Phone Polling
 

Am I reading this latest MEC email correctly that the phone poll is only calling 600 pilots? And this is supposed to give the NC direction on what 15,000 pilots want? It's like every time you think it can't get worse it does...

Depending on what questions are being asked it is a statistically relevant sample size.

Assuming a population of 15000 and a confidence level of 95% and a 4% margin of error.

Does it make the 14400 that don't get surveyed feel heard? ...no.

It's very hard to believe a sample size that small can accurately represent 15,000 pilots, but now if they send out another turd for a vote they can point to the survey and say "this is what you asked for".

But at this point if they don't know what the pilot group wants it's hard to have faith they ever will.

That’s 4%

Proportionally similar to s presidential election poll with millions of respondents

You have to understand also that the questions are well crafted to elicit a predicable response. You can't ask 600 pilots to freeform a wishlist of contractual gains and expect any hope of statistical relevance. As such, the questions will be asked by non-pilots that have no clue what it is that they're asking. Historically with the kind of ALPA polling, you'll get a "agree, disagree, disagree strongly...." kind of option with maybe one fill in the blank.

In other words, the MEC has already carefully crafted the questions to drive their desired answer. SSDD. And, as mentioned above....they'll come back and insist that "this is what you asked for....we have statistically relevant polling data to prove it...".

And we've seen how accurate those polls have been with the 2016 election and the 2022 midterms...

This also isn't "are you voting for x or y?" We have so many different subgroups of pilots 600 just isn't enough.

Legacy CAL
Legacy UAL
Post Merger hires
Post Covid hires
Flight Instructors
LCAs
Commuters
Non commuters
Lifetime widebody FOs
One year 756 captains
etc etc etc

Although from what I've heard like what was just previously stated the questions being asked are so bad it doesn't seem like it will matter in the end.

Why doesn't the NC on FPL sit down together for five days and randomly ring a few pilots. It's absurd that certain management pilots find time to call every pilot on every birthday but our guys on FPL can't pick up the phone. Would this unduly cut into their 🥩🎂 time or what? It can't truly be better to filter our voice through limited questions and clueless interviewers. It also can't be cheaper. How much are we paying for this ridiculous exercise? Enough of this clown show.

As long as it is a true random sample that is plenty large for an accurate statistical analysis. In fact, if you get too much bigger, you reach a point where most statisticians would warn that you’re only wasting time & resources on a study that won’t yield significantly different results.

I agree with those above who’ve said the quality of the questions will be of much greater concern than the sample size.

The 'quality' of the questions will depend on what you think the survey is intended to answer. I suggest reading the MEC comm related to the survey very closely to get an idea of what they're trying to learn. They already have data from the previous surveys - so this one should be asking different questions.

IMO we need to decide what we want ALPA to be before we can be unified enough to take on the company in any serious way. Are we going to be (and act like a trade union) or are we going to continue as a company 'club'? That choice can make a tremendous difference in how we approach the next TA...and more importantly the one after.

I'll keep my feelings on the matter to myself for now.

This sums up why my optimism had faded. We’re too busy fighting each other to focus on fighting the company for a contract.