9.14.19 – PBS: Buddy Bidding

Saturday, September 14, 2019

Disclaimer: The APFA JSIC has made repeated requests for the company to communicate the buddy bidding logic and how it is processed. APFA does not agree with the current logic, and we continue working with the company and the PBS vendor to correct it. The following information is only to assist you in your current bid should you use the buddy bid property.

We have been made aware of an issue when using the Buddy Bid Property combined with bidding specific positions. The logic, as described in the PBS guide, should be looking at the sequence and positions bid for by the buddy group. It should only select sequences with the bid positions for the entire group.  What we have discovered is the buddy bid logic is looking for any open positions available on the sequence first, and not necessarily for the actual positions bid in that layer.

Consequently, if one position can be awarded to the initiator it will be awarded. In some circumstances, the follower is not awarded the other open positions either because they were not included in the bid or the positions were held for speaker. To increase your ability to hold sequences together, it is suggested you bid all your positions in the same layer. You may also want to consider increasing the positions you are willing to work.

For example, there are two Flight Attendants buddy bidding IPD sequences, positions 4 and 6.

Currently, PBS will look to see if any two positions are open on the sequence. Then it will look at what positions the initiator has bid.

• • If one or both positions are available, PBS will award one of the positions to the initiator and continue to process the initiator’s bid until a legal line is built. For this example, position 4 is awarded to the initiator.

• • If neither position is available, PBS will not award the sequence to the initiator and will move on to the next sequence(s) until a legal line is built.

Once a legal line has been awarded to the initiator, PBS will process the follower.

Based on the example above, PBS will look at the sequences awarded to the initiator and attempt to award the follower the same sequences based on the positions bid.

When PBS moves to award the follower, it will read that position 4 has been awarded to the initiator. If position 6 is not available or is being held to fulfill a speaker requirement, PBS will not award the sequence to the follower and move on to the next pairing. This could mean that only a partial line is awarded as a buddy bid or potentially break the buddy bid.

PBS is not programmed to go back to the initiator’s bid to check if other positions were bid for this sequence in a later layer.

Although, the information in the PBS guide and the PBS training curriculum explains that PBS would move on to the next layer and look for pairings and positions that the buddy bidders bid, it is not currently awarding that way.

To increase your ability to hold sequences together it is suggested you bid all of your desired positions in the same layer.  You may also want to consider increasing the positions you are willing to work.

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.

In Unity,

APFA JSIC

Alin Boswell
Julie Hedrick
Linda Haertling
Vicki Balistreri