23.M.7/Auto Accept thread drift.
 

There are plenty of pilots willing to fly, but scheduling falls behind and trips sit in open time for hours.

Ditto this. I won't embellish the story, but I watched a trip sit in open time for nearly 2 hours, just waiting for it to be assigned to me on SC reserve. The call finally came 30 minutes before report. Flight went out late as a result. There were no WS/autoaccept shenanigans. It just sat there as I refreshed trip coverage expecting to get the call. (Yes I know this is neurotic of me, but I like to hawk iCrew during SC sessions from home once my chores are done.)

My category is not short staffed at all fwiw.

The regional and LCC I was at before both offered some type of alert system when things dropped into open time during my reserve window, or however you wanted to set up your alerts. I also find myself refreshing open time to see if a possible assignment is headed my way. Would it be difficult for the company to set up email, text or micrew customizable alerts?

FLICA has this feature. I believe at American their union has a feature that sends out email alerts. Can't be that hard to incorporate.

Ya, that's part of my "not a well oiled machine" comment. Scheduling seems to have been min manned so bad that they can't seem to keep up. Lack of experience doesn't help either. In my scenario though, the trip was in open time only for an hour so and scheduling was on top of it. The process was severely slowed by two well known OOB 23m7 seekers who auto accept everything and almost never take anything. I blame the inability to easy turn on/off auto accept. This probably cost someone a GS. However, on the same day, a very senior buddy in that seat woke up and saw he had an IA call for an easy day trip, from hours prior. He called when he saw it still in open time and got it. It had been sent out W, I'm pretty sure he said it was sent green as well. That doesn't sound like a category well plenty of willing pilots laying around.

In July DTW320 (both sides), they put every trip in open time after mid month, up as silver slips. GS/IA calls were non stop for them. A 320B friend got 18 GS and 6 IA calls in one day. Many went unfilled. That doesn't scream plenty of pilots.

I think those individuals know EXACTLY what they're doing and I don't think easy access to an auto accept ON/OFF switch would've helped.

exactly this. Because of all the violations happening they are hunting for free money. Just like before with batch size violations.

What difference does auto accept make vis-a-vis 23M7? Does it somehow make the pilot in question more likely to be the “affected” pilot?

If you are the most senior pilot eligible for a trip, auto accept casts the widest net. It doesn't matter if you did or didn't have the intent to acknowledge and fly the trip.

In theory, during a very chaotic month the top pilot ina category can submit a slip with auto accept and just sit back and do nothing. Any time the company uses 23.M.7 he gets paid.

But the part that sucks for most pilots is the guys that can make that 23.M.7 money are the absolute most senior pilots

(That's how I understand it, happy to be corrected)

I've always understood it to be the most senior with a slip in, not the most senior with auto accept on. People putting auto accept with no intention of actually working are just idiots trying to gum up the works. Happy to be wrong but I have gotten 23M7 and I only use auto accept at night and while flying.

This is why I said above that having easier options to turn on/off auto accept/ack, would be nice. These guys are just too lazy to turn it off themselves.

Auto accept is to prevent getting a call for a GS when 100 guys senior to you also got the call. If you use auto accept and you're number one on the list, you're doing nothing but wasting everyone's time

At what number are you no longer wasting everyone's time by using auto accept? And how does the number one pilot on the list know s/he is actually number one for that 3am call-out without having to actually check the list? 🤔

(And what does this have to do with 2025 AEs? #Threaddrift)

My understanding as well, which is why I don’t get all the auto accept (if you’re not going to fly the trip anyway). Easier just to block ARCOS calls to avoid them, no??

Well they probably have WS requests in for the 23m7, but still want GS calls, so blocking ARCOS isn't a good method. I use auto accept at night to avoid calls for trips I won't get. I also use it when I'm flying but I usually bid a specific trip or ratchet down the qualifiers and use auto ack as well. Some people are too lazy to update their auto accept on/off all the time, frankly, I don't blame them. It's a pain to do and the easy button is just to let it ride.

Another thing that would be helpful to to be able to maintain a slip but turn it off/on without deleting it.

