Ccs
 

How come the l-ual pilots are having so much difficulty with Ccs? It seems fairly simple and intuitive. When I was hired it took me all of twenty minutes to figure it out.

It is a simple system. The problem is that it doesn't give access to all the same information that people are used to having access to. The veil of scheduling secrecy is also not transparent...as it should be.

I agree with Golfer's sentiment. There is some element of a learning curve involved, but I feel the larger issue is the difference in philosophy shown in CCS. As an example I will point out 4 issues that have come to my attention right away, not that these issues are unsolvable nor that others might have run into different issues, but simply as an example of the frustration some people may be feeling.

First, I can not access another pilots current schedule or pairing. Second, when Monthly Preferencing is complete I must look through hundreds of pages of data to see what others were able to bid where previously I could pull that up in a simple line summary format only a few pages long. Third, bidding individual pairings was easy because a pairing summary was available in 9 pages rather than hundreds. Lastly, training managers were able to see each instructors schedule by simply hovering over their name on a data base, but now they have to print out several poster sized sheets to get the same information. Information that they use daily to meet the scheduling challenges they face when people call in sick or there are broken sims etc. In short, CCS appears, at first blush, to have much less functionality from the UAL perspective. It may be that in time we will learn how better to get what we want from CCS, but so far it seems CCS is intentionally designed to restrict pilot access to system wide information.

It took me all of 1 second to figure out that you are a D-bag

I guess you are one of the pilots that is having a difficult time figuring out how to use Ccs. Have you read any if the training materials or tried navigating the system?

It might be because the LUAL pilots like know what the hell is going on. We could actually see the maintenance status of the jets we flew. We could see what the crew desk was doing to us. They actually had to document changes to our schedules. We knew where the jet was going next which might determine whether we accepted an MEL. We knew when we were supposed to get crew meals (actually a contract item, go figure). We actually knew where to go to get the van to the hotel. The pickup times from the hotel were readily available. We knew the sequence of the FIFO list. We were aware when the crew desk was running amuck of the contract. We were actually able to determine violations of the contract and we grieved them.

Is that enough? I could go on. Or, in contrast we could waive it. Your call.

Scott

I think the two responses to your original post are adequate... when your expectations are low (cal pilots), you don't expect much...

I don't think its just legacy United pilots.... its seems UCH is having problems with CCS... see below!!

United Airlines (UAL) is suffering a computer system malfunction that stranded pilots and caused canceled flights, evidence the company is still struggling to integrate Continental Airlines more than three years after the merger closed, people with knowledge of the matter said.
The breakdown contributed to the scrapping of almost 1,500 flights as the airline also grappled with unseasonably cold weather, said the people -- five United employees who were not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. United’s crew desk lost track of hundreds of pilots around the world since Dec. 30 as the system erroneously reported which pilots would control specific flights, the employees said.
The technology snafu is the latest in a string of miscues that have dogged United parent’s Chicago-based United Continental Holdings Inc. since the 2010 merger. The issue was amplified by tighter federal limits on pilot duty hours, which took effect Jan. 4 as a winter storm and plunging temperatures thinned pilot ranks at its Chicago and Newark, New Jersey, hubs.
“The company has brought on the perfect storm for our pilots, exacerbating the subzero temps and snow,” Jay Heppner, who heads United’s pilots’ union, wrote in a Jan. 4 letter to members and obtained by Bloomberg News. “In the communications received from our pilots, we are hearing about an operation which is coming apart at the seams.”
Computer issues and new federal duty limits “created a nightmare” for United pilots and crew schedulers, said Christopher Cooke, a spokesman for the union representing United flight attendants.
Scheduling Woes
Crew scheduling woes started after the second-largest U.S. carrier shifted all 10,200 of its pilots to a system previously used only by Continental pilots on Dec. 30, the United employees said.
David Messing, a United spokesman, declined to discuss any issues regarding the change.
“We worked hard to support our pilots as we have made changes to their routines at the same time we have faced unprecedented bad weather,” Messing said in a phone interview. “As we began complying with the new regulations, we were combining our pilot scheduling systems. We are making progress each day in making all of the new processes easier for our crew members.”
Dave Kelly, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, said Heppner wasn’t available for an interview.
Pilots said they had difficulty logging on to the system, known as CCS, for Crew Communication System, which shows everything from trip assignments to pay stubs.
Software Crashing
The new technology required three passwords, said a United captain, and was prone to crashing. Once logged on, he found it difficult to navigate and the information that was available was largely out of date. Flights were even assigned to pilots who are retired or deceased. When pilots tried to call for help, they sometimes sat on hold for more than an hour.
Another pilot, based in Chicago, said that every time he logged on to the crew scheduling system in recent days, a different person was listed as the captain of the flight he was supposed to fly.
He had difficulty calling in to the swamped scheduling department to straighten out matters, which caused him to be late on several of the flights, the pilot said.
“The company is field-testing the CCS system on the fly, several months behind schedule, and fixing issues as they arise,” Heppner wrote in the letter to pilots. “At the same time we are switching bidding systems,” adding the new scheduling system and reacting to the realities of the new pilot rest rules.
New Rules
United canceled 1,467 mainline flights from Jan. 1 through Jan. 8, and more than 8,700 when including its regional and commuter airlines, according to flight data analyzer masFlight. Other carriers also scrapped large parts of their schedules as they contended with frigid temperatures in the eastern U.S. and the same new federal restrictions on pilot flying time, known as FAR 117.
United’s Challenge
Merging complicated computer systems has been a challenge for United, especially when the shift has been to smaller Continental’s technology platforms.
The airline suffered flight delays, long check-in lines and problems with check-in kiosks in March 2012 after the Apollo passenger reservations system from the old United was switched over to Continental’s Shares program.
Five months later, backup systems failed to prevent a computer network malfunction that disabled communications with airports and United’s website, delaying 580 flights.
Also in 2012, a computer breakdown caused a flight to take off about 20,000 pounds (9,071 kilograms) heavier than pilots believed because the carrier’s weight estimate assumed the coach section of the Boeing Co. (BA) 737-900 was empty when it was full, people familiar with the incident said at the time.
In November of that year, a computerized system that coordinates preflight activities across the U.S. failed for about two hours. At least 523 United flights were delayed, according to online data service FlightStats.com
‘Stable and Reliable’
United has worked to improve its on-time performance and make its operations more efficient as it moves past the merger struggle. The carrier aims to trim costs by $2 billion through 2017 as it shifts flying to fuel-sipping aircraft like the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and boosts employee productivity.
“Our team’s performance year-to-date demonstrates that our operations are once again stable and reliable,” Chief Executive Officer Jeff Smisek said on an Oct. 24 conference call, after 78.9 percent of United’s arrivals for the third quarter were on-time.
To contact the reporters on this story: Julie Johnsson in Chicago at [email protected]; Mary Schlangenstein in Dallas at [email protected]; Alan Levin in Washington at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ed Dufner at [email protected]

