Originally Posted by sailingfun

The company if you read what they put out has made it very clear what they are going to emphasis on the coming contract. It's going to be productivity, productivity and more productivity. The threat in this area most don't even recognize. There are new scheduling programs that will give the company the ability to reschedule the entire operation in real time. One flight cancels for a mechanical and the computer in a matter of seconds spits out a min cost solution that reroutes 57 crews. SD alluded to this in one of his recent memos. Their new found computing power is increasing reroutes and decreasing premium pay. They will in real time be able to optimize the entire operation on a minute by minute basis. Essentially once you sign in for a trip every flight the company has scheduled could be a big pot of open time for the company. The company builds the current rotations to a cost solution that is only accurate until the first flight cancels or is late. The new computer systems will be able to put out a new min cost solution with every change.
The contractual work rules in the contract are all that is keeping the company from going to a active real time scheduling system. As pilots we will not like that. There is a grievance filed that is of huge importance to the pilot group that I don't think has had a single post on this forum. It deals with uncovered flight segments more then 14 hours out. The company agreed that segments known more then 14 hours out will be sent to crew scheduling to be built as open time. They have reneged on that and are sending those segments to the new super premium reroute computer.
This is a huge grievance and of far more importance then the 1 to 2 flights per day the company failed to fly in the AF/KLM JV. I will start to sound hysterical like Jerry always is but this could cost us into 4 digits worth of jobs if the company wins the grievance and can get other seemingly innocuous changes in work rules.
My point in posting this is I suspect the company will throw a lot of dollars in pay charts. The devil will be in the work rules. Imagine departing on every rotation knowing that rotation is being evaluated for change every minute based on the real time status of the operation! Its happening as we speak and multiple crews are being rerouted to keep one flight from going 10 minutes late. Think about a computer that views every credit minute on every rotation as something to be eliminated. It's not pretty.
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