Abba bidding system

[Babeinsky]

YIKES!!! talk about sloooooooooooww!!! The ABBA bidding system was supposed to have been PRE_TESTED --to ensure it could accommodate the number of users !!! Do you think the system is going to crash?? COME ON !!!!! How many of us will be appealing our march sked's???? This is ridiculous!!! :frown_2:

[ACstew]

Yeah I agree, Babe! I'm glad finally to be able to bid by PC, but there's a great deal of fine-tuning that needs to be done. The system is pretty cumbersome (when it works at all).

[JetBoy76]

Hi Babe! :cool_2:
Actually the System has already crashed, it was not designed to handle that many hits, it was down for almost 24h, I think is just matter of time before it crashes again.
My advice would be to bid ASAP, print your blocks(so now you have proof of your bids), before it crashes again and then we'll be left in the limbo :confus_2:
HAPPY BIDDING :windsock:

[Snackpack]

I bid but didn't print. Can I go back and print somehow Jetboy?

[flying uke]

Why don't they let us download the blocks onto our own computor, and just use abba for bidding only!!!! :confus_2: sure would not be as slow as this is with everyone bidding at the same time, and maby no more crashes!!!!!

[Was_Moeman]

This is new from last night.

Due to the technical difficulties,
effective immediately the following corrective actions have taken place
to mitigate the slowdowns experienced on the ABBA system.

YYZ BASE ONLY:
1. Filtering option has been removed
2. Message displayed in ABBA of the above
3. Crew members are to pick up printed block packages
4. ABBA will be available for bid submission ONLY

ALL OTHER BASES: Status quo

Compulsory ebid submission for FAs and optional for AC InCharges
Bid deadlines remain STATUS QUO

[Babeinsky]

Happy Valentine's day to u all!!
:tongue_2:

ps .nice yellow pages- I mean bid package..how many trees did we kill?? Ohh yeah..AC owns its own printing services..

[JetBoy76]

Hi Snacky! :cool_2:
Just go back to ABBA(if it's working)and go to bids, then view bids, and then print :smile_2:
Having a hard copy would be the only proof you bid, otherwise you could be stuck with something weird :shocked:
HAPPY FLYING :windsock:

[Snackpack]

Thanks a lot Jetboy! :smile_2:
For some reason I thought after I submitted the bid it just evaporated somewhere into Cyberland. It was still there, I printed it, have a hard copy just in case.

Anybody out there feel as if you're having a big dinner party and trying out a new recipie for the first time? Risky business...but it'll be much better than the old system once the kinks are fixed. I know some of our former CAIL colleagues probably really miss SOLO these days but some of us never got used to that luxury and only have that-or something like it-to look forward to. :windsock:

[blockpro]

I have developed an alternative bidding analysis system that will be released in March (after April bid closing) as a commercial product. It works with canned blocks and offers over 75 bid options vs 8 for ABBA... and it works off-line. After the first month, it takes about 7 minutes to bid. The first month takes a couple of hours to test out various combinations of bids.

Rather than a filter system that can "hide" good flying, it uses points, similar to the pilots' PBS system to give a gradual result. Entering your bid into ABBA from the product is simply a single paste function to bid every block in your desired order.

If anyone in the Oakville area would like to help test it over the next month, please contact me or visit my website at www.aloft.ca. (http://www.aloft.ca.)

[Was_Moeman]

TO: ALL CABIN PERSONNEL
SUBJECT: ABBA Bidding – March 2003

Current bidding patterns project that over 50% of all electronic bids will be entered into ABBA during the last two days of bidding. In order to prevent slowdowns, we will disconnect every Base’s access to the ABBA FILTER OPTIONS AS OF SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16 @ 1700 EASTERN. All Toronto based employees have already been disconnected from all Filter Options.

While you will continue to be able to enter your e-bid via ABBA, you will be required to refer to the printed block package available at your local Crew Support Centre.

We encourage you, if possible, to submit your e-bid as soon as possible.

[bridget74]

Hi, everyone! I'd just like to offer a little input here...

My brother is a programmer at the same airline I work for, and he actually wrote the "rules server" for the bidding program for both our pilots and flight attendants. The rules server is basically just what it says...it contains the conditions for the bids, so that the system awards lines and spits out a schedule that meets all the company requirements and union contractual agreements.

Just something to keep in mind: there is usually a period of time, once a program is released, where some problems appear and the program has to be tweaked. This is why you often see "versions" of software and programs...they're fixing any bugs they find, and adding enhancements that have been requested. And although you can test it until the cows come home, you usually will still run into some issues once the program is released.

Also, if your bidding and open-time works anything like ours, then your bidding and scheduling software is dormant the majority of the time. But when it comes time to bid schedules or open-time rolls around, then POW! Suddenly everyone is trying to get online to use the system.

