Watch my right hand.

Pay no attention to what I'm doing with my left hand.


So, really, what is the sin being committed here? Is it the use of automation? Is it the advantage some people have over others with particular types of automation? Or is it the saturation of company resources?


We casually toss around terms like "bot" and "hackers" and "rogues" and "cheaters", but what we really mean is that some people have used technology to gain an advantage. The truth is, if we all had the same "bots" or "hacks" to level the playing field, there would be no complaints. Those bots would be OK if everybody had one.


A recent complaint from The Company is that computer transactions are being conducted when pilots could not possibly be at a computer to conduct them. So what? That's been going on for at least 15 years, and they weren't complaining then. Who remembers MagicDisk? A precursor to a current product, it was meant to be a user-friendly interface to the "Green Screen", which at that time was the only way to access schedules, pay information, jumpseats, etc. One if its biggest selling features was its ability to log on to The Company's computer, synchronize your computer's clock to The Company's clock, and submit your Jumpseat reservations "on the hack", even while you're asleep or flying. The same feature was used to submit Trip Trade requests at the very second that Open Time becomes available for the following month. You didn't have to be at your computer to submit the trip trades -- Magic Disk did it for you.

Did The Company complain then? Nope. They made available a place in the locker room where Curt could display his product for all to see. Did pilots complain? NO. Anybody that wanted a copy of the program could pick up the floppy disk, install it, and send Curt a check. That's how he put his daughter through UC Berkley. He wasn't sneaky about it. He was completely open, worked with The Company, and The Company condoned it -- even the part that allowed me to reserve a jumpseat in my sleep and submit my trip trade request while I was airborne.

I submit that the issue of submitting those types of requests while one is otherwise occupied is a red herring. In fact, I think the restriction is unfair to people who are flying when Open Time becomes available. I think it's unfair to a pilot who is flying when the Jumpseat reservation he wants to make becomes available. I also submit that making those types of transactions while flying is NOT a violation of our Collective Bargaining Agreement. The CBA grants us access, and it does not place arbitrary limits on that access.

The biggest culprit is the Trip Trade system. You never know if your Trip Trade will be approved. You never know if your Trip Drop will be approved. You never know if your Request to Move or Drop an R-Day will be approved. And you never know how long you'll have to wait to get an answer. So you submit another request, and another, and another, until you run out of options or time. The system thusly gets bombarded with requests that have to be processed manually -- a problem of The Company's making that causes us all to suffer, and wastes bandwidth.


I think the real issue is the bandwidth which is consumed. Rather than fix the core problems, The Company is attempting to erode our access. They add layers of nuisance to the access to make it more difficult. They implement arbitrary policy through FCIF, e-mail, and the threat of disciplinary action.


And then they chuckle when we start going after each other with fingers of blame extended at our fellow pilots.


When I send a package via FedEx, I can log on to fedex.com and track the package. I can set my web browser to refresh the webpage every second. (My computer can't keep up with that, but that's not the point.) Never, NEVER have I gotten a warning from FedEx as a customer to stop using their computer resources so much. Why am I being harrassed as their employee?



They need to fix the Trip Trade system.


They need to add bandwidth.








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Tony -
You are way off base this time.
It has been against company info sec policy for a long time to give anyone else your password. It is unfair for any of us to take advantage of the others by doing this.
Same as having a computer logged in and auto trade.
Same as hacking the CAPTCHA, which has the stated purpose of having a person and not a computer read the challenge.

Instead of telling us to all be sheep in the name of unity, why not use this to unite our force. It is the one percent who are breaking the rules and cheating on the rest of us, why not let the 99% unite on this issue?
This does not have to affect the negotiating table in any way at all.
Now quit preaching unity means silence and let guys that have valid beefs express themselves.

Simply said, we need to police our own......Somehow, I always thought that was part of what my union dues were for......are you listening, Pro-Stan?

Nowhere, never have I said or implied that unity means silence. What I DO believe is that we ought to be pointing our fingers at the REAL enemy, and it's not each other. The problem here is The Company, and we're defending them.

I am not advocating giving your password to anybody else. There is no prohibition against storing your password and your e-grid on a secure computer. I'm willing to bet you have yours stored.

I am pointing out that The Company did not have an issue in the past with having a program to log on and conduct legitimate transactions while the pilot is otherwise occupied.

Why is it a problem now but not then? I don't believe that's the real problem at all. The real problem is bandwidth, and it is exacerbated by our ridiculous Trip Trade system.


So, you state the CAPTCHA "has the stated purpose of having a person and not a computer read the challenge." You imply The Company wants that function to be performed by a person and not a computer. Well, that's nice. There are a few things we want, too. Do you suppose they'll give us everything we want? I don't. Nor do I believe we should hand them everything they want. If they want it badly enough, let's see the CBA language they propose. Maybe we can bargain. As it stands now, there is no such restriction.

