4.14.19 – APFA JSIC Update – PBS Bidding Closes Tomorrow/Buddy Bidding in PBS

Sunday, April 14, 2019

PBS bidding will close at Noon DFW Time on the 15th of every month. Please make sure you have submitted your monthly bids or have updated your standing bid prior to closing.

Buddy Bidding in PBS

Disclaimer: The APFA JSIC has made repeated requests for the Company to communicate the buddy bidding logic and how it is processed. The following information does not imply that we agree with the current logic. The following information is only to assist you in your current bid should you use the buddy bid property.

If you use the Buddy Bid property in PBS you can bid additional position preferences. While you may bid specific positions, the current award logic may take this into consideration. However, the current processing logic will not always take this into consideration when awarding sequences. The current process is not solely looking at positions bid by the buddy group, it is only looking for any positions available to match the number of buddies in the group.

For example, there are two Flight Attendants buddy bidding. In their PBS bid they bid for position 4 and 5 only on sequence 9875. Currently, PBS will look to see if two positions are available on sequence 9875. If two positions are available it will award the sequence to the initiator and, if available, award them in their desired position preference. Then, PBS will award the same sequence to the follower in the buddy bid group and award the position in their preference. If however that additional position was not in the bid preference, or required a special qualification (ex. Purser, Speaker), it would break the buddy bid without moving on to see if it could award the two buddies together in lower layers.

The information in the PBS guide and the PBS training educates the Flight Attendants that the process would move on to the next layer and look for pairings and positions it could award the flight attendants together. This is not the way it is currently awarding. If the systems can see two open positions, but can award only one position in the pairing, due to another position not being bid or requiring special qualification, it breaks the buddy group at that point.

While we do not agree with the current awarding logic in PBS, it is recommended that you bid all positions on a sequence in the order you would desire to hold in the same layer. We continue to work with the PBS vendor on correcting the logic so that it looks at both the desired sequence and positions prior to awarding the sequence to the buddy bid group.