This is hard on servers, for some reason. Servers can handle running at 95% for months or years on end, and they rarely need to be serviced. On the other hand, if you have a server that runs at 5% the majority of the time, and then for one or two days every two months suddenly runs at 100% capacity, then you're going to have issues. I don't know why that happens, but it happens. It's just kinda the way servers are, and it's really outside the control of your company's programmers. I know that, everytime open-time rolls around, my brother is up at work at midnight, keeping an eye on the servers because they're running at the maximum capacity.

This is just an FYI...and it's coming from someone who admittedly knows little about computers. I'm just sharing the experience my brother tells me about, so that you know it's not happening because your company has complete and total idiots for systems programmers. :grin:

[Babeinsky]

hey Blockpro--- re the aloft.ca program....I realize u must test it out first...have you approached the company?? do u think it would be cost efficient (u know the company w/$).. is it easy to use?? etc..can it handle the volume??
just wonderin'
:0)

[blockpro]

The company is aware of our product but they had a bunch of SOLO programmers on a no-layoff clause, so they decided to use them to develop ABBA.

Our product is not "browser" based like ABBA. ABBA uses the power of ONE (apparently underpowered) computer to do all of the calculations and returns the result. Our system uses the power of 8000 home computers. All that is necessary is an internet connection to download the blocks and pairings. You then disconnect from the internet and work on your blocks. When you're finished, you connect to ABBA and submit your requests all at once with a paste transaction.

Because it doesn't do any processing at the server level, it can handle ANY volume with no problem. It can be run on any 486 or higher computer with 32 Mb of RAM or more.

Using a server to do procedural processing is a mistake that many companies are making nowadays. Servers are meant to accept and retrieve data, not process long sequences of procedural code. As soon as they have to do both, the can't do either well. The pilots' attempt at browser bidding proved the same thing last fall.

It's the same reason why scientists use individual desktop computers all over the world to solve cancer and deep space radio searches just using people's screen savers.

[Snackpack]

Thanks for the above Bridget! Puts all the waiting some of us are dealing with now into some perspective.

[tailwind]

blockpro, sorry to say but your software won't work it's not seniority driven, it's by points

TAILWIND

[blockpro]

Hi Tailwind.

My system is not an award system so seniority is not even an issue. It is simply a way to make it easier for you to sort and bid your blocks in the order that you want them. The awarding takes place (in seniority order) at the company based on the block numbers that you submit.

Your post indicates to me that you don't properly understand the PBS system in use by the pilots. PBS IS seniority driven. One only needs to look at the results to see that.

Whether a system is priority based, like SOLO, or points based, like PBS, does not automatically lead to whether it is driven by seniority. It was ACPA who insisted that the awards be done in the way that they were being awarded and the software was modified to do that. They have since reversed their position and the software was re-modified to reflect that. It now follows the same principles of seniority that SOLO followed... "the right of the senior crewmember to a specific pairing does not override the right of a more junior crewmember to a block" - right from the front page of the SOLO manual.

Swiss uses the same PBS system but theirs has been modified to provide equal "satisfaction" levels across the board, rather than giving #1 everything.

So, you can have it any flavour the union asks for it... pairings by seniority, blocks by seniority or flat seniority.

Using points is slightly more difficult to learn but it actually "thinks" the way that many people think about their flying and easier to use on a monthly basis, because you don't have to know the pairings in any great detail to use it effectively.

There are plusses and minuses to the various bidding systems. The fact of the matter is that, now that SOLO is shut down at Air Canada, there are no airlines in the world using it. The PBS system that the pilots use is the choice of about 2 out of 3 airlines that are closing down their old systems or getting into PBS for the first time. That's gotta tell you something about the relative quality of the programs.

There a still some secretaries out there that still insist that Wordperfect 5.1 DOS is a great program. And it WAS. But there are better things out there now.

It's easy to create the same kind of priority bid with PBS as it was with SOLO if you want to limit yourself to a priority type of bid. But you would be ignoring some of the benefits of a points based system.

PBS got a bad rap first because some Air Canada pilots thought they could "spin the numbers" without bothering to learn the system and without thinking about what they were doing and they blamed the system for their problems. In talking with former Canadian pilots, I know that there were teething problems as people learned how to use SOLO, too. The second bad rap occurred when the former Canadian pilots came on board and were faced with a system that, by the union's choice, followed a seniority principle (above) opposite to that of SOLO, plus the normal teething problems that go with any software change.

SOLO had some great features. But, it didn't honour seniority any more or any less than PBS does.

For the record, I have no finanacial or personal interest in AdOpt Technologies, the maker of Altitude PBS, in use by AC pilots.

(note to moderator... this post is not about my software)