And as it stands now, The Company is using our jealousy to divide us.






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I argue with Tony more than anyone but I think he has a point about our access taking a beating over time.

FedEx IT has been going backwards in time when it comes to our ability to trip trade. No one but crew dogs care because the rest of flight ops and the corporation is going the other direction. Thank goodness they upgraded our deviation system and e-mail. That was a serious problem :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Failure to process trip trades increases the number of transactions that would naturally occur. What should be one transaction turns into many.

For example -

Several good trips look to be available in open time. You, and other crew members, put requests in for the best trip so that creates 30 to 100 requests. Probably more in the big bid packs. Then each crew member keeps putting in requests for trips on the same day because they don't know if they got any of their previous requests. If there are 10 trips available then you have just created about 1000 requests.

Not to mention Scheduling's answer to dropping R days. They say "just keep trying, the system might allow it as the day gets closer". Sure enough the algorithm changes at some point then you drop it. Not a hint of it until you get the approved message. Why not show some type of code so we can actually SEE the system change. This would eliminate tons of useless requests.

No matter what they say, the number of transactions is 100% the fault of scheduling. There are easy ways to reduce them to less than 10% of what they see now.

I think scheduling is afraid someone might be let go if they get more efficient.

How about the company pushing OT when new trips pop open, rather than everyone pinging OT en mass, VIPS sends out 1 notice to all - options to subscribe or opt out can be included.

Oh, nevermind.

That has been suggested more than once to the company. And yes, would be part of an overall solution.

We could process open time requests at set intervals during the day and in seniority order. BOT problem solved.

We have 1% who are cheating on the rest of the crew force and most of the crew force doesn't know or much less care. I know & I care. I went to pro Standards, they told me to go to my block rep. I went to my block rep, he told me to go to the company.

IMO, real-time fully-automated scheduler-free trip trading is the only way to solve this. I know that most airlines have been doing this for years now, some with much more sophisticated platforms than others. Most of these software products allow pilots to swap/drop/add with only a mouse on a single window display, compared to the multiple windows and manual keyboard entries we now need to navigate through for every single request. I have had the pleasure of using the more sophisticated systems. You find out, within 5 seconds, whether your swap/drop/add was approved or denied. And then, you can move along with your day, instead of inputing another 30 requests and waiting for hours to find out the result (as TonyC noted, this will obviously overwhelm the server). Those other systems I was able to use also had the negotiated transparency for Rday drop/move "algorithms". With that one is able to go in, look at the calendar, and figure out BEFORE making an input, whether dropping/moving an Rday is even a possibility. All of this was done completely automated. Zero scheduler input.

We could have a dedicated server, from a company whose sole focus is pilot bidding software development, take care of all our swap/drop/add requests. Then our incessant pinging of the server, which is independent from the server used for business, would have no negative effect on company resources. The negative side to this solution would be the outsourcing of FedEx jobs, never a good path to follow for the long-term. I just don't see our IT department being able to "patch-up" VIPS to make it user friendly and fully-automated. We have to start from scratch, or better yet, hire a company which is already doing this very well (FLiCA). Or, appDude and FlyByKnight and BidX-man, can revamp the system to something that works well for everyone :).

In any event, let's beware of the real possibility of "here is the fully-automated trip-trading software, however it only works with PBS" (sorry I brought that up).

They have the Internet on computers now?

Yea, don't you remember, Al Gore brought us that.

I understand your viewpoint TonyC, but the CBA does not say a lot of things and the Company has the right to control access to it's business machines. You are correct that our CBA secures us "access" to the Computers but I see nothing that prevents the Company from making Infosec policies that require you to be a live person and not share or store your password in order to use said machines.

Magic disk and green screen may have worked that way before but that does not mean, IMHO, that the Company can't change their minds. Fact is that IT is way different than those years and I think it is bad advice to imply that there is nothing wrong with remote access to ViPs any longer since they have made a clear statement. To do so now puts those users at risk and we do not need more pilots fired.

Seniority has nothing to do with OT, hence "open." Only time stamps and legality matter, not when you were hired.

Agreed! It should be First Come, First Served... But there is no reason it shouldn't be real time and more transparent.

Well said.

There would need to be some lag or waiting period, otherwise, you'd never be able to use OTP or PMU.

Exactly. Make it "real time" for a trip leaving in a couple of hours, but as the trip gets farther out, increase the window before it is assigned until is is at least 24 hours. That protects those out flying. The order of assignment for those longer out there can be based on some other metric, starting with OTP, PMU, then maybe leveling/hours cap (my preference), seniority, inverse seniority, or some other parameter.

With regards to my comment about CAPTCHA codes and whether the response should be supplied by a human or a program ...

