Lots of shorter legs don't make great schedules.

On an unrelated note, rumors are we are going back to LGA at some point later this year. Enjoy that one!

 

Same story in MSP. June in the worst schedule I've had in 5 years at CP. 88 block/93 cred, 11 off and couldn't hold a 5 day stretch off at 58% seniority. That's bidding everything for max time off with just some day off requests like I always do. Trips are lots of short legs with crap credit.

I'm curious if it has anything to do with the union's scheduling committee being cut out of seeing the pre-awards last month. Many times they would catch things and have the bids rerun. According to the contract we have the right to have our union officers involved in the schedule creation and bidding process. I don't believe this is being honored by the company right now. I think they're counting the summer being over by the time the union can rectify the situation.

 

The PBS committee still get the pre-awards. They just aren't allowed to share them with the rest anymore, until they come out officially. It's easy to find major errors, it's the suttle ones that are difficult to find. We have all the input into schedule creation that the contract allows us.

The pairing analysis committee are the ones that have input to pairing creation, not the PBS committee. So, if you're upset about the crappy 19hr 4-day that you have...call them.

Honestly, most of the time what people perceive as errors is just an over valuation of their seniority vs. the flying that is getting covered.

 

Good to know the union is still getting a chance to look things over, I'd be very concerned otherwise. As far as over-reaching my schedule. I know where I sit and how I bid and what I can usually hold. I think I just got very unlucky with the coverage days.

That said the trips are crap but it's just because of the kinds low credit flying DL has us doing out of MSP this summer. So garbage in, garbage out I guess regardless of what the pairing analysis committee can do. Don't read me wrong here, I'm nothing but thankful for all the work our union volunteers do. All our volunteers are awesome and do great work.

There was an error that squeaked through that I need to email the contract committee or someone about though. I got a call from crew scheduling today telling me that my PBS award had me scheduled to fly over 100 in 167 so they dropped a MDW turn off a trip. I think that really sucks because I never should have gotten that trip on my award at all if wasn't legal. My bid award could have looked completely different....and I don't think there's anyway it could have turn led out worse so I probably would have benefitted.

 

You've obviously been around long enough that you 'get it'. Coverage days are usually the culprit in a bad schedule.

The benefit of seeing the pre-awards is that they would have caught that descrepency in your schedule, but the 'off the table' agreement was that NO ONE should make more work for the planners by calling them directly, and always go through the committee. Not everybody followed those rules, and now we're stuck with what minimal input the company wants.

It's true with the crap in, crap out of trips. Hopefully when the hiring/upgrades calm down, schedules will get settle out at a normal distribution.

 

Maybe we need about 600 pilots on the scheduling committee. You guys need "assistants" to help you review the awards now, since you can't share them. Each "assistant" could be responsible for picking one name off of the list to review.....

 

It sounds like people in both bases have received bad schedules. Looking at the bid packet the LAX trips have historically been more efficient then MSP (or DTW), but seems like now everywhere is getting worse. Seems rare to see 30 hr 5 days anymore...lucky to see 25 hour 5 days...

 

I remember having 37 hr 5 day trips out of MSP last summer. 19 days off with 75 hrs credit... Seems so far in the past. I don't think this is an issue of ATG vs min day, if you have efficient and productive pairings then neither one matters. These quick hops out of LAX aren't helping. If it takes 6-7 leg days to bring up the credit, I'm all about it!

 

Quick question for the Compass guys here.

Does Compass have a commuter policy?
or
How commuter friendly are the lines out of LAX? Early starts, late endings???
I would theoretically commute out of PHX?
For a commuter not to have to get a crashpad are multi-day trips the norm?
What would the possibility/probability of commuting in on the start day, picking up a multi-day trip, and commuting home the day your done?

Thanks in advance.

 

LAX has some decent commutability. Crashpad during the first few months would be ideal. After that the PHX commute is decent and you could get away with getting a few hotels. Our commuter policy requires two flights to get to work on time.