mikea72580

I echo this. For example, guy gets a Green Slip, Green Slip NOOP's, then trip gets re-instated. Then said pilot gets 23K'd back into it. What does it pay? You could read over PWA 23.K and 23.J for an hour. You would be no closer to knowing the answer. Truly, could break either way. Wouldn't it be nice to make a 3 minute phone call with a person who's dealt with this 4 times in the past month. Thats how it used to be. Now you have to spend 20 minutes typing out an online questionnaire and really have no idea when you'll hear back. I mean, ok, I guess. But, wasn't the other way better? Can we not afford to have both? We aren't dropping quarters in the bucket, it's hundo bombs every month. Plus, didn't the MEC Chairman reveal a few years ago that less than 30% of pilots even know their ALPA login?

TED74

My takeaway from a briefing by the scheduling committee to an LEC meeting was that essentially we as pilots don’t have the tools to know if reroute pay is due. Is that not true? How is one ever sure WRT reroute? Naturally I can evaluate the return-to-base delay trigger defined via PWA, but not the timing of a leg becoming uncovered (relevant for grievance settlement reroute pay NOT defined via PWA). It is this type of reroute pay trigger that spring-loads many of us to hit ALPA scheduling with a request to investigate if Delta scheduling is unhelpful.

I’m hopeful that an ALPA rep embedded in scheduling (as Delta should have allowed years ago) will nip much of this in the bud.

DALMD88FO

Just my recent interactions with both ALPA scheduling and Crew scheduling, they seem to not know the contract as well as in the past.. I've received outright wrong answers from both and when I showed them where they were wrong they apologized and said I was right. Problem is If I didn't know my contract I would have taken their answer like it came from a burning bush and would have lost money.

TED74

You’ve suggested they put forward a resolution, or you’ve actually authored one? I think if you do the latter it could gain some traction - particularly if you clearly define what you want. “More robust” won’t necessarily solve your problem. Do you want a business hour call center manned by enough staff to keep hold times under X during non-IROP conditions? Call center with place-in-line annunciation and call-back logic? 24-hour desk? Perhaps you want all submissions to have an option for call-back response instead of email response?

TED74

Some of this obviously comes from a loss of experience with early-outs, but it also comes from poor coding. Rather than interpret the verbiage of the contract, both Delta and ALPA have been guilty of validating a pilot’s gripe by seeing what the system shows regarding pay treatment or historic handling of odd corner cases. It once took me over a dozen calls with ALPA/CPO/Scheduling Sup to be paid correctly for reserve during a month containing MLOA. All three parties looked to the pay system (which was coded incorrectly) for the answer instead of reading and applying the actual text of the PWA. The coding glitch was rectified, but I have no idea how many blissfully ignorant pilots went underpaid over the months or years that the system was programmed incorrectly. I’ve talked with other pilots who have had to hand-hold Delta through discovery of other coding anomalies, so this is apparently not uncommon.

FangsF15

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Times, I always appreciate your perspective and tone, but I have to agree with mike here, at least conceptually. Maybe not every day, but it really shouldn’t be that hard to put a banner on the very web-form folks fill out with a “hold time in cue as of X”. It serves both of your interests, and helps manage expectations for the dues paying members.

Seems like very low hanging fruit. So, I ask, why is that silly?

tunes

sounds like you should volunteer for the scheduling committee...or at a minimum submit a resolution as you state at your nexst LEC meeting.

The reason there isn't something like that is because it's very dynamic. Some days we get no emails, some days we get hundreds of emails.

Are you actually trying to get an answer to something? or are you just going for a good ole fashioned rant fest? you had one person reach out to you offering help, which as of a few hours ago you haven't used. I don't see any scheduling forms in the inbox from a mike a....so what's your end game here?
I touched on it earlier, but we dont have that because pilots get impatient. They will send an email, then call 45 min later. Different people handled different mediums. the 'pit'--the full time ALPA staff answered phones. The pilot volunteers handle emails. Things would get double worked, wasting valuable resources and time, delaying responses to other pilots.

L.4 note is the one that you really can't see. L.8 and L.9 are pretty transparent to the pilot (which is essentially what you have said). A lot of L.4. notes get triggered for auto review, the issue lies when the violation consists of a deadhead after operating, those don't get auto triggered for review.

I'll preface with the statement that I am IT challenged with writing programs and algorithms. I'm not aware of an auto response system that can generate an auto response with the number of emails in the queue. Even if there were, # in queue are only a small indication of response time. Some emails could require hours of research, while others could be responded to in under 10 minutes. I'd say a good rule of thumb is outside of an IROP, response time would be 3-5 business days. IROPS obviously take longer. I'd rather under promise and over deliver. Some days, we are able to respond within 30 minutes of receiving the email.

XJ86

Wait you heard back?? I'm still waiting in my 3 day greenslip pay I was denied illegally

tunes

go on.....

Ar Pilot

We are currently training several new volunteers. It's a pretty significant learning curve for the first 6-9 months on the job. Apologies for any lapse in quality and just know we do our best to have supervisors or experienced personnel review any emails before being sent out.


Edit: To anyone who's still emailing the DAL Scheduling email address... it is not monitored or responded to. Please use the "contact the committee" tab on the ALPA MEC website.



We have a "Scheduling Optimization Team" that works directly with the company on coding issues and other minutiae to help resolve things like this. A lot of the response from the company is "we know this is an issue, but we don't know how/can't/won't fix it."