Originally Posted by
Khantahr
I guess if you think answering the phone genuinely caused them any reluctance to hit the IA button, then this might be a small win for them.
I very much doubt that though. They're answering the phone constantly anyway, I'd be shocked if any one of them thought, "I really want to just send this out as an IA, but I don't want to answer the phone, so I won't."
I do agree that we screwed up on the automation side. We should only have given them a month. Even that is double what it should take. Someone familiar with the system could implement it in a day, they could test the snot out of it over the course of a week. The automation failure is temporary though, and has no impact on the overall effect of the MOU.
They are so task saturated they can't answer the phone when the open time is piling up. Everyone has their hold stories because they can't answer the phone. The cost controls against hiring pilots this year must be across all of flight ops positions. I got 2 unknown calls yesterday from a private phone number. They are scrambling to do anything to cover trips in these situations including the shady personal phone non-recorded "deals." They aren't doing deals because they have free rein but because they can't do their job. We just solved management's problem with the easy button. If that is acceptable to you that's your opinion. Mine is that we got another pinky promise and no monetary incentive to correct the problem. This is writing them into compliance for a hugely underwhelming quid all because people panicked on IAs.
This also doesn't address the underlying issues with 23M7, or harassing calls for premium flying, or timely trip coverage. This will become unacceptable as well when the phone blasts happen for the 20+ IROP days every month in the upcoming summer. People won't just remove themselves from the premium game. Instead they will have endure the onslaught of QS calls and be under a time pressure every time to evaluate and respond to everything.