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08-21-2009, 04:04 PM

757Driver

Need More Callouts

Joined APC: Dec 2005

Position: Unbridled Enthusiasm

Posts: 2,143

Item 3: Council 170 Meeting: Standing Room Only

We were overwhelmed with pilots at our quarterly Council 170 meeting this past week. While over 150 signed in on the attendance roster, we believe we actually had over 200 during the course of the 4-hour meeting. We allowed for 30 parking passes, we distributed almost 100; additional chairs had to be ordered twice; and the food consumed was almost three times what we started with. Even with these additional accommodations, we still had dozens of pilots standing outside the meeting room. Not a bad show. Your Council 170 Officers thank you for your attendance and your participation.

The crew of the Brussels-Newark flight, First Officers Jeff Titus and Vince Stanek, were honored with an ALPA Safety Award for assuming command of the aircraft after Captain Craig Lenell passed away. The crew of the Newark-San Francisco flight, Captain Brent Black, First Officer Dan Montgomery, and jumpseating Captain Steve Wyckoff, were also honored for their amazing handling of a catastrophic engine failure immediately after takeoff.

Captain Al Brandano, First Officer Nick Fabry, and First Officer Kate Malone received awards for their prior service as our Council 170 Officers.

Council 170 Chairman Jayson Baron updated us on the status of the Aviation Rulemaking Committee, the STAR Alliance, the new RFL LOA, and, as Negotiating Committee Chair Mark Adams was unable to attend our meeting, gave Captain Adams NC Committee update PowerPoint presentation.

Retirement and Insurance Committee Chair Andy Sigler discussed all aspects of our retirement and insurance programs.

Eric Hunter, the incoming Chairman of the SPSC Committee gave a brief presentation on the revitalization of the SPSC and the role it will play in the coming months as we near the endgame of Contract ’08.

Dave Owens, Chairman of our PBS and Scheduling Committees, gave a presentation on PBS and the improvements coming to PBS bidding and spoke about staffing, the new bid, and the difficulties of holding management accountable for their actions when our current contract has few or no provisions to do so.

Several resolutions were introduced, one regarding limiting of Honor Guard details to members in good standing, one dealing with increasing per diem to the government rates, and one regarding the unfreezing of our A plan. All passed.

We had an emotional and extremely well-received presentation by Michelle Bixby and Trish Riggs of the Continental Airlines Families for Change. When the major changes to our contract and lifestyles come, they will be as a direct result of the efforts of the families of our pilots—and these families are being united and educated by this new organization.

The meeting adjourned at 15:05 and virtually the entire audience accompanied us to the crew room meeting with Fred Abbott.

Thanks again for your attendance and participation. These numbers are not going unnoticed by management.

tem 4: Issues With the September 2009 B756 Bid Runs

From Captain Dave Owens, PBS and Scheduling Committee Chairman:

On August 17th, while the first group of PBS bid results was being loaded into the CMS scheduling system, several FAR illegalities were discovered on individual lines in the IAH756 solution. Upon further investigation, a data error was discovered in a computer file that affected a small number of trips, limited to the 756 fleet. This error caused the system, in a limited fashion, to look at some 3-man trips with 4-man trip rules. Specifically, those rules were: 20 block in 48 hours, 24 block in 727 hours, 120 block in 30 days, and 300 block in 90 days. The error allowed a flight time greater than allowed by the rule(s).

With the EWR 756 scheduled for release the next morning, your PBS Committee met with company counterparts to determine the extent of the issue and the options available.
It was determined that 7 EWR756CA lines, 12 EWR756FO lines, 7 IAH756CA and 17 IAH756FO lines had legality issues. In EWR this equates to a 2.2% CA and 2.7% FO line error percentage and in IAH this equates to a 4.8% CA and 8.8% FO line error percentage, short of the 10% required to give the Union the right to mandate a complete re-run. The PBS Implementation LOA addresses this specifically in paragraphs R.2 and R.5. Furthermore, it was clearly established, in no uncertain terms during the creation of that language that an error on “Bidder 1” does not constitute a cascading error on each line award throughout the run for the purposes of the 10% re-run threshold.

The decision was made to publish the EWR runs (the IAH runs had already been published on the morning of the 17th) on time and deal with each line error on an individual basis. This process involved RX days and full pay protection for the pilots involved. Most of these pilots will be illegal for some potential additional flying during these RX Days due to the nature of the original assignment and because scheduling has legalized these pilots’ lines by removing trips at the point of the illegality. These dropped trips have now been placed in open time and will be available to all pilots in the open window. This open time is an additional cost to the company in addition to the payment for all trips in the bid run. This equates to a significant amount of additional dollars to the 756 pilot group in an otherwise low time month.

Several rumors have been floating around that should be addressed:

Rumor: All of the trips were not awarded; therefore it prevented a trickle-down effect.

Answer: This is not true. All pilots were awarded a line within the legal line range for their BES using all available trips. The trips seen in open time are the result of crew scheduling modifying the affected pilots’ lines and dropping these trips into open time. Any re-run would have given the pilots with a line issue a legal line according to their bid group. Any changes to their award would have been done using the pool of all trips. This would have been just as likely to have a detrimental effect on junior pilots as a positive effect.

Rumor: Re-running would have been punitive to the company.

Answer: A re-run, while putting the bid awards out approximately 2 days late for all 756 pilots as well as changing the schedules of the already released IAH 756 pilots, would have provided the most cost effective method to the company. The only cost would have been an apology. The method of fixing the issue in Crew Scheduling creates full pay protection of the pilots involved as well as the benefit of the open time to the main 756 population that would otherwise not be there.

Rumor: Mandating a re-run was an option.

Answer: This issue did not break any of the thresholds that provide the Association with the leverage to force a re-run. Our only discussion about a re-run with the Company was that any re-run would have to be full and complete with no shortcuts. This would have equated to a release late on the 19th or possibly the 20th.

Where do we go from here?

As your committee, we are looking at what changes are needed to the resolution portion of PBS language to give us more options in situations such as this. Items such as full release and pay protection on affected pilots, lower re-run thresholds, etc. have been discussed with the negotiating committee. As far as the issue that occurred in the run, the process has been reviewed, corrected, and additional redundancy put in place.

Item 5: Remember: Be Safe

The past few years have been nothing but turmoil and upheaval. As we’ve watched the dramatic decline in the spending power of our earnings and the complete destruction of our meager work rules, we’ve seen a corresponding rise in sick and fatigue calls. Contract ’02 decimated us in more ways than we can count and management has seemingly enjoyed their role as the vultures circling overhead, waiting to pick off the weak.

Under our present circumstances it is easy to become distracted by outside influences. Any distraction in our working environment can easily lead to the compromise of safety—and safety is our business.

We ask every one of our pilots to ensure they are safe in every area of every flight. We cannot afford the results a lapse in safety can bring us.

Item 6: Repeat—“The Best Staffed Summer…”, etc, etc

Currently, the union and management only track actual junior manning events. As we all know, instances of scheduling abuse and intimidation abound so we are going to start tracking these occurrences, as well.

Please send your scheduling horror stories to:

[email protected]