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Greetings, AFA 66 eCommunication - Sunday, April 12, 2009 May Bid Review The new software is named SR