This little comedy nugget is solid gold, and deserves to be recognized as such.

 

This is what happens when the trip coverage ladder isn’t being followed. There’s no way to know if you’re a dealmaker. Awarding an IA instead of a GS is the same thing as awarding GS 1 to someone junior. The senior pilot is losing money for a trip he/she should have flown. At least in the GS situation, a scheduler can be held accountable. In our current state of affairs, there’s no transpsrency.

Pilots are ****ed. Now taking it out on you isn’t right, but you are the junior pilot flying the trip that he contractually should have gotten before you. There could have been a pilot senior to him that wanted it too.

 

Why anyone is getting ****ed at an individual pilot when the bold is 100% the company's fault is beyond me. Anyone who is angry over the situation needs to direct that anger at the company*.



* with the small caveat that the pilots who really ARE dealmaking on IA#7 are fair game. Pilots getting one, or even two IA's are not in that category, and no-one should be sniping them even a little.

 

Maybe IA calls are going out in SSN order, so to be as fair as possible... 🤔

 

I answered an IA call and spoke with a scheduler who told me that specific rotation had already been awarded to someone else. I was, however, informed there was a different rotation that hadn't skipped the ladder yet that I could take.

That's deal making. I sent the details to ALPA, but I can certainly see how that could be confusing for those who do not choose to educate themselves on our contractual nuances.

 

Moose, the association was clear about what constitutes a deal. It's the dudes proactively calling CS without any prior previous contact i.e. an robocall and volunteering their services. If you've received the robo call and are calling back that's not deal making.

If you happen by luck to get a CS on the line and they tell you "hey that trip we called about is no longer available but we've got this one available...." - that's deal making from their end. It's happening from both sides. Pilots and CS

 

Come on.....ok, while it isn't our fault, if you do not believe auto accept on thousands of slips isn't contributing, I don't know what to say. Yeah, yeah, I know.....its contractual.

Should the company have hired more last year? Absolutely. But, in the end, even when they screw up, the long term consequences are far worse for us and in this scenario, while it isn't ultimately our fault, the auto accepts are absolutely contributing. Everyone has blood on their hands in this one.

We are alienating our customers and destroying our performance to spite our managers, all while sticking to our auto accept guns.

I understand using this as leverage, but we have no transparency between ALPA and the company. Are they even talking? It's painfully obvious ALPA despises RG and HT. So now what?

We have to live with the long term results. Not our managers, who with a linkedin post and a resume, parachute into another exec gig at any other company for greater or equal comp. We get stuck with PO'd pax, deteriorating performance, and all the negatives associated with that for the remainder of our careers, not them.

 

This boil of an operation has been festering since 2018. This mess is resting squarely on the shoulders of 2 people. Yeah, we ran it a little hot alright. Now look at this mess you've created.

 

Our contract is not the problem here.

Staffing in the OCC on the CS/CT desks is.

Also our contract provides them several levers to use to assist them but it is them that fail to use them.

This is not our problem to solve.

 

While I lean to being frustrated in the people who are slowing things down just to slow things down, this wasn't a problem 8 months ago. And frankly, it's more frustrating getting passed over for legit WS and GS for trips that get sent immediately to IA. There are guys getting a hundred hours a month to sit at home and me, trying to sharpshoot OT to recover credit from dropping trips earlier in the month, is panicking to get above 60. So I have to ask, what has changed? Has there been a 6 fold increase in people auto-accepting? Or is the company running super lean and leaving scheduling desks unstaffed?