Airline Pilot Central Forums

Airline Pilot Central Forums (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/)

- Delta (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/delta/)

- - MOU 25-05 (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/delta/151540-mou-25-05-a.html)

Quote:

Originally Posted by OOfff (Post 3975205)

hypothetically, let’s say an atl320 flight becomes uncovered 6 hours out. if the company had all the cs staffing in the world, you couldn’t speed up the process.

12 mins per auto accept at each step of coverage, right? there are 700 people in each seat in that category.

the company doesn’t care who gets paid, we do. they don’t care about respecting seniority or whether you should have gotten the trip you wanted. they only care that the flight operates.

so yeah, they have a problem to solve, but it’s not at all the same problem that we want solved. they’re already solving theirs with an ia free-for-all.

They’re spending a lot of money. Most of our pilots are losing a lot of money. Company spending more than we lose, but that doesn’t help the pilots not getting 23.M.7 or green slips.

This 23.M.7 was a huge change in status quo. We should have found a way to stop it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by notEnuf (Post 3975249)

Yet they continue to do it everyday without issue. They didn’t ends the practice with 25-05 just made it easier for themselves. That tells me it’s an acceptable cost. In fact they made IAs twice as expensive with the QS step. I’m not sure the cost is a deterrent but rather a fee for the freedom to do what they want.

I think they just bought ignoring the coverage ladder at will and they are happy with the price. Same price as before with no increase when they use QS and now it is sanctioned by ALPA. They just solved the batch size and length of coverage problem by eliminating auto accept at no additional cost.

I don’t think they’re happy with the price — they simply can’t avoid it. It’s a sunk cost for them. There’s no way for them to cover a trip that reports in 2 hours, following the ladder, when there are 8 hours worth of auto-accepts in the system.

The only reason why any of this matters is because the company will try to escape their auto-accept / 23M7 costs for a much lower price at the table. It will be essential for ALPA E&FA to provide the negotiating committee with an accurate number prior to section 6. I’m cautiously optimistic that the NC will approach any bargaining with the true dollar value of auto-accept in mind.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hockeypilot44 (Post 3975257)

Total pilot payroll is up because of it. That’s all that matters to the company.

The QS will solve most of the other problems you describe. Giving away the farm for free (by giving away auto-accept) is not the answer though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ancman (Post 3975259)

There’s no way for them to cover a trip that reports in 2 hours, following the ladder, when there are 8 hours worth of auto-accepts in the system.

Yeah there is, it's called VAS. But they chose not to use it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hotel Kilo (Post 3975262)

Yeah there is, it's called VAS. But they chose not to use it.

VAS doesn’t help with their cost problem. It’s #18 on the 23.O ladder. Most of the auto-accepts come well before that.

VAS pilots could help with operational integrity, but they’ll still end up paying an M7 pilot each time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ancman (Post 3975259)

If this is a significant cost then more farmers, successful or not, make more IAs and eventually QS so there’s financial incentive both for the individual and the union to get more people putting in blankets. The problem has to have substantially higher costs before the company cares IMHO. Also QS has already eliminated auto accept if/when implemented. There’s little chance we walk back that freedom for the company and inconvenience for us.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CX500T (Post 3975214)

Pulled 23M7 coverage for a couple categories, (atl320 and nyc7er) that seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum, figured out the pay per trip.

Compared time to bid packs total time, got a percentage.
Multiplied that out by year 8 pay rates for seats, as the median pilot is around there (I'm 52% company on year 8 pay) and scaled it by the total block flown by the company.

This is a Fermi estimate thats correct to an order of magnitude, within certain bounds, and I picked the lower bound that still met a 95% confidence solution.

If you want a full on forensic accounting analysis if this, I ain't got time for that. I was able to blast that out in about 30 minutes.

Fermi estimates are good for a quick "is this worth further investigation" calculations but I wouldn't go into negotiations based on it. That's the lower bound. High end was 300+ but that's factoring in other costs like a 23M7 IA driving another GS or IA later if a reserve got it.

You’d absolutely have to do some serious research to come to an actual number but I don’t doubt for a second there a significant cost of downstream effects.

I know it’s anecdotal but recently this situation happened to me:

Late night GS comes out for a turn. I’m 1-2 pilots away from getting the trip and fully intend to fly it. 23.M.7 invoked.
IA call goes out. I try to get it but someone junior snipes the turn. Check the coverage report and the trip No-Opped.
Another GS comes out a few moments later. 23.M.7 again… this time I win the robocall lottery and get turn #2 as an IA
Show up to fly this new turn and talk to the CA. Turns out his FO got re routed to cover the same turn that No-Opped. The same turn I tried to get as a GS on step one of this journey.

Just walk through that single narrative and count how many times someone got paid to cover a single turn via the downstream effects. If this is happening at any meaningful scale the amount this problem costs the company can grow quite quickly. The challenge is doing the forensics necessary to find all these costs twice removed from the initial 23.M.7.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ancman (Post 3974924)

I’m not opposed to selling it back as you suggest, but the quid would need to be enormous.

The guys who are saying “auto-accept is worthless, just give it back” are way off base. It would be management’s dream to get out of this costly debacle for free.

Oh I agree, do not give it back. No way. SELL it back for full value.

if everyone that had a slip in that got skipped when they choose to IA something got paid, I'm pretty sure this practice would stop. Probably the only real fix to stop the madness

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrBojangles (Post 3975278)

if everyone that had a slip in that got skipped when they choose to IA something got paid, I'm pretty sure this practice would stop. Probably the only real fix to stop the madness

Why would the company ever agree to this? They’d have no way to effectively cover trips that pop up less than say 4 hours to report. They can’t still be covering a trip 6 hours after report time as they work through every step, even when it becomes fully automated.