IA Calls
 

Does anyone else keep getting IA calls for trips that have already been covered?

I got a couple over the last weekend. I'm usually pretty quick on the draw too to see what the trip is.

Been happening a lot these past couple of days. The timestamp on the robocall is usually between 5 and 20 minutes earlier than the time my phone rang. It's frustrating when it's for a rotation that I was eying and willing to fly. By the time I got connected to a scheduler they were already gone, assuming they were still showing on MiCrew to begin with. Some to junior pilots as would be the correct order, but recently several were already awarded to pilots thousands of numbers senior to be before I got any kind of call, and that is making me scratch my head. Oh BTW, had Greenslips in for all those days and never got an ARCOS call either.

How can you tell what trip you are being called for? I don't even get a voicemail anymore.

Ive had ones go well senior to me before my phone rang. I checked the time stamp, and filed an Ace.

For the IA calls that you get that never come in as a GS, please submit an ACE. It helps us in the grievance process. And will get someone paid.

Keep in mind that you won’t get an IA call if you’re a reserve on a golden day off.

While an IA is supposed to be awarded in inverse seniority, in reality, the robocall goes out and it’s first come first awarded.

Watch for scheduling to write in the remarks section of a rotation..."first one to call back." That means someone called scheduling to grab an IA before they even called anyone.

Caught one the other day at 2 pm that was created at noon’ish. CS did not even run it. They were going to IA rather than even try. Asked them to run it and it went to a very senior pilot almost instantly. Gave the guy a call and he said “thanks but no thanks. Now I have to fly it.” He preferred to be skipped. He sits and collects pay for all kinds of IA. Figure the top 5 to 10 on the list are getting boatloads of single pay. A trip a day the way the IA are flowing.

Can not imagine the $$ the company is wasting.

Would make better sense to just cover trips in seniority order.

I would like to get rid of the proffer in cases where we WS or GS by specific rotation number. If we auto accept, auto acknowledge; why sick around with ARCOS?

Honestly we should just get rid of batch sizes.. if you don't want to be disturbed during your sleep put your phone on do not disturb or block ARCOS' number.

Ideally we'd have the technology to choose within ARCOS like "only call if less than 5 senior pilots to me eligible for trip" and it doesn't call you until this is met and adjusts in real time as senior pilots deny the trip.

But we'll never have that ability, so I say just get rid of batch sizes and manage your settings as necessary.

Keep batch sizes, just set them based on the number of pilots in category. ATL7ER probably shouldn't have the same batch size as DTW717.

So literally what the current batch size does...

Yes, but the response window time starts from the first call out, so if your personal batch size is too small then you're out of luck.

I think this is a better answer than no batch size. Base it on a percentage. Let’s say 100 people are eligible for the trip(s) on the call out. First call out is 25 peeps, second 25 and so forth.

Absolutely not. There is a reason we negotiated a LOA to start having batch sizes. It needs to be tweaked, not eliminated.

Or allow the company to double the batch sizes in any category with additional X day reserve manning, and triple it as long as all bid month calendar days are blue.

Optionally, remove the batch size limitations and give me an hour of pay/no credit for every green slip I accept through ARCOS but am not awarded.

If the company is going to infringe on my free time with bait and switch offers for premium pay that don’t materialize, they can pay me for that privilege.

We negotiated the batch size. Now we use it to negotiate for PSC to/from same day/next day WS/GS trips.

Company had three options:

a) tells network to pound sand when they try to push a schedule Flt Ops know they can't fly.

2) if not a, then staff the company to execute said schedule

d) neither a or 2

I agree. The current batch size limitations and penalties for violating them are leverage on our part. We’d be fools to give that back to the company for free.

during the day (and we can argue about what timeframe the should be) I don’t see a downside to unlimited batch sizes. Send out a batch to the whole category. It’s better than a trip going to an IA, or worse to the ********* who calls scheduling fishing for the trip.

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?

While this is very true, there is no inherent right to small batch sizes especially for pilots who shotgun blanket GS requests when they are super selective then get salty when their phone rings. You want to be notified of anything and everything all the time? You deserve to be woken up. We should spend zero capital protecting the little perfection mentalities like that.

That said, eliminating ARCOS and going back to calling one at a time works for me.

Hold the phone there professor. "Automated coverage" was a line item that was specifically included in TA2, and part of that was GS became proffers. More specifically, it also didn't include any barriers, parameters or restrictions.

To summarize, while yes, the company implemented it, but we also permitted it when we accepted TA2.

