FNG320

I have heard that many crewmembers (pilots and inflight) have written and complained to Al about all the IROPS, poor customer service, exhaustion, min rest for inflight (crew services abusing the rules) etc. In Al's letter he says:

Over the past few weeks, many of you have taken the time to share with me your recent experiences from both normal operations and from IROP events that have proven to be very challenging. Your concern is that our operational performance has created a negative impact on your quality of life and hurt our relationship with our customers. I appreciate this input and I must say that I agree with your observations.

Then he says:

I have asked Chris Collins, Dave Bushy and Vicky Stennes to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the principles, methods and technological tools that we use to schedule aircraft, crews, and terminal facilities so that we can make the necessary changes to ensure our future operational success and provide a high quality of life for our Crewmembers

I expect everyone will pay some price. But the price will be big and it won't provide us a high quality of life, it will acutally hurt our quality of life. JB will pay a small price, but we will pay a big price!

Here is what I read between the lines.

I expect that many changes will be made to help reduce the IROPS and late departures.

Inflight pairings will be changed to more match up with the pilots. This will reduce some inflight productivity, but it will increase crew bonding, reduce late departures due to a missing front/back-end crew. Flight attendants will not be doing as many transcon turns and getting burned out and giving crappy service.

I expect that pilot pairngs will be reduced in productivity. The end goal is to reduce the number of pilots timing out above 29:45 or 31:45 causing their replacement and the need for reserves. (The flight scheduling guide says that when a pilot is projected to be above 29:45 or 31:45 his pairing will be split to prevent this).

Pairings will be created with more turn time. Not between flights, we will still keep the same 40min turn, but get us more rest time on overnights. That way, if you do go over 8 hours in a day, you will still get plenty of rest so that you don't go min rest or force crew services to remove you from the pairing. Thus reducing the need for reserves.

Expect layovers to increase to 12-16 hours. Why? To allow for late arrivials and still have the ability to get sufficent rest. Plus the larger period allows for normal or manditory rest in case we fly over 8 hours in a day.

Currently classbid and JetBlue allow us to bid up to 29:10 or 31:10 per 7 days. I expect JB to reduce this to between 27-28 hours. Then we all have more slop and won't time out as easily.

I can also see in pairing construction, more "productivity sits" to give us flex in a an IROP day. That way when we are late, we can still make our next flight. It make will for a 12-14 hour day instead of a 8-10 hours day. Still leaving extra time prior to 16 hours duty day.

I can also see our pairings being constructed to maximzie the number of 1 day trips. This makes it easier to replace a crew member mid trip/commute if he goes illegal vs at an out base/city.

So in summary, here is what I see.

Less productivity

Less hours per commute

Longer duty days (productivity sits)

Longer layovers

More uncommuteable trips

Less days off

All of which directly reduce productivity and reduce days off. So, all of this may help fix the some of the IROP problems that are due to crews, lack of reserves, etc.... but as a commuter, most of this will reduce my Quality of Live (QOL) as well as yours. This will be Al's and Dave Bushy's idea of "provide a high quality of life for our Crewmembers" not your idea of quality of life or mine. Remember, they don't mind all of us employees making the same pay year after year with no cost of living adjustments (just check out your medical cost so far). As long as we have "10,000 applications on file" we won't see anything that is good for us. Just ask them.

Just my opinion.....

FNG