Originally Posted by FangsF15

The MEC (or more accurately, a controlling group of reps on the MEC) saw the year-over-year recovered hours via ACE down somewhat dramatically. They felt it wasn’t worth what they were spending to “rent” the capability, and directed the MEC admin to either acquire it outright, or find another vendor from whom they could buy&own the software.

Initially, the company that developed ACE (and invested literally all of what they were paid back into improving ACE, and building out the backend of it, to include Auto-ID), they didn’t want to lose what they had built, and tried to negotiate. DH was having none of that, and IMO, suddenly ‘found’ an overbilling situation in a game of Russian roulette.

Note: the contract stipulated that ALPA would send monthly a list of the pilots, and would be billed on a per-user basis. The first contract with ACE was ~$5/pilot, and was renewed/raised to ~$7.50/pilot per month. Each month was therefore a slightly different amount. However, ALPA erroneously included some inactive, and or extra pilots in the list that they sent to ACE. But there was zero fault in ACE. They simply generated an invoice based on the rosters sent to them by ALPA itself. It’s that simple.

In typical shortsighted, and astonishingly shallow thinking, DALPA didn’t process the fact that the reason year-over-year recovered hours was down was precisely because ACE was working. It was only because ACE had its proverbial boot on the neck of management, that caused the company to stop violating the contract quite like they had been because it was costing them so darn much.

When an incredibly effective enforcement mechanism is removed, what did DALPA really think was going to happen? In the meantime, we are now nearly 2 years past the point where auto ID was ready for action. And there was much more in the hopper, being developed for offering an increased level of service to us pilots.

In the end, ACE was offered for sale to ALPA national for a total cost that was a fraction of what ALPA had been paying annually. And auto ID is still “somewhere” on the horizon. TBD. There are a lot of good people working the issue, but ultimately it was the (IMO) foolish decisions by DALPA leadership that lead us to where we are.