10.18.19 – PBS: November Award & Holiday Logic

Friday, October 18, 2019

During the running of the PBS November bids, open time distribution logic also called half month max logic was applied to the awards, due to a combination of higher distribution of flying at the end of the month and Flight Attendant bids. This logic has primarily been used in December due to the increased flying in the last half of the month. While this logic has been in place for several years, this is the first-time many Flight Attendants are bidding in PBS during the holiday season. During an update of the PBS run yesterday, we were informed that this logic was used for the November bid run. While the PBS guide does discuss the distribution of open time it does not go into a bidding strategy for this type of logic. At the same time, the majority of Flight Attendants have not been prepared to consider a different bidding strategy if this logic is used.This logic will limit the number of hours that can be awarded during a timeframe in the month. For the month of November, the first half of the month was restricted to a max of 37 hours starting at a different seniority at each base. While this doesn’t affect all Flight Attendants the impact to those that were may be significant depending on their bid and seniority.

APFA received no notification prior to yesterday that this was a possibility. The distribution of flying is known to the company prior to the opening bid date on October 10th. This should have been communicated to the Flight Attendants alongside an explanation on bidding and the possible effect on awards. Not only has this logic been used just a couple of months in the past 4 years, but the Flight Attendants have not been properly informed on how to consider this when bidding. Our concern is to make sure Flight Attendants are prepared with all the tools needed to achieve a successful award. How are Flight Attendants to achieve this when they haven’t received those tools? The company should have prepared the specialists at the bases, the FABRC, and APFA for this possibility. Unfortunately, without that communication everyone’s focus was directed towards coverage needed days (CN), not open time distribution logic.

Since there is a possibility this logic will be needed in December, we will expect the company to prepare the FOI specialists, FABRC, and Flight Attendants with all the tools necessary to achieve a successful award.

In Unity,

APFA JSIC
[email protected]

Alin Boswell
Julie Hedrick
Linda Haertling