Originally Posted by OOfff

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.

Originally Posted by notEnuf

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.

Originally Posted by hockeypilot44

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.

Originally Posted by ancman

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.

Originally Posted by Hotel Kilo

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

Originally Posted by ancman

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.

Originally Posted by CX500T

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.

Originally Posted by ancman

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.

Originally Posted by MrBojangles

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