I love it, you gave the A, 2, and D….what movie was that from? Home Alone I think?

 

Megan McCallister: You're not at all worried that something might happen to Kevin?

Buzz McCallister: No, for three reasons: A. I'm not that lucky, 2. we use smoke detectors, and D. we live on the most boring street in the whole United States of America, where nothing even remotely dangerous will ever happen. Period.

 

I don’t know if you’re in the minority or the majority, but many of us don’t want incessant calls and notifications all day every day simply because the company is incompetent with their operation. We also don’t want to miss opportunities to actually fly a green slip we deem worthwhile.

Just like the old days when we functioned just fine with phone calls, when the company reaches out to me I want to know there’s a good chance I can have the offered work.

 

I agree. The false angst over "only call me if I'll probably get it" creates an unmanageable scenario for the system when things are busy. It also causes more ppl to put in fake GS blanket requests for everything when they really only want the perfect trip.

The old system where they called one by one worked fine. If they called you, it was yours if you wanted it. If they were tight on time they didn't hold it for 10 mins. When you talked to them you could wheel and deal on a 1 by 1 basis for hotels or pos space.

We don't need "batch sizes" at all, but some added functionality on the user's end to better screen. As of now the old way is vastly superior for everything except fantasy bare bones scheduler staffing, and that's not our concern. Well worth the 3 cents in PS we don't get.

 

I didn’t ask for ARCOS, the company implemented it for their own forecasted gains. I didn’t ask for GS to be proffers, the company did that. This gummed up system is of the company’s making and there aren’t any settings to manage (that I know of) to eliminate head fakes and still get called for trips I want.

There’s no false angst on my end. We all know one beauty of this job is leaving it a work. We can’t do that now without sacrificing the premium pay our seniority should afford us.

If the company put a few hours of effort into modernizing the green slip and white slip entry process they could eliminate a ton of drag for the system. Seeing as how they already underpay schedulers and understaff all departments for IROPs, though, they’ve shown they have no wisdom about where to invest for actual savings and efficiency and seem not to care that we regularly implode in flight ops.

I don’t need a perfect trip, but when the company is offering so much premium pay to offset their poor planning and mismanagement, folks can and do get picky. They also stop flying extra at straight pay, which exacerbates the mess. Like almost every other problem - this one is on the company, not the pilots. I don’t choose to cede my own QOL even a little to fix problems they cause and won’t rectify themselves.

 

I certainly think there must be batch size limits. Before we had batch sizes I was getting calls at 2 or 3am for a rotations that sometimes reported in more than 12 hours where I was the 15th or 20th pilot in line. So now I'm awake and I check ARCOS and #2 and #5 pilots have already said they want it. And that was a GS with parameters I would fly, not a fishing expedition.

That kind of incompetence and total disregard for crew members is why we need batch sizes. I agree we might need to go to percentage based or more dynamic sizes based on time to report.

I shouldn't have to turn my phone off when I'm ready and willing to fly because they are incapable of not nuisance calling 50 pilots. We did not make this staffing 'situation', let's not talk concessions to fix their self-induced crunch.

 

Do have a reference for this? It seems counter intuitive. The company just wants to cover the trip. Why would they cede contact not being an assignment and make it a proffer.....thereby increasing their work? They wanted ARCOS to streamline trip assignments and pilots wanted it for the same reasons.

 

Fair enough. But I do think during the day, and within 2 hours of report, the batch sizes need to be much bigger. The current situation encourages the company to use 23m, and also encourages the losers who call in fishing for trips.

 

I fixed it for you. Just for all the newer pilots here--prior to ARCOS, green slips were not proffers, and so long as you were FAR-legal (hadn't consumed any alcohol, etc) and were in place to be able to report for the trip, if you answered the phone, the trip was yours--period. While most pilots were happy about that, there were undoubtedly times where a pilot put in a blanket GS request, forgot about it, then picked up the phone one day, only to be rudely reminded that he had an obligation to fly an upcoming GS he may or may not have wanted. The biggest improvement (to me at least) was the simultaneous rollout of ARCOS along with contractual changes to make green slips proffers only.

I mostly agree. I still like ARCOS better (seeing the trip details, where you are on the list, etc). There is a good solution out there. I'm not sure what it is, but a good solution, giving the pilots and the company a bit more common-sense flexibility, would be welcomed by all.

 

Agreed. I am not sure why ALPA hasn't held the company's feet to the fire, and only allowed IA phone calls after a robocall has gone out first. So...did you get a robocall, with the voice saying "we are in the Inverse Assignment step of trip coverage; the following trips are available"? If so, then feel free to call back. The robocall should have a "control number" or something like that. But unsolicited calls by the pilot to scheduling along the likes of "hey I noticed you have a lot of uncovered trips; I'll be happy to fly one for IA pay" should be utterly disallowed.

Simple solution.

1. IAs must always be tied to a robocall with a control number associated with it.

2. Pilots cannot call scheduling unsolicited to volunteer their IA services.

3. Pilots must provide the robocall control number when making the call to scheduling, otherwise the conversation ends before it starts.

Is that too hard a concept? What am I missing here?