider in the order you prefer by bidding “FK, FC, FB, etc.” IF YOU HAVE BID FOR “K” POSITION PAIRINGS BUT DO NOT INCLUDE THE FK POSITION IN YOUR PREFER POSITION ORDER, THOSE PAIRINGS WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED IN YOUR BID. If you do not have a preference of the position order, do not include the property and all the positions will automatically be considered in alphabetical order.

How to Understand Your PBS Award

What information is important to look at?

Under the Award Tab, very valuable information is displayed. The best way to ensure that your bidding strategy is working for you, is to look at the Award information each month in order to understand where to make adjustments in your next bid.
           
Where did PBS finish your award?     

a.  Layer: L1, L2, L3, etc: PBS was able to find enough pairings that you could hold and satisfied your Line Properties to finish at the displayed layer

b.  Layer: PN: There were not enough pairings bid in all layers to award you a legal line based on your Line Properties and PBS had to go to outside your Pairing Pools to find additional time to build a legal line

c.  Layer: CN: A CN award will be accompanied by Required Coverage Dates in the Reason Report. If your bid includes a requested day off in all layers but at your seniority that date is required to be awarded to you for coverage, PBS will find any pairing touching that date which allows it to award a legal line. CN pairings do not come from your created pairing pools.     

d.  Layer: LN: The created pairing pools gave PBS enough pairings to award at your seniority but the Line Properties that were bid in all layers were too restrictive to allow PBS to find a combination of those pairings that satisfied all parameters.
When this type of award happens, all pairings were awarded from one of your pairing pools but PBS had to go outside your Line Properties in order to actually award them.

For example: All awarded pairings came from Layers 1, 2 or 3 and combined they create a legal line with 82:21 hours. But your bid included a TCR in all layers of Min 65, Max 80. If PBS can not find from your pairing pools any other combination of pairings that add up to less than 80 hours, it must go outside your layers to no longer have the restriction of an 80 hour max on your line. Once it goes outside your layers the default TCR of 70-90 hours will still be honored and it could now award those pairings from layer 1, 2 and 3 that add up to 82:21.

How to adjust your bidding strategy based on your award

e.  An award finished in L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, L6, or L7 indicates that your bidding strategy adequately provided PBS parameters that allowed a legal line to be built.

f.  An award finished PN means your pairing pools did not provide PBS enough pairings that could be held at your seniority to create a legal line. ***Adjust your future bidding strategies to include more pairings***

g.  An award finished in CN means your seniority required you to be awarded a pairing over certain days even though you requested those days off. ***Adjust your future bidding strategies by removing day off requests in lower layers on known Critical Coverage dates like holidays***

h.  An award finished LN means your Line Properties were too restrictive but your bid provided enough pairings in your pairing pools to build a legal line. ***Adjust your future bidding strategies to relax your Line Properties in lower layers***  
 
Crew Portal Scheduled Enhancement Release

The next Crew Portal enhancement release is scheduled to happen on November 18. Check the News tab in the Crew Portal for the full list of features and bug fixes.

Being Added to the Facebook Page

If you have not been added to the Tips from the JIRC Facebook page and would like to be, please email [email protected] with the subject line “Add to Facebook” and we will send you an invitation.

In Solidarity,
Laura Albert – PHL and DCA
Scott Barnes – PHX and the FARC (Flight Attendant Resource Center)
Emily Arner-Brown – CLT

About the JIRC:
The Joint Implementation Resolution Committee (JIRC) is a committee that was created by the current contract (the Redbook) to oversee the implementation of PBS.