Ok, so auto accept in and of itself doesn't affect if a senior pilot is gonna get 23.M.7 pay, they just need to have the slip in. But by virtue of so many having auto accept on and gumming up the system, the company is force using IA's which then drives senior pilots collecting 23.M.7, did I get this right?

That is how I understand it. But I'd push back on the idea that auto accept is the reason the company is forced to use IA's. It may be a contributing factor, but I don't see it as a root cause. That is more a factor of how they choose to "run hot," and their crew scheduling hiring/staffing decisions. As has been talked about before, we see trips sit in open time for hours before coverage is started and even then it sometimes sits on a pilots line for up to an hour, even after they've rejected it.

Yeah that's probably more likely. A pilot uses auto accept hoping that during the 12 (or more) minutes the rotation is sitting on his schedule that scheduling makes the call to 23M7 it and since it was on his line he gets paid as the harmed pilot. Honestly I think that strategy is really a shot in the dark and probably doesn't work all that often.

I assume you were also against batch sizes since that’s what drove the previous IA bonanza.

I don’t like the batch size allowances we gave CS. With that being said I can understand why a junior pilot would use auto-accept in the evening when they don’t want to be pestered by batch call offerings they will never get. However, if you are senior and your #1 job in life is to be thorn in the side of the CPO and you are trying to grab free money. YOU! are what makes working here at Delta a real pain. If you aren’t going to be part of the solution, pound sand. If you are senior and select auto-accept you have stated that you will accept the proffer… plain and simple. The only issue is figuring out who is exactly senior. Maybe the trigger should be one individual pilot should not be given assignment pay for 23M.7 violations more than once per month.
Everybody’s flown with these self-serving types. It isn’t fun. Victim mentality with a dose of retribution for big bad Delta. Makes you wonder why they want to work here. Oh yeah, to get free money and game the system.

WE didn't cause the problem. That's all on management.

Let's keep that straight here.

Like I said in my first statement…

It’s what we do with the problem that is being questioned. Hopefully ALPA can work something out that’s beneficial for our pilots. I’m not a fan of how the company has handled it either. They are grossly violating PWA provisions.

Do you think it’s right for guys to be gumming up the system with auto-accept for reasons of getting back at the company? Wait… don’t answer that.

Good for them. I have more respect for pilots who are “gaming the system”, which really only means acting under the terms of the PWA for maximum benefit, than I do for management’s outright disregard for the PWA in its quest to take as much as possible from the pilot group.

Two separate issues. The reason we have a bargaining agent in ALPA is to handle these disputes. If you respect pilots that game the system, that’s your right. I don’t agree with it and I am senior in category and refuse to do it on principle. I can easily live with that.

As if management doesn’t “game the system”? The only difference is that the senior pilots in question are playing by the rules, while management is not. Both sides have the right to extract maximum value from the PWA in accordance with its terms.

Nope. I honestly didn't understand the whole batch size thing while it was transpiring. I barely understood what they were, so I simply didn't have an opinion on the issue. I was just trying to understand why so many here were so mad about it when at surface level it didn't look like a big deal.

More than one thing can be true at once. There are absolutely senior pilots who have auto-accept on who have no intent to actually operate a GS/WS. You don't need to have auto-accept to be the harmed pilot under 23M7. The ONLY thing it's doing is slowing things down unnecessarily. Whether you want to believe it, doing this does far more harm to mid-seniority pilots than hurts the company. They just move to 23M7. The only people who get paid are guys in the top 1% and pilots who are super junior who get the IA call before anyone senior to them.

Yes, the company is the problem. They are the ones who don't staff properly. But also auto-accepts with zero intent to fly are also causing this slow down as well.

Unfortunately that was the case for the vocal minority who were blinded by "losing out on their GS." It's like they didn't take a second to just think it through and realize that we were giving it away for free and accepting a company promise to not do it again. Now here we are, in the middle of one of the biggest "I told you so," moments.

