A possible solution?
 

So I think everyone is in agreement that the trip coverage process is broken. The current usage of auto accept bogs down the process as it works 12 minutes per pilot though all the AA on each step of coverage. Obviously the company doesn’t like this as it leads to increased costs (23m7). But one main reason that pilots started using AA in the first place was because we were getting so many nuisance calls from ARCOS when a pilot was so far down the roster that they had no legitimate shot at the award. The one basic fix I’ve seen thrown around a lot is to just eliminate AA in its entirety. But while that solves the company’s speed problem it just brings back the flood of nuisance calls for pilots.

So, today I had a thought for a possible solution (inside section 6 negotiations): what if we got rid of AA but at the same time brought back batch sizes?

Ever since ARCOS rolled out, AA was always an option as everything was always a 2-step process. First the offer window then the acknowledgement window. Batch sizes reduced or eliminated the need for pilots to use AA since on any call out a pilot was at least in a much smaller pool and had a much higher chance of actually landing the trip. But what if we eliminated the 2-step process (like we already have for QS) but pair that with smaller batches? So let’s say we set it at a batch size of 15, and bump the window time up to 15 minutes to allow people more time to make a decisions, check commute options, etc. But just like QS, if you raise your hand in that window and are the senior pilot to do so when the window closes then you are obligated to fly the award. If no one in the batch raises their hand then ARCOS just calls the next 15 pilots in the next batch. What actual batch sizes to use would be something for the union and company to decide on.

So in that example you could work through 60 pilots in an hour, whereas right now if every AA pilot lets the full 12 minutes lapse you can only go through 5/hour. So trip coverage would move much faster than it is currently while not going full-tilt toward the blast-everyone-at-once solution if we simply just dumped AA. In this setup QS would still be available as an emergency step of coverage if report time was closing in, along with the required 23m7 payment to the skipped pilot.

I feel like this setup moves reasonably towards the company’s goal of faster trip coverage without just selling the farm and blasting every single pilot every single step every single time. Under this system a pilot getting an ARCOS call knows they have a reasonable chance of getting the award.

And lastly, I am only suggesting this as a solution inside of section 6 negotiations, still using our leverage of the current TC process to get a deal done and any potential cost savings rolled into other gains for our contract.

It would have to go way below 15. 5 during the day, 3 during the sleep hours, and 1 during a WOCL. No need to wake 14 people unnecessarily from their sleep every time 1 trip goes out. That 15th person will be awakened 15 times before they get a trip. That could be in a single night or over several days, that's causal to fatigue.

I'm flattered that you've bee reading my posts =)
We would need RCOS pay for batch size violations, too.

A5S

For WS maybe but hard no for GS. Getting woken up at 3 am while being 15th in line (and probably again at 4am when you are 14th in line etc etc) would get old really fast. Keeping AA for GS only and perhaps shortening the window a bit would solve 99 percent of the problem.

In exchange for no other concessions and a massive quid in section 6 of course.

Don’t get held up on the 15/batch number. That’s just one possible number out of many that could be used (1, 2, 5, 8, etc), either set all the time or variable based on nighttime hours and/or time to report. The point is more the overall concept not the nitty gritty details.

The company used to have this and...drumroll please...it was violated all the time. And often, just as slow. Read the old comms about RCOS violations.

ATL schedulers calling at 0700est for example not realizing the west coast pilots they were calling were asleep at 0400pst. Instead of proper training or automation that would easily fix this, the company wanted to go with changing the rules to what we have today. Let them deal with what they asked for and wait and see how things pan out during negotiations. After QS there is zero reason to rush, we're in a good spot.

The company has shown they rather throw roughly $200m per season at the issue rather than staff the scheduling department and pilots adequately. So the next "solution" will have to come during section 6 and recapture that quid to the pilot group, however they end up going about it. Don't give that away now, even if the process is a mess.

6 …. 7 …. whatever

Let the company figure it out and negotiate for it.

they wanted the big batch sizes in the first place.



You thought about this way too much already.…..

how about a flat $100 for every phone call I get for a trip I end up not getting awarded.

Submitting a "call me for everything" slip and then getting mad when you get called for everything is peak pilot. Most of our problems get solved with using parameters.

