They are planning to get us to sell out on scope

 

When a pilot thinks of growth, we think more planes and more pilots. When management thinks of growth they are talking about capacity. They are adding seats to B-737s, replacing MD-80s with B-737s and A-321s. 787's replacing 767s. Aircraft wise, fewer aircraft. Capacity is up though, there's your growth. Newer aircraft and fewer fleet types will require fewer spares and fewer pilots.

 

Well said.

 

I’ll agree that’s exactly what’s happening and well said.

The issue is not with the fleet plan, but rather with our crew planning/scheduling department. They are incredibly inept at staffing the airline that network/fleet planners have demanded.

It’s not just a mid-level management issue, it really is a cascading failure of foresight and allocation of resources. To make a boring story short, CS had designs (probably even well intentioned) for a very automated process on their end concerning the way crews were scheduled from bidding through DOTC/RAS (daily open time coverage/reserve assignment). They designed a system - with contract language - to eliminate the human side of crew scheduling (an entry level position) and keep everything automated.

The problem is AT LEAST two fold: we didn’t have the programming ability or IT infrastructure to accomplish any of it and, we have a PBS that pulls from old line bidding ‘architecture’ for lack of a better word and contract language built around lime bidding v. PBS. This causes lots systemic issues for both parties.

CS got rid of many of their human schedulers but then had to hire because they couldn’t implement their programs. We are now left with ineptitude from the basic CS person on the phone with VERY little training and ZERO knowledge of our contract besides what’s in their company guides to the management overseeing this mess. None of this is changing soon unless the company focuses money and IT brainpower to fix the issues.

Unfortunately, for reasons beyond my technical comprehension, they are unable to suitability run the software required on top of our 1960’s Sabre system to realize any efficiencies we might gain.

The company has a death grip on scheduling practices which is only exacerbating things.

Like one of our smartest has previously said: this is the only company that has made PBS a job gainer.

Don’t even get me started on our looming training catastrophe!

Anyway... a great fleet plan won’t matter unless we have a workable solution to the utter mismanagement in crew resources.



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Are you talking about the one this fall when they park 26 MD-80s and 6 E-190's and have 400+ pilots to train at the same time, not including new hires? I can't help but think there are going to be quite a few MD-80 guys that will get the rest of the year off waiting for a class.

 

Lol - that’s just the short term catastrophe! Wait until we are 8-900+ a year in retirements and the cascading training events this causes. Good thing they foresaw this and prepared by hiring early...

...Ohhhhh. Wait.


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Wasn’t that about the number of old planes parked (MD-80s) last fall? How well was that handled? Hiring was 940 for 2018. The plan for 2019 is just about the same number of hires as 2018.

 

Some of those displaced guys are just starting training this month...

 

So what were they doing from Sept, when the Mad Dogs were parked until Jan?

 

I'm guessing sitting at home or on a beach I really don't know, is this a trick question? Maybe you have more info I do not, I'm curious as it might effect me too. I don't know anything about displacements here.