It's not that simple. I absolutely do not agree with batch size agreement. We effectively solved a company problem (batch size violations) by agreeing to a pinky promise. The problem, however, stemmed from the grievance. We filed a grievance because we were claiming that the 23M7 usage was violating past precedent. The company came back with this settlement offer and our options were effectively to withdraw the grievance, accept the settlement or take it to arbitration where we were certain to lose. The widespread usage of 23M7 doesn't just negatively impact a "vocal minority." It completely upends the seniority system in favor of a FCFS system which primarily benefits super junior pilots and super senior pilots.

Those pilots are still playing by the rules though. There is zero requirement in the PWA to have a certain level of “intent to fly” prior to submitting a slip — with or without auto accept. Most pilots have blanket green slips submitted all month long, but very few actually intend to fly every day. My personal “intent to fly” varies throughout the month based on what else I have going on, and the quality of trips being offered. That’s the beauty of our proffer system.

The company is not always playing by the rules / PWA, which is the real issue. The pros / cons of the current PWA terms that we operate under can be hashed out in section 6.

Again, nuance. More than one thing can be true at once. And for the record, using 23M7 inside 8 hours IS playing by the rules. That doesn't make the rampant usage right.

Of course more than one thing can be true at once. Pilots who use auto-accept are playing by the rules, while management is often not. That part is simple. If you don’t like the rules, then write your reps and fill out the upcoming C26 survey to request a change. Nothing is truly “wrong” if it’s done in accordance with the PWA.

Management is frequently using 23M7 outside of 8 hours, not logging 23M7 incidents as required, along with numerous other routine PWA violations.

They are sometimes using it outside 8 hours but they are using it a lot within 8 hours and that usage is complaint but it still harms a lot of the list. To just throw your hands in the air and say "auto accept has no role" in them using it is incorrect. We are both engaging in the old cold war mentality of MAD.

Ya, we could have just done nothing and let it play out. I was was middle of the pack then and while not ideal, there was no shortage of premium available. We let a little bit of short term pain get in the way. No we're back in the same position, with a broken pinky promise and no batch sizes.

That’s costing the company triple pay per trip. Management would love nothing more than to get pilots / ALPA distracted by the “it’s abrogating seniority” facade again, resulting in the surrender of very valuable bargaining power for free.

They succeeded with that the first time around with the batch size settlement. We can’t let it happen a second time. The issues with our PWA coverage rules are very valuable in section 6 if managed by ALPA appropriately.

It’s not mutually assured destruction when one side is using a pistol, and the other side has a nuke.

I'm not arguing we should solve their problems. I'm pointing out that there is a problem. I'm also less interested in the company paying triple pay to the wrong people than I am with them paying double pay to the right person. I'm not saying we give away the farm to do it or anything at all. But we can also acknowledge that pilots are being harmed.

It probably those darn in base domicile pilots trying to keep the good trips away from commuters by delaying awards to the point commuters can’t get there…. 😁🫣

Sure, but my experience mirrors what crewdawg posted above. Whenever 23M7 has run rampant in my category, I’ve had little trouble finding a premium trip or two somewhere in the month — even as a mid-seniority commuter.

The company would love nothing more than to make their problem look like our problem. For us, it’s minimal short term pain for long term gain. For the company, it’s a massive, unsustainable cost and operational issue. It becomes even more unsustainable after we eventually get automated enforcement up and running. Time is on our side here.

I’ve used auto accept in the past and seen a trip sit past the point that I could commute in to take it—once accepted I called to tell them when I could get there and they said we’ll move on to the next guy—so I dont completely understand how these guys can get paid for trips they don’t intend to fly. I have inquired why a trip disappeared and was reassigned to another base which got a senior guy paid.

You must be new here. We got them new fangled computators now so we can leave the whiz wheels at home.

I use it all the time for this reason and night has nothing to do with it. You can put do not call time in your slip request. I also use the full 12 minutes for a decision and sometimes can't coordinate my life in 12 minutes and then lose some premium due to the delay. I'm sure you think I'm the problem, yet there are trips sitting in open time that could be running coverage that are not and will not until <8 hours prior to report. Many so late that there is no way anyone could report on time.

23M7 seems to go to junior pilots a lot because they start coverage and get halfway (or more) thru coverage and then stop it. Scheduling finally runs out of time and then send it out for an Inverse assignment. Where the proper coverage stopped is where it is pay protected.