That being said, I'd be all for eliminating the need to submit new slips every month. More pilots would put time and effort into submitting slips with parameters if:
1. They didn't have to every month
2. They were easier to "turn off/on"

since you mentioned parameters…I wish we could be more specific with our qualifiers. A 2 day trip from ATL-SFO Vs ATL-PBI is very different. I wish we could put “max block time” in a qualifier. You would think it would be an easy add…..but DL IT. 😕😕

:rolleyes: Using a negotiated provision and then some rando interweb memer calling you out for COMPLYING WITH THE PWA AND RE-GRIEVED SETTLEMENT.

Under which part of this re-grieved settlement is the "complaining about the consequences of my own actions" clause?
If you didn't want to get called in the middle of the night, you had the tools at your disposal long before batch sizes went away.

Yup, it's called auto accept.

And I think you'll see a lot of us want to negotiate that away.

That’s why my solution attempts to strike a balance between what we currently have and a world with no auto accept but just blasting the whole eligible category for every single step.

Isn’t that what’s happening now? You do realize there are do not call hours on slip? You could also (sigh) take your slip out.


Also we have not always had auto accept. We always had auto acknowledge.

Why would I do that? I don’t farm, I don’t WS ever, but I actually fly GS. If I don’t put it a slip, I don’t get one. I’m fine getting woken up in the middle of the night for GS that are mine. I’m not fine getting woken up for someone else’s GS.

Edit: Just saw you add your second point, the only time I can remember not having auto accept was the old way of calling one pilot at a time. It was not auto acknowledge for GS because there’s no getting out of auto acknowledge; in the old days if you took no action the trip was removed with no penalty. You’re right that that’s how it was for WS.

I’m 100 percent fine going back to that way for what it’s worth.

The problem is that most categories are so large now that even with bringing batch sizes back, it will still take many, many hours to reach deep into the green slip step of coverage. Now that pilots are aware of the advantages of having auto accept on, they will certainly be aware of the same advantages were batch sizes to be reintroduced (being the senior-most pilot of the skipped batch = 23M7 pilot). At a batch size acceptable to most pilots, it will still take forever to cover trips. A320 OOBWS could have hundreds of pilots to get through.

The only ways to actually speed up trip coverage through the IBGS step without increasing nuisance phone calls are to either reduce the acknowledgement window timeframe from 12 minutes to something far shorter, or to move the OOBWS step to after IBGS. And I don’t support either without substantial concessions from the company.

This might well be an unpopular view, but I don’t think trip coverage is a disaster for us, especially with quick slips incoming. Quick slips will ensure seniority is respected, and the company will pay 3x for the inconvenience of being called in a big batch if you want them. Trips will be covered within 12 minutes, rather than current IA calls where wait times are unknown and a total crapshoot.

I think we should stop trying to figure out how to solve the company’s problem and let the negotiating committee decide how they want to approach it in section 6. We will all get to vote on whatever is agreed to.

Hey, look! Another argument about auto-accept!

I'm sure the negotiating committee will take these particular thoughts to heart!

While we are throwing out ideas for the NC to put a $$ on, here is a one call and done approach. Accept/Acknowledge together, just like the "good ol days".

Batch size of 1, sequentially called in seniority order every X minutes until someone accepts/acknowledges. Set X according to time until report. Close in, calls go out every minute. Further out calls fire off every 2,3,4 minutes. Worst case is 11 pilots interrupted for a trip they can't hold because #1 took 12 minutes to accept/acknowledge. Further out only 3-5 pilots interrupted without a chance at the trip. No blasting 10-100 at a time. Calls can be further restricted during base night time.

The programming is complex. It would take an intern an entire day with OpenAI Codex to complete the ARCOS project and then a team of Amish IT craftsmen another month to hammer and chisel it into DBMS.

See, now you’re talking. Get rid of auto accept, but 1 hour of pay for every arcos call accepted, but not awarded. It will force them to choose their batch sizes very carefully.

I can’t say I agree with your first sentence, but I like your thoughts in the second half.

Why we can’t have standing slips and edit them in MiCrew is beyond me.

Again, a company issue. If they wanted pilots using parameters they would have built an intuitive easy to use interface. Why do we have to read a full users manual for everything we do here? Want to bid for vacation - good luck finding the new form and figuring out how it works. Bidding for CQ? Good luck finding where to bid. Want to understand your pay statements? Spend an hour consolidating three different statements from three different systems. Want to get a next day WS? Dig through years of FB posts on strategies and then update your bid every morning or risk getting screwed. Reserved golden days? Training golden days? Good luck. Sick time usage? Dig through iCrew for a few hours and you might find it.

