10.19.19 – PBS: November 2019 Bid Re-Run

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Yesterday, APFA discovered an issue with November Reserve awards. Below is a thorough explanation of what transpired and why APFA ultimately made the decision to re-run the bids. We want to make very clear that the decision to re-run November was not because of an issue with the PBS system, rather because of the company’s decision not to designate the 28^th as a holiday for the Reserve award.

As bid awards are uploaded into PBS to be viewable by the Flight Attendants, APFA receives the complete PBS award files. Yesterday APFA reviewed the awards for overall satisfaction for Lineholders and Reserves.  In doing so APFA noticed that the Reserve holiday logic that had been implemented with the JCBA PBS was not used for the Reserve Flight Attendants. This new holiday logic recognizes when the official holiday becomes a coverage needed day (CN) for Reserves at a specific seniority, then all Reserves junior will have the same CN day and will be working the holiday.

This new holiday logic was implemented to avoid having senior Reserves working the holiday while junior Reserves were holding the holiday off. This was a common occurrence in the previous PBS due to the number of CN days junior Reserves had to cover. Since the previous PBS had no way of knowing which day was a holiday, it would frequently award the holiday as an off day to the junior Reserve. In the eyes of PBS, all CN days were considered the same. With this holiday logic change, the company PBS administration team has the ability to designate specific days for PBS to recognize as priority (holiday) days.

November Reserve awards, however, reflected that PBS was awarding junior Reserves the holiday off while requiring senior Reserves to work the holiday. APFA spent yesterday discussing this issue with the company at length and obtaining information as to why this occurred. In the end, it was clear, that the parameters that were used for the Reserve award did not include the “holiday logic.” In essence, PBS was not told that the 28^th was a priority day. Correcting all the Reserve mis-awards was not an option because it would create a Reserve shortage on the holiday.

Ultimately it was determined that the only real solution was to re-run the Reserve awards.

However, since the award process for Reserves can only be processed alongside the award for Lineholders, the re-run had to be for both. APFA has required that all the parameters for lineholders remain exactly the same as for the original award. Re-running could delay the finalization of the award which could affect the first TTS and ETB run for the month of November. Please stay tuned for further information regarding times and dates.

Again, APFA wants to make clear, this was not an issue with the PBS system itself, but with the decision made by the company to not designate the 28^th as a priority day.

Please know this was not a lighthearted decision made by APFA, but the correctness of an award, in the end, is most important to all our APFA Members.

In Unity,

APFA JSIC
[email protected]

Alin Boswell
Julie Hedrick
Linda Haertling