Care to explain? Delta has granted the union scheduling experts the exact same access crew schedulers and supervisors have. What exactly does American allow APA? This access allows are scheduling reps to look back and reconstruct almost anything.
This is remorse access from DALPA HQ. We don’t have to go over to the company for access as I am told APA does.

 

Two words:

DECS and RES.

Every pilot has access to them and the Union reps generally have even deeper access than that. If you don’t know what DECS and RES are then you shouldn’t be commenting about how “awesome” our access is, because it isn’t.

 

Well I am just commenting on exactly what our union put out a few years ago. I also personally know one of the union contract admin workers who was a ex Delta scheduler. Isn’t DECS simply the program American pilots and flight attendants use for scheduling function like DBMS? What does that have to do with the union being able to look back and follow trip construction and assignment sequences?

 

The ACE system pulls most of its data from publicly available DOT sources. The company can’t turn off the access.

 

When you say crowd sourced, its populated by information from our side of icrew? Is this simply a issue form submission process or are they trying to get some transparency by using our end of the data?

 

As many as it takes, whatever the cost.

That said, much of the existing delta between CBA compliance and status quo could be caught by a good automatic review system/programs. Part of the rest could be significantly reduced by the DALPA scheduling SME's in the same rooms as the schedulers etc. The remaining could be easily reviewed by hand. If it can't be done within the existing budget, keep the 0.05% and apply it towards that.

Its unreasonable to expect 13,000 pilots to know the entire CBA in real time and properly flag everything including things that depend on a million other moving parts including other pilots's schedules and interconnected coverage sequences. PB/PR days are messed up all the time; the rolling thunder ninjas probably have that on lock, but not everyone does and some situations can get pretty esoteric. Beyond an individual pilot getting shorted, that creates in the blind errors no other pilot could possibly catch unless they are scheduling forensics experts. Its very hard to review something you should have gotten when you have no reasonable expectation to know you should have gotten it. That's 99% DALPA SME or programming review dependant.

Companies know this, and there is a built in default incentive to "deny deny deny" as there is no penalty and substantial reward for doing so. Its also the inevitable result of hard (over?) working schedulers sincerely doing their best while simultaneously trying to put out hundreds of interconnected fires at the same time. Its not all nefarious intent, nor is most of it. But errors can rapidly cascade into missed money/days off for numerous pilots down the line, directly and indirectly. If someone else doesn't get the proper PB days for example, 30 pilots down the line someone gets a trip instead of stayng home, or someone else misses a GS they had no ability to ever knew should have existed. All the errors add up to costing DALPA dues money too, so there's that.

100% compliance on RR, coverages, PB/PR and other major interconnected scheduling items should be the goal. These things should be automatically caught by computer review or manually looked at by SME's who are the ninjas that 13,000 line pilots can't ever be.

 

I would also add that NWA permitted 3rd party access to PARS and ACCESS, the NWA reservation system and scheduling software, respectively.

This allowed a healthy little market for cool programs, such as JS & non-rev booking and websites like EZOPENBOARD.

”BUH BUH BUH Flightline!”…which is shutting down leaving users with no alternative.

 

My American and United friends can find boat loads more information about things than I have access too. Even simple things like looking up schedule history is difficult and sometimes impossible for us (which is why ALPA says to screenshot everything). Dupe trips and missing iterations make reconstruction of a trip impossible for Joe Shmoe line pilots. We don't even have access to a glossary of iCrew codes to know what something means on our schedule, you just have to piece it together through the years like some kind of ancient language. Don't even get me started on the non-rev side! The Kompany actively restricts the amount of information we have. Even on a DH you can't see open seats in economy if you've been booked in a C+ middle seat or the C+ seat across from the lav on the 75.

 

I agree 100%. I know the contract pretty well and catch scheduling assigning illegal rotations on a regular basis. Last month I had 2, and this month I've had 2 so far. Every time I get an illegal rotation, I call scheduling and tell them. 99% of the time they deny it's illegal and come up with some poor reason why it was assigned. I keep pushing and tell them the exact section in the contract it violated. After that, they always agree, and pay me..I think Delta mgmt tells them to initially deny all illegal rotations when a pilot calls, Putting an ALPA rep in scheduling does nothing for Delta pilots except take money out of our pockets..He helps the company occasionally avoid an illegal rotation.

 

There is a big, big difference in what the line pilot can see, and what ALPA can see. Big. Huge.