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