Originally Posted by
BeatNavy
Here's something that would speed up schedules coming out and make life better...don't hold trips for IOE! Drop assigned trips for IOE when needed like other airlines. Isn't that how Mesa used to be? I didn't see that previous concession in the last TA that the union tried to shove down our throat, which should have been negotiated back.
Here's another thought, other airlines, to include airlines that are much bigger than Mesa, use the same software and publish schedules 24 hours later. This isn't a dig on MAGPBS, but the reasons cited for the length of time it takes can be remedied if someone really wanted to fix it. But therein lies the problem. It is status quo and the company is fine with it, the union is fine with it, and so it will remain like that forever.
Same with the asinine amount of time it takes the company to process SAP requests, and schedule changes on the 28th. The contract says they have 24 hours or the union has to be notified (but there are no ramifications). Every month It happens, and the union says ok cool. What's being done to fix it? Not a lot. Have any new schedulers been hired since we started growing? I've heard from a CP that schedule changes are all manual because 117 rules aren't taken into account with split trips. Why don't they let automatic drops and pickups happen for the non-split trips, using manual intervention for the split trips? That would alleviate the backlog for a lot of requests and free up the schedulers to focus on the split trips during the 28-3rd when the requests are piled up. My understanding is Kevin W is the one who is saying no to that. What is the union's position and what is the union doing to fix it?
Agree 100 percent with everything you said! It is good knowing somebody gets it. So thanks BeatNavy.
The dropped for IOE part you mentioned was also a huge mistake on the unions part. It use to be as you described, but then commuters were complaining that they would commute in to find out that their 4 day trip was dropped and have to commute back home. Poor thing. The home based pilots didn't care. So what the union did was create a letter of agreement for a new system. It was a 3 month test. At the end was to be voted on. The new system would allow the commuters to find out 24-48 hours in advance if their trip was dropped, but they had to call in, and could be reassigned another trip. They had to do this at least twice on a 4 day trip if I remember right. Once before the first two days of it, and again 24-48 hours before the last two days. Sounds good for the commuters right? Worse for the home based. Now they had to stay close to home instead of take off to Hawaii for the week. What ended up happening is the company started reassigning junk to both the commuters and the home based pilots. Like standups, day turns, causing hotels for commuters now, and was just worse because now you had to work instead of being off. So the union dropped the ball. It went on for 2 years like this before it was voted on. At that point the people like me who knew the old way was better were now captains not getting dropped anymore. Now the replacement FO's only knew the new system and didn't know the old way was so much better. So the vote came and guess what? It passed by a slim margin. How? The union sent an email recommending to vote yes to all these clueless pilots. So now we are stuck with a worse system then we had. That is how it came to be today. There is your history lesson and you can thank the union once again for dropping the ball and letting Mesa once again run over us.