Jetstar JBIDS Update - 27 April '23

Jetstar JBIDS Update

AIPA recently met with Jetstar and were briefed on the proposed short-term improvements to JBID that have now been announced, based on the recent Jetstar pilot survey.

The aim is to offer improvements to the bidding process as from the June roster period. The changes involve tweaks to the current system, and to simplify the bids a pilot can submit to avoid bidding clashes and unrealistic bids.

In the background, the system will be changed so that it will now always prioritise a day off bid over a trip bid where the system has both options available for the roster build.

On the simplification front, there are changes to Sign-on/off times, days off, additional restrictions to combination bids, and an overall reduction of maximum bids from 50 to 15.

Sign-on/off times:
The window to enter for preferred sign-on/off times will be a minimum of 3 hours (previously unlimited) to give the system more options to fulfil this bid.

As an example, this will likely result in fewer late duties assigned to an early bid of a very short window (e.g. 0500-0530 previously) due to the increase in options the system has available within the new 3-hour window from 0500-0800. The same minimum window applies to sign-off times.

Day off bidding:
Options B&C (regular weekday off & any x number of days off) from the current day off bidding will be removed, and for non-flexiline pilots the maximum consecutive days off a pilot can bid for in one request will be 2.

This still allows pilots to bid for as many days consecutively as they wish, but it encourages them to assign different priorities to each block of two days in order to avoid disappointment when a less achievable bid of more days off in a row is submitted. However, it is still possible to assign the same priority to all blocks if someone wishes to use this functionality.

Combination bids:
There are new restrictions for a combination of parameters when creating a trip bid, as outlined by the company and now active in JBID. This is to make it less likely to bid for a trip that the system can't satisfy or does not even exist.

Maximum number of bids:
The maximum number of bids per roster period has been reduced from 50 to 15. This seems like a drastic reduction but, Workforce Planning have confirmed that there are very few pilots submitting more than 15 different bids in the current set-up, and there is a greater chance of bids going unfulfilled with that many submitted.

Workforce Planning have now implemented these tweaks for the June roster period and going forward, which means pilots will have to resubmit their bids within these new parameters by the end of April to ensure the bids are being considered for the June roster build. 

Performance and satisfaction of these changes will be actively monitored over the coming months and should the improvement to the pilot group not be clear, an alternative option may be considered which would involve a major redesign of JBID.

Ideally, we hope to see an improvement with the implemented changes, but we will work with the company at a PCC level on a potential redesign if that's what is required to achieve greater satisfaction.

If you have any questions regarding these announced changes and how they affect your bidding, please reach out to our members e-mail inbox or directly to the JBID team at Jetstar.

Regards,

Jetstar AIPA Team