Originally Posted by BeatNavy

Here's something that would speed up schedules coming out and make life better...don't hold trips for IOE! Drop assigned trips for IOE when needed like other airlines. Isn't that how Mesa used to be?

The old method basically put you on the hook to the company. Your trip would be dropped and you would effectively be on reserve those 4 days. The process of dropping trips ahead of time made very good sense on paper. I will say that the reality doesn't equal the thought.


I didn't see that previous concession in the last TA that the union tried to shove down our throat, which should have been negotiated back.

IT was attempted.

Here's another thought, other airlines, to include airlines that are much bigger than Mesa, use the same software and publish schedules 24 hours later.

Gotta call BS on that. The two largest US airlines that use Navtech are Delta & Jet Blue. I've sent messages out to both groups, Delta I got back that their average award time is about 4 days. Waiting on Jet Blue but I know it's not 24 hours. - JUST GOT Jet Blue answer. They bid separately, Captains bid first then FO's bid. Each run does come out quicker but if you put the data together to signify running both at the same time like we do and Delta does their answer is 3-4 days also.


Same with the asinine amount of time it takes the company to process SAP requests, and schedule changes on the 28th. The contract says they have 24 hours or the union has to be notified (but there are no ramifications). Every month It happens

The first time this has happened was two months ago, so claiming every month is a large exaggeration. What was done to fix it? A change in staffing on the company level.

, and the union says ok cool. What's being done to fix it? Not a lot. Have any new schedulers been hired since we started growing?

Yes

I've heard from a CP that schedule changes are all manual because 117 rules aren't taken into account with split trips.

Pairing modifications require manual work as FLICA can not edit a Sabre pairing.


Why don't they let automatic drops and pickups happen for the non-split trips, using manual intervention for the split trips?

They do. A flat out drop or add or swap 1 pairing for another is manual. The delay comes in very request is processed in order. So if your drop X for Y comes behind someones request to split the last 2 days off pairing Z you have to wait for pairing Z request to be processed before the software can automatically do X for Y.

Originally Posted by wt932051

Agree 100 percent with everything you said! It is good knowing somebody gets it. So thanks BeatNavy.

The dropped for IOE part you mentioned was also a huge mistake on the unions part. It use to be as you described, but then commuters were complaining that they would commute in to find out that their 4 day trip was dropped and have to commute back home. Poor thing. The home based pilots didn't care. So what the union did was create a letter of agreement for a new system. It was a 3 month test. At the end was to be voted on. The new system would allow the commuters to find out 24-48 hours in advance if their trip was dropped, but they had to call in, and could be reassigned another trip. They had to do this at least twice on a 4 day trip if I remember right. Once before the first two days of it, and again 24-48 hours before the last two days. Sounds good for the commuters right? Worse for the home based. Now they had to stay close to home instead of take off to Hawaii for the week. What ended up happening is the company started reassigning junk to both the commuters and the home based pilots. Like standups, day turns, causing hotels for commuters now, and was just worse because now you had to work instead of being off. So the union dropped the ball. It went on for 2 years like this before it was voted on. At that point the people like me who knew the old way was better were now captains not getting dropped anymore. Now the replacement FO's only knew the new system and didn't know the old way was so much better. So the vote came and guess what? It passed by a slim margin. How? The union sent an email recommending to vote yes to all these clueless pilots. So now we are stuck with a worse system then we had. That is how it came to be today. There is your history lesson and you can thank the union once again for dropping the ball and letting Mesa once again run over us.

Originally Posted by MagPBS

And yes, both Jet Blue and Delta have small armies of planners dedicated to nothing but PBS.

Originally Posted by MagPBS

Point 1. There is no way that this system can kick out an entire airline schedule by the 18th. And for that matter you wouldn't want it to. Attached is a copy of the open time from the first run at PHX CA in February as case in point. It also goes to

Point 2. Unstacking/coverage is nothing new. It existed in paper bids just wasn't as transparent. Because the Navtech product is pilot centric vs global solution it tries to honor every pilots (regardless of seniority) request. This gets dealt with via the coverage section whereby junior people can't have weekend as much as they would like them. It has in the past been used to correct shortages in staffing but it's also used to deal with changes in marketing (like February) and vacations issues (think X-Mas) and quite frankly I have numerous examples of pilots being unstacked a trip they specifically requested, but complain because it has the word unstacked on it.

Originally Posted by wt932051

MAGPBS...As far as Flica, maybe we need to go visit Frontier and see how they can do so much automated and so quickly, and learn a thing or two. I think it would be very valuable.

Originally Posted by wt932051

I disagree with point 1. They can spit it out within 24 hours if they had the right pilot staffing in the first place, are limited to a certain percentage of unstacking/coverage awards, and have the PBS staffing in place to get it done.

Originally Posted by MagPBS

I'm sure they have more then 1 line adjuster working it at a time.