So it's not that you can't operate the system, it is that the system is limited in the information it provides? No argument there. The FIFO is completely unacceptable as is the crew meal info.

Some of the other information, such as the aircraft's next leg, are available if you know where to look.

It's AFU. We all know that. Very little of it has to do with pilots operating CCS. CMS, that's a different story.

Totally understand and agree. I believe CCS has most of this functionality, however line pilots are not given access to it. This needs to change.

Question is, why didn't you guys change that already?

My expectations are that neither the CAL nor UAL pilots lose functionality is controlling our schedules (no matter which systems we chose for various functions). What I am seeing in the crew rooms are a lot of L-UAL pilots who can't figure out how to bring up the information that IS available of CCS. This includes TRIP information, dh PNR's, schedule changes, etc.

The problem isn't CCS, it's the level of access that the line pilots are given. Management pilots and check airmen have much greater access. Most of the functionality that was available to the L-UAL pilot is available on CCS IF we are granted access to it.

Well, let's see:

FIFO: Never used that system.

Crew Meals: Didn't have them.

Aircraft Next Leg: It's printed on the release, easy to find.

Other pilot's schedules: If I were to guess, it is probably a corporate privacy matter. I really have no idea, nor have I ever had the need to look at someone else's schedule.

Sunvox,

Some of the items that you are looking for are available on CCS: I have listed a few. I don't know anything about what the instructors can pull up or have access to:

I don't know of a way to pull up another pilots schedule, but you can find the pairing information under the "Flight Planning" tab.

There are pairing summaries for all CAT's. They are located in the Bid Packages tab, which is below the the Bidding tab.

We also didn't have this crazy trip trading system.

Read: "cheaper." Seems like every decision on which system, program, or department to use between the two companies was whichever one's cheaper, not which would serve the purpose better.

Perhaps part of the sUAL guys' problem is training on CCS

The main problem on the ex UAL side is CCS doesn't talk well with a system which was robust, and never failed in the three plus decades I've been at UAL.

Of course we don't want to hold back technology.

http://img.izismile.com/img/img3/201...40_high_07.jpg

You think l-UAL pilots were not given adequate training on CCS or the new PBS, you should have tried to be a "new" CAL pilot. New hires are given slightly above zero training in both. When the trainers in the domiciles go away, hopefully ALPA will require some kind of adequate training for new hires, as some of them have never even heard of PBS.

I have been continually surprised at the acceptability of inadequacy on the lCAL side.

Like others have said, "that is all they know."

I shouldn't have laughed at that...but I did!

Super - thanks! I'm sure I'll learn tons more once I start flying with EWR 756 pilots next month, but in the meantime thanks for the help.

We had a far more robust and better system before, including PBS.

The step backwards in technology is frustrating for us.

Do you remember when you got your most recent smartphone?

