There is nothing to agree/disagree with. If multiple people get paid then it favors the pilots. It is black and white. This is costing the company more money and getting pilots more money. It is a company issue not a pilot issue.

It totally is wage theft. Funny how they only seem to catch errors in their favor, but even after calling multiple times on things, it's only ever paid out to the pilots when the union gets around to the ACE. (Not blaming ALPA at all btw. People that think it's ALPA's fault for the backlog are a special breed.) And usually seemingly very quickly at that. Maybe Delta can add microloans to their profit profiles as that is what we are all being forced to give them, all while inflation still sucks.

Just imagine if another Fortune 50-100-whatever we are company was found to continuously under pay their employees $10('s?) of millions of dollars in wages a year, got caught doing it, and did nothing to actively address the systemic issue. It would be on the front of every newspaper and Breaking News segment on TV. Thanks RLA!

Weird, they told me it was automatic... 🤣🤣🤣 Good thing I knew better. I had to tell them I am going to read the pairing numbers anyway, just so it's on the tapes for the timeliness of the dispute. Don't care if they send to pay specialist or not, someone is eventually going to get some money.

Exact opposite of what I've been told

We had comms on this back in 2018.

File the ACE for this and any reroute. A fellow pilot 9/10 most likely will get paid

This is a company issue not a pilot or union one.

I don’t think any DALPA communication has said to “file the ace for any reroute.”

That's before I was hired. Could you point me in the direction of where to find this?

Scheduling committee members have publicly stated in the FB group that we are encouraged to ACE every reroute to ensure proper pay.

We all pay a lot of money for ALPA’s representation and services. I don’t hesitate to use them as often as possible, especially when the vast majority of my ACE reports result in additional pay for another pilot or myself. The backlog indicates nothing more than the need by DALPA to budget greater funds to the scheduling committee and hire more committee members. This is not a pilot-created problem.

He can deny it all he wants, but he's definitely Drum. Same attitude, same negativity, same threats. It's hard to believe the mods allow this. Maybe Internet Brands just likes all the ad revenue the clickthroughs generate from conflict. That's what eventually killed Flightinfo too though.

This behavior is PART of the REASON the backlog is so big! If you're happy with that, have at it.

Only the company and ALPA have access to enough data in DBMS to ensure that all parties are paid properly in a reroute or 23M7 situation. Our options are either trust that the company pays all involved properly, or file an ACE report and let ALPA verify it.

Like I said, most of my ACE reports have resulted in additional pay going to myself or another pilot. Pilots should be filing more ACE reports whenever they see something fishy, not less.

DALPA absolutely needs to invest more of our sizable dues payments into the scheduling committee. They’re a business and we are their customer.

Question, from a potential new hire: Is IA the Delta equivalent of junior manning? Do you have to accept the trip if you answer the phone? Any premium pay associated?

Yes, yes, and yes. But you are never required to answer your phone. Ever.

Yes, No, Yes.

It’s a robo call that tells you which rotations are available for IA. If you want one, it will tell you to press * to connect to Scheduling. They will eventually pick up and have no clue why you’re calling.

This … absolutely!!! … their decision to abandon the coverage ladder shouldn’t let them abandon finding where the trip would have went without 23m7. Have you brought this up to the union??

Ive been following this thread and I may have missed it but I would greatly appreciate anyone that could explain this. What exactly is prompting this apparent sudden surge in IA's? I'm used to getting green slip calls constantly and then suddenly out of nowhere not a single greenslip and now everything is an IA call from scheduling? Does the implementation of 18hr LC play a roll?

It's the trips within a few hours of report that are going IA because Scheduling is invoking a clause in the PWA allowing them to skip the coverage ladder to get the flight covered ASAP

Maybe some of them. But managers from CS have been stating on multiple base visits it’s mostly due to the ARCOS batch sizes and not being able to get through the massive numbers of people with blanket slips in, bogging down the process. And they just resort to IA to get it covered.

Not saying it’s an excuse, just that it’s their explanation.

No, because 18 hour LC isn't even in effect yet (starts June 2). IA's are generally going out for 2 reasons. First is that something pops up very short notice, roughly under 2 hours to report, and there's basically no time to run the full ladder. ARCOS batch limits mean they can only call 5 people every 15 minutes for WS/OOBWS/GS, whereas with an IA they can blast basically everyone in the category who is legal. The second thing that causes IAs is that a trip pops far enough out so the batch size is extremely small, or only 1 pilot every 15 minutes. But then it has to call 60+ people with slips in and even as the report time gets closer and closer ARCOS is locked into that 4 people per hour rate. Eventually the clock runs out and scheduling just dumps it to IA close to report.