+1 to all the above.

"Measure with a micrometer, cut with an axe" is not always a good axiom. We need to take smaller bites at the problem, vice making huge/wild changes (back to what we had before the batch size LOA - and many will recall that LOA was WIDELY demanded by the pilot group.)

If I were King, I would put more transparency into the system on all levels. Once the ARCOS Batch has started to run, the App can be made to 'unhide' the callouts above you, but the phone call only comes when/if it gets down to you. IOW, everybody can "see" the callout at the same time. That way you can follow the slips as they trickle down, particularly when there is a huge avalanche coming, well before it gets to you. Order them accordingly, and wait for your 'batch' to come - or not. People aren't interrupted/called too early, but you have a lot more time to respond. If you miss all that, the call comes and it's just like it is today.

A tweak to Batch sized is warranted. But my biggest beef with opening the aperture on batch sizes, especially to eliminating batches altogether, is getting woken up in the middle of the night for a trip I have no chance at getting. I don't mind the 0100 phone call if I have a strong chance at it, but otherwise, I shouldn't have to put my phone on silent so I can sleep only to miss a call I would have taken. But frankly, I don't want the 6-9 AROCS calls per day that I sometimes get becoming the norm, which would happen with eliminating of batch sizes.

Additionally, I would require every single use of 23.M.7 would require TWO inputs on the daily trip coverage. The first is the IA, the second is the 'senior pilot' getting paid. FULL TRANSPARENCY. NO EXCEPTIONS.

I totally disagree with this idea that batch size should be tied to size of your category. Just because I am in a large category I get more nuisance calls for trips I will never get than some other category? If the batch size is big enough for a small category to get a taker then it is big enough for a large category. Shouldn’t make any difference how many total pilots are in a group.

While I know I personally didn’t ask for GS to be a proffer, I honestly don’t know if the membership at large wanted that with all the good and bad that comes with it. Of course I’d like to be able to sell back my vacation, but I surely don’t want anyone else to have that option. I think proffered GSs are similarly good for a few individuals but bad for the group overall. That wouldn’t necessarily be true if we could enter persistent slips with all the PBS parameters available to only enter specifically what we want to fly…but the company has shown they want zero specificity and make us enter generic slips every month with the clunckiest of interfaces.

- Give me more parameters
- Let me easily toggle on/off as my social/family/alcohol schedules ebb and flow
- Let slips carry over multiple bid groups or at least allow copy/paste of all my hard work to make them representative of what I’ll accept
- Keep me logged in to icrew for more than twelve seconds

If there’s something everyone might agree on, it could be that if there’s one thing the newest generations of pilots know how to do it’s how to NOT answer a phone call.

I’ve never gotten salty or complained about calls that wake me or start family schedule adjustments…at least not the ones that could be mine. Only the head fakes that went to someone ahead of me. Larger batches will make that more common. I don’t deserve to be awakened or disturbed because Delta is addicted to revenue - proper manning be darned.

Lots of junk gets accepted in any ratification of a massive PWA. That doesn’t mean a majority is necessarily happy with every provision contained within it.

have you had success doing this on a WS?

Auto ack off duty: Y Auto accept on
 

Since we can control "Auto Accept" and "Auto Acknowledge" the obvious fix is to insert coverage just above 23 M. 7. that gives the trip to the most senior pilot who has waived their proffer.

A friend sent me this and I agree. Feel free to copy and send to your Reps if you are inclined to do so.

Suggested improvements to trip coverage:

1. Conditionally waive the proffer: If a close-in trip needs to be covered (in an instance where 23 M. 7. would be used) direct Crew Scheduling to skip to pilots who have selected YES to AUTO ACCEPT that trip via PCS and award the rotation in seniority order of those who want to fly. Limitations would have to be mutually agreeable and specific, say < 120 minutes to report.
2. If we want to maintain the "proffer" aspect of close-in assignments, then expand the batch size. This is a worse choice than #1 because it will disturb rest (for some reason these calls seem to always come between 2 & 4 AM) and Crew Scheduling still has the uncertainty of knowing whether the pilot awarded the trip is willing to fly.
3. Require trip coverage be initiated within a specific time limit and make this information transparent to line pilots. Line pilots have no visibility into when trip coverage is pulled, or coverage begins. This would drastically reduce non-productive calls to Crew Scheduling.

The Association may see either of these solutions as "concessionary." If necessary, give the association something to fix our mutual problem.