Was there a "user manual"? Probably not. If such a powerful tool and computer you can hold in your hands doesn't need a user manual, then CCS shouldn't need one.

This is a step backwards for UAL pilots. A big one. We had a robust system that would tell us everything. Everything. It was only a 6 on a scale of 1-10 for user interface, but CCS is about a 3 and its really frustrating for us.

Your frame of reference is that this is probably all you have used, but all the LUAL pilots have used both systems and its not because we aren't used to it. We are smart guys. We change airplanes and learn new things.

If you went from your guppy to flying a DC-3 you'd probably wonder where all your technology went.

That's what this system is like for us.

If you can't look at other pilots schedules, then how do you know if some guy who was junior to you got a trip you should have, or not in the right position in the FIFO queue, or they skipped you to give the trip to someone else, or they gave it to you when someone else should have had it?

Its about enforcing the contract, not spying on other pilots. We aren't talking about their SSN or anything. This is simply looking at corporate scheduling and in no company that I know are employees schedules secret, except maybe CIA or NSA. Most companies post schedules for EVERYONE to see.

Not at CAL. Its all a big mystery.

We've already had pilots assigned to reserve trips who should not have been, but they can't tell and the crew desk is violating the contract by doing this.

Yep. This is probably the case. Its short-sighted for sure. Look at the costs of the problems this created. Its far more than the cost of the tech involved.

Screw up some pilot scheduling and it can cost them BIG TIME. They would have been better off with the better more expensive system most likely.

I've read some of your posts and you seem pretty upset.
The people that you work with are not going to change...ever.
You should quit/retire from United Airlines.
Then, you'll be happy.

The question posed is why calalpa hadn't fixed these "problems". My answer is that it wasn't a problem because we didn't use FIFO and our trip system was fastest finger.

If you want to know where a trip went, plug the trip number in Ccs and see who is flying it. Fairly simple.

"If you don't like it, quit".

That's a great answer! The ghost of Glen Tilton is still alive at UAL!:confused:

Ok. Keep complaining on an ANONYMOUS message board. You all are doing a super job at changing hearts and minds. Really, great work so far!! Keep it up!!

That attitude is part of the problem. At LUAL the attitude was "If you don't like it, then help make a change that will make it better."

This defeatist attitude is why CALALPA was a mess, the old CAL contract was a mess, and nobody bothered to fix PBS.

Pre-SLI all we heard about from CAL guys were how bad their PBS system was and we should have voted no on the contract to get a new one. Now we are being told that its "not that bad, we just don't understand it". There are already 2 councils that have passed resolutions to vastly improve PBS.

We will change and make it better, but we need everyone on board and willing to help and not just be satisfied with the status quo.

Do you know why I'm upset? Its because I believe that as hard as all of us have worked to become professional pilots, the sacrifices we have made on both the CAL and UAL sides pre-merger to keep our companies going, and that we really do work for the best airline out there, that we deserve to be treated better by management and that the systems that we use to manage our work lives and careers should be USER FRIENDLY and ROBUST and not the messes that they are.

We have all put in too much energy defending our pre-merger self-importance, and that clearly has to end if we are going to fix the problems we have. It starts with a better leader in the CEO position.

We all deserve better. Period.

I know you will just come back with a "you all are the problem!!":rolleyes:

No its not, but you probably really don't care. I and others have laid out on this board and the other one how to determine what pilot was assigned a trip. It's rather simple actually. Once you determine that you can fight whatever battle you need to some of which I have won.

Rather then read that and learn you would rather blabber on and on about how CAL has wrecked your once perfect jumbonaut career. In my eyes it shows your true motivations for this board. Quite frankly its proof positive that you are one of the forever moaners who will NEVER be content. I rolled my eyes at your ilk at CAL and certainly will at THE U.

Its actually not simple. Its a mess.

I don't need to. The answers to my questions and statements that you gave prove what I was saying.

Part of the change with CCS is it takes multiple pages to do the detective work to figure something out. It looks intentional, and tries to hide what the company is doing. In many cases with our old fortran based UNIMATIC, it was one page and obvious.

Yes it will take time to learn, but you shouldn't have to be a detective to figure out what is going on. Pilots just love to learn new things.

I think the problem is that when they overlayed a GUI interface onto an old command-line-driven system it makes you think you're on an advanced system when actually you're just pulling your Mercedes with a couple of horses that are reined to it.

At least you knew the horses were going to get the job done...

Pbs q
 

Do the PBS awards ever come out early, (like in the Adopt system) or can we expect them to always come on the last day?

The center column tab labeled CAT Award Reports in PBS is the first place they will start appearing. The captain awards always show up first, followed by the FO awards at the smaller bases, followed by EWR and IAH 737. The captain awards will probably start appearing on the 14th or 15th. The FO bids perhaps late on 16th they will start showing up...but more likely afternoon of 17th.

PBS will still have the red warning letters up there saying access is temporarily disabled blah, blah, but you should be able to find what you need.