I don't know if the "The Files Are In The Computer??!!" Meme or "Old Man Yelling At Clouds" Meme fits better here.

Except he's right about all of it. I have never worked anywhere that was more difficult just to work at than this place. This whole Slip/AA/23.M.7/iCrew discussion going on here the last couple of months is demonstrative of how overly complicated this place is. It doesn't need to be this way.

Icrew is garbage

every Pilot that doesn’t want age 67 to go through knows it

some pilots use it to their advantage. They use the lack of schedulers (analysts now) also to their advantage

I hope the negotiation crew asks what the company plans to do to modernize it. If no plans the next question should be “how much money on scheduling does the company want to continue to waste?” And go from there.

Having a non-1980's based DOS system to manipulate our schedules would certainly go a long way.

Here's my idea, anything covered manually inside the 48 hour manual timeline pays 2X in seniority order. If you get a call with a report inside 48 hours then you get 2X and you know the trip is yours. Call it a Gold slip and when a trip reaches or is dropped into open time within 48 hours to report they just start calling pilots 1 at a time. NO ARCOS. They would only have to call the senior person and everyone would know it's coming because it should appear as an AU trip in open time. Every trip in open time is essentially soaking as a gold trip. If scheduling can't get to it in time then AU.

Why do people want to get rid of ARCOS (the idea, not necessarily the specific app)? I don't want to talk to a scheduler, and they probably don't want to talk to me either. Improve the ARCOS system, or get a better replacement, and keep the app with the option of using the archaic phone.

Seeing the trip being offered is invaluable. I am a hard no on anything that gets rid of an app based system. Doesn't have to be ARCOS specifically.

I have to laugh at this post. Increased staffing of schedulers or pilots will have very little affect. Neither one of those actions would change the fact that the majority of pilots in most categories have auto accept selected, and with 12 minutes per pilot it takes forever to get through the trip coverage ladder. In a category like ATL 320 it could take an entire day just to get through the white slips.

If you wanna fix the problem, eliminate the incentive.

Level 1 trip drop per PCS run per pilot
Level 1 Silver slip per PCS run per pilot
Treat OOBWS like a QS (1 AA window for all pilots with slips)

Senior gets first dibs at whatever they want through seniority but they don't get a complete monopoly over blue days, silvers and emptying their entire schedule to play Farming Simulator.

God forbid you're not the harmed pilot because you have to ...

*Checks notes*

...fly what you bid for 😯

Makes me chuckle to see people conflate "DOS" with any software that seems old. Just because something uses scrolling text, doesn't mean it runs on MS-DOS.

If you strip away the benefits of seniority, then you likely would not have enjoyed the insanely fast upgrade you experienced at a legacy carrier.

I’m firmly against watering down seniority any more than we already have. Aside from those at the very bottom of the list, most pilots here have quite a bit of control over their relative seniority.

That's what seniority is all about. As said above, if we didn't have this, you likely wouldn't have been able to bid up to junior Captain so fast. I'm good with leveling SS like we do other premium flying, but no way to one drop per PCS, at least not during the 20th PCS. It's one of the biggest QOL factors in staying senior in my seat. We've watered down seniority enough.



It wouldn't be so bad if they built trips worth flying. Even if I bid over to 320B, where I'd be on the top page of the wide, most months I wouldn't be able to hold a line of the trips I prefer to fly. If we switched to a system like you want, they'd need to build a lot more day trips.

Semantics.

From someone who was once a comp-sci major and coded in the 90s. While DBMS wasn't my strong suit, I could have done a front end UI 10x better as a semester project.

Interesting, but I don't want to undermine seniority like you suggest here.

Let's make OOBWS not have auto accept. Inside of section 6 of course. And let's get something big for it from the company because this will significantly save them money.

How about spreading 23M7 payments to everyone in affected category. Could spread payment where #1 gets exactly double the plug and everyone prorated in between. Certainly would limit the farming. Of course, company would need to give up something for it.

Why? Spread it that thin and there is no incentive to farm, then farming disappears and we solved the company problem for free.

May you didn’t see the last sentence.

That’s the intent; solve the problem and extract value.