I've said it before, but probably the easiest fix is to have scalable batch sizes the closer in to report it gets. So right now if a trip pops 12 hours to report it's a batch size of 1, and it is stuck at 1 pilot every 15 minutes even if you run up to and past report time. ARCOS needs to be able to increase each callout size on a rolling time schedule. So 18+ hours the batch size is 1. Then when it goes under 18 hours it starts calling 2/batch until 12 hours to report, then 5-12 hours is 8, 3-5 is 15, 1-3 is 30, under 1 hour is 40. Or something like that, make up your own numbers. That would eliminate almost all our IA issues.

So essentially, an abnormally large amount of pilots have blanket greenslips in that don't intend to fly them to begin with bogging down the system, made worse by the fact that we are growing the airline (both in demand and # of pilots) and now more and more pilots are sitting in coverage ladders that take way too long for CS to run through because of batch sizes meant for smaller pilot group comprising smaller categories under less demand.

SOunds like we'd be seeing tons of cancellations and reroutes like last summer, and this is their attempt at slapping some Flex Seal tape on a crack on the Hoover Dam

Pretty much…

A scheduler told me this week that they are going straight to IA at 3 hours prior to departure. That’s not an ARCOS batch size issue.

yes it is. For instance I know one category a guy just posted somewhere else he was number 190 on the list in arcos. you tell me how a trip 3 hours out is supposed to get covered with a GS 5 people at a time when all the people that are at the top now have a blanket slip in with no intention of taking a trip? It's impossible and that's why they go to IA.

If only we hired 6,900 pilots the last 2.69 years…you would think the NB categories would actually have some positive Res Days…maybe even have the appropriate number of people on SC…SC can definitely make the airport in 3 hrs.

If only Flt Ops would push back against network when they present a schedule we know we don’t have the bodies to actually execute.

i agree somewhat, but there will always be trips covered by premium pay-it's just part of the business. the question is do we want a system where these can be covered correctly, or do we want them to rely on IA and reroutes like they've been doing out of necessity?

Cover it with the IA and auto-pay the guy that was bypassed at whatever step of the coverage ladder.

Why are we trying to solve this problem for them?

And more importantly why aren’t they paying the affected pilot every single time, whether asked or ACE’d? Solve this piece first (ie honoring your deal$) then we can talk about a quid for fixing the batch size.

why do you want a system where one person who probably wouldn't fly it anyway is getting paid? that's what is happening. also did you know that if you're above ALV or a reserve on a golden day you aren't even eligible for IA. So many people aren't even eligible for premium pay the way things are now. It's a problem to solve because it harms us more than it harms them. maybe you like getting rerouted all the time, but most people don't.

Your first paragraph just incentivizes senior pilots to put in blanket GS requests without any intent to work. It would become a grift and take away premium opportunities from lower seniority pilots who actually wish to fly

While that is A (legitimate) question, I don’t think it is THE question.

THE question for me is - Do we want a system where you can PD, move X days, fly the rotations you bid, occasionally get an extra X day on reserve, very rarely get rerouted, fly less on reserve than as a lineholder, preserve sick leave for when you’re sick and hold weekends and holidays off when you’re senior in your category? Or do we want to have to bid min credit every month because you can’t drop anything later, burn your APD early in the year, steal vacation from your future self to drop trips, fly to full every month on 17 or 18 days of actual reserve duty, get unstacked in the top 15%, delay upgrade because your QOL at 30% still won’t be good enough to see your kids?

The number of people affected negatively by an over-extended operation probably exceeds the number of folks being harmed by 23M7 by a factor of 10 to 1. Sadly the latter issue consumes the oxygen in the room. Don’t take your eye off the ball; ARCOS and batch sizes and blanket green slips aren’t what is ruining this career for those of us who want to work to live.

The company can fix just about all things with proper reserve manning. That tide will lift almost every boat, not to mention it’ll keep our airline as a passenger favorite and preserve our revenue premium long-term. The company’s addiction to revenue has the potential to ruin not just your career long-term, but our standing amongst our peers. That standing is what generates your profit sharing and your job security. Normalization of this scheduling chaos endangers a lot of goodness. “Fixing” how we pay pilots to execute glove saves should be both extremely expensive for the company and temporary.

Signed, someone who isn’t addicted to nor reliant on premium pay.

what if I told you that these premium trips can actually make you work a lot less? But yes I agree all that other stuff you said is great but you’ll never find an excess of reserves lying around like we had in covid. It doesn’t make financial sense to the company

As a scheduling committee member, we really prefer the pilot do as much as they can to advocate on their own behalf if they believe they have experienced a contractual violation before submitting an ACE Report.

Wait for your rotation to show closed on your time card. Contact crew scheduling and bring up how you were harmed and ask for a remedy. If unhappy with the answer, either politely end the call or escalate to a supervisor. If CS is unhelpful, your CPO if a great resource that has contacts they can reach out to at the company. PWA 18.B can be referenced with your CPO to start the formal grievance process yourself.

If all of that is unsuccessful, then submit an ACE report. Ideally, attaching any timeline information about your contact with the company.

