mikea72580

If your kids paid you $30+ million a year, you would answer every question they had. I mean, all of them.

Buck Rogers

And here endeth the lesson....when they have to deal with attitudes like yours.....no wonder they went to an email format

You had a reasonable offer by someone that appears to be a scheduling volunteer and he also gave a very reasonable explanation as to what the current wait time is,.... were neither of those to your satisfaction? Did you want answers, or were you just venting? I'm sorry if my conjecture hit a little to close to home, I put this more in the arena of my wife venting and when I think she wants "help or reasonable explanations/answers".....things go sideways....kinda like they did here. I hope you find the solace you deserve.

mikea72580

Thanks man, yeah I think I finally found my safe space. It’s 2018, when you could call ALPA and get a question answered by a nice person on the other end of the line. I’m definetely venting, but wondering if anyone else misses the old system where a person was generally available to assist with questions. I realize that by asking this my attitude is poor and I should just be quiet and keep sending the checks. Thanks for straightening me out.

hockeypilot44

They stopped answering emails awhile ago. The only way to reach the scheduling committee now is through the template on the ALPA website under the scheduling committee's page.

tunes

-no, that's just silly.
-how to contact the committee since this change has gone out probably 5 times since the phones were turned off a few months ago.
- there are people available to answer real time FAR issues 24/7. Every other issue is not time critical. To have 24/7 every scheduling question support would probably be 10 more full time FPL people at a minimum--completely unnecessary. Just because you want an answer to something immediately, doesn't make it truly time critical. The way to contact the committee was changed to get answers to pilots faster--and that's exactly what it has done. We would have pilots email in, then call 45 min later because they didnt get a response to their email they just sent. We work on a first in first out basis.
- sounds like you want to volunteer to join the committee?

sailingfun

We can do that. It is however very expensive to add full time employees. Much of what they deal with is as mentioned in other posts items the pilots should be able to look up in 2 or 3 minutes. Many also neglect trying to solve the issue first at the CS level. What clogs the system is a small group of pilots who spam the system with every possible perceived issue without taking the time to make sure they have a reasonable claim. As applies to so many things 5% of the pilots generate 95% of the workload. The pilot who has a real issue gets hurt time wise as a result.

Gspeed

I do my homework and heavily research the PWA and SRH before reaching out. I also typically contact scheduling unless doing so might potentially make my situation worse. But the email system sucks because sometimes the rep doesn’t understand your question (sometimes my fault, sometimes theirs) or their answer creates a follow up question which requires another round of emails. Plus drafting an email does take time; it isn’t instant. Most of my scheduling email interactions of late could have been resolved in 3 minutes or less via phone. So I’ll be more fine with the email system when we finally get a scheduling rep stationed inside of scheduling.

mikea72580

True, wouldn't it be nice to be able to talk to someone. If only there was a way.

tunes

outside of an IROP, this is a very accurate statement. That being said, i encourage all pilots to fill out the form about reroutes if they are unsure...I have no problems researching legal reroutes. We do however have a hand full of pilots that will fill out the form constantly just fishing for things.

mikea72580

So when you call a 1-800 number and they let you know your wait time or place in que, that's silly? No, actually it's pretty smart and people appreciate the honestly. If we are going full internet on scheduling help, it's really the least they could do. Not because anyone is entitled, but because it's reasonable and smart to maintain confidence and transparency in the system.
I personally believe that we provide ALPA with an adequate budget to be assisting pilots by phone (as an option) with scheduling questions. If a pilot wants an answer right away, that is their right. They provide adequate resources to ALPA so that no persons' questions should be divided into time critical or not buckets. Now, if Scheduling Help is an entirely unpaid, volunteer department, then I entirely rescind my suggestion and we should be thankful for what we get. I've personally volunteered a minimum of 1,000 hours of unpaid volunteer union work and never received a dime of compensation. If you volunteer your own time, then you owe me nothing, I owe you. But as far as I know, we have paid volunteers and staff doing that work. If in your opinion, you would rather keep your ALPA Monthly magazine and Family Affairs Committee social budget over an additional full time scheduler answering calls, then that's your right. I personally believe that the budget should begin with building out the most utilized ALPA resource (Scheduling Help), and then go from there. I have suggested to my reps that we poll the pilots on this issue, and put forth a resolution reallocating a higher percentage of the budget to a robust Scheduling Help department.