I am not prohibited from storing my password and my eGrid on a secure computer. Therefore, if I open my laptop and click one button to log on the pilot.fedex.com automatically, I have violated no policy. They may have intended for me to read the CAPTCHA and look at my eGrid and enter three alpha-numeric characters manually, but if my program does it for me automatically, so be it. If they want to make a rule that requires me to enter it manually, that's another story.

I am also not advising that pilots access VIPS remotely. I am simply stating that The Company's claim that remote access is a problem is a fabrication on their part. It was never a problem before, and when done from secure computers now it should not pose a problem -- except that they're having bandwidth issues.

My bottom line is that we should be pushing back against The Company and not against each other.






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Scheduling has turned "short delay" into a 3 hr standstill

oh, nevermind

Heard that the number of authorized open time requests has been reduced by more than 1/2. Yea yea I know that 100 open time requests in a 24 hour period may be excessive but it's all about access to VIPs anytime no matter what. Anyone hearing otherwise.

As long as I'm inputting my Open Time requests manually (not using a BOT, not while I'm flying) are they permitted to limit our access to VIPS or do they have to give us unrestricted access? Enquiring minds want to know? :eek::eek::eek:

Roger that TC, and I agree wholeheartedly with you on the last sentence.

Not true. It is the password to Company data and Company computers. They can (and have) specified how and where it can be stored. To maintain they can not specify that is naive. To tell others on this bulletin board that their policy does not apply to our group is risky.

The Company again hands the advantage to the rule breakers.
The 100 Open Time limit per day just makes it more valuable to have a group of guys sharing passwords and bribing schedulers.
This is in addition to the advantage they handed to the rule breakers with the 'baby' CAPTCHA for trip trades. (see previous post)
Maybe the schedulers were denied a cash raise, and the fact that this will make any scheduler leak even more valuable, has been added to their 'overall' compensation package?
And my apologies to the schedulers. The inside info may be coming from a different group all together. But some advance inside information is leaking from somewhere to a very select group. 'Scheduler' was used as a generic term for insider information.

Have no fear fellow pilots, the company will fix all these trip trade problems and make life better for you. Read openers.... PIBS...... :(

The CBA says, "pilots SHALL have access to open time." It does not limit it.

I have been blocked out of VIPS before. I have no idea what a bot is or how to get one. I was obsessing about my calendar around the holidays with family plans hinging on my schedule and so I kept checking not sure when it was officially going to be posted. Wasn't even checking open time. Every time I walked by the computer, I hit refresh just thinking it would post any second and then bam, access denied because I exceeded the daily allowance. Don't remember what the number was, but it was not even related to open time. Was just trying to check my own schedule, not trying to pick up at trip at all. Just did it the slow, old fashioned way, but I guess too many times in a short period of time.

Same thing happened to me in December. Was just trying to get my trip trade "Approved/Disapproved" so kept checking open time in case it was not approved. Got the locked out so who knows how long the crew notification took since I didn't log back in till the next day.. Ridiculous! And antiquated!

A text message from vips whenever your schedule changed (ie trip trade approved) would save the company a lot of band width if that was their real objective.

Good idea, I like it ... I had another VIPS automation thought years ago. Instead of discipline threats when folks forget to check in for their deviation trips, how about a phone call from VIPS saying, "You neglected to check in for your trip, perhaps you forgot? Would you like to check in now?"

I couldn't get anyone to listen :eek:

I've been locked out just looking at all the md-11 open trips for the CIC makeup bid thing. I wasn't even able to see every trip to decide my input before I reached the max. I complained to my ACP. There was nothing he could so, he said.

That would be a good idea, I would suggest a "Where R U" text 2 hours prior to the 12 hour window would solve a lot of problems but might make the wife suspicious.

I like it! And what Mark said would be a plus too!

Try using BidX
 

Try using BidX. You can download all of the open time for the next month and look at it offline. :D

If the company is mandating the use of BidX for CIC/View Add needs they need to pay for it. By mandating I mean limiting our viewing of open time so it's impractical to do it manually.

BTW, I'm really motivated to support PBS now. :rolleyes: They can't use the technology they have now correctly! Secondary line errors have also been a running joke for years with no sign of improvement.

So True,
You don't need 100 if you know to start checking/submitting a minute prior that you know the trip is coming out.

Funny, a few months back when we were talkin about calendar blockers, a bunch of guys were certain... there aren't guys using bots, trip trading for each other or doing bad things

Why did management even bother calling "offenders" in to talk to them if they were going to hand them an advantage like this?

Maybe it was a pep talk?

I had the union inquire about this issue a couple of years ago. The answer came back that there were only a few guys locked out during the peak view/add windows and the company didn't see any need to lift the limit. They view these arbitrary limits as an allowance; hence, you should be careful where and when you spend it.