ACE Report is the easy button, but ideally a pilot will take some initiative on their end.

In the 4000+ reports in the queue, there are countless simple issues a pilot could have fixed with a call to CS. (Rotation guarantee adjustment, PB day calculations, etc.)

Additionally, if CS and CPO received dozens or hundreds of calls every day about contractual violations, issues might get escalated and fixed quicker.

We all appreciate the work that you do. I’m all for doing as much as possible on our end to lessen your burden before filing an ACE.

However, aside from taking the company’s answer at face value, how are we supposed to verify that the proper pilots were paid in a 23M7, reroute, or batch violation scenario? Without having the same read-only access to DBMS that ALPA has, we have no way to verify proper payment of everyone involved in those cases.

I have notified CS of those issues occurring, but I also follow up with an ACE every time. I don’t trust that the company is competent or honest enough to pay the affected pilot(s) properly simply because I brought it to their attention.

Without making trip coverage reports and other resources accessible to the entire pilot group (which SHOULD happen for transparency), we lack the visibility into most of these issues that ALPA has.

What you’re doing is perfectly fine and appreciated. There are obviously a lot of things that aren’t transparent to line pilots. A record of contact is very helpful given our response timeline and backlog. We understand pilots do not trust the company and we are the backstop for compliance.

It's not about what we had during Covid, it's about what he had pre-optimizer. Magically we still made truck-loads of money even with significantly higher staffing levels. Yes there was still a lot of premium flying but nothing like the last few years. That would do more than all the other ideas to fix the trouble with covering trips.

OK, remind me who we all pay? ALPA

I know that SC work is not easy but in the recent past we were able to call and speak to a person in the bull pen who used to be a scheduling supervisor. They were a wealth of information and I learned so much from them, now we have no direct link to the people we pay except thru an APP.

They're a bunch of items in play here but have you tried to call CS recently? Just to call in sick or well (would be a nice place for an APP) can result in long waits on hold. Additionally, we are in a perpetual self-inflicted IROP which exasperates the wait times.

I agree we should all help ourselves, but how many times have you been blatantly lied to by CS either because of lousy training on the PWA or because they came from the regionals and are used to brow beating the pilots.

I end with ALPA takes our money so we should expect a bit more than what we are currently getting.

Like I said, ACE Report is the easy button and no one is stopping you from doing that.

Also, the phone lines are still open and you can call to speak with a scheduling committee member during normal business hours.

This too. At the end of the day, ALPA is a business with paid employees. We pay plenty for ALPA’s services.

If the line to get into your restaurant consistently runs out the door and wraps around the block, you don’t tell your customers to try eating somewhere else first and come back only if you’re still hungry (especially when they’ve already paid). You expand and hire more staff as necessary.

I agree, and IMO until and unless we have a robust system that quickly catches all the deny-deny-deny "errors" and pays them swiftly, we need to stop playing footsie with dues refunds and invest in the infratructure needed to handle the actual needs we have,

Getting a couple hundred dollar check is cool. Having incorrect assignments fixed/paid quickly is WAY cooler.

Not being stopped but with the backlog, it just isn't working like it should. So, if we have a question 9-5 Eastern Time M-F there is someone there? Are they former CS supervisors or just a SC member, because that was the reason for the SMEs (CS supe), it freed up the "volunteers" to work the more contentious issues.

I like the restaurant analogy. We need more full time employees who aren't on FPL.

Absolutely! Unfortunately, what I fear is we solve the company's problems with no gain for the pilots.

The company decided to let all of the experienced schedulers leave during 2020 and then hire back entry level employees who didn't get trained properly, or if they did, were quickly recognized by another department/division and scooped up resulting in the replacement's replacement not being given nearly as thorough training as the predecessor.

The company is blaming us, I know because I flew with someone who spoke to Tim H-R at a PUB event who said they were just responding to our group having a blanket GS in all of the time without accepting responsibility for our woefully lacking IT or their decision to let everyone who know what they were doing to leave in 2020.

Don’t disagree! We have the second largest budget behind the safety committee. Would need to greatly increase the budget and allow for 12-18 month lag time for new member training in order to knock down the queue and wait times.

API access should help greatly with ACE auditing.

That’s the way I handle it personally. But I have to wonder how many pilots stop short of ACEing every probable violation, thereby letting more violations slip through the cracks, simply because of ALPA’s oft-repeated message of using ACE as a last resort.

That messaging has been inconsistent as well. I’ve heard scheduling committee members recommend filing an ACE report for every reroute, and others suggest that it should only be used as a last resort. Every reroute is prone to multiple different types of violations and pay issues, and unfortunately those issues have only become more prevalent over time. Ideally ALPA will commit enough resources to verifying every single reroute.

I do know that everyone on the scheduling committee is working extremely hard every day. I appreciate and respect that. I’m simply suggesting that it’s time to devote more funding and resources toward expanding that team, at least until we can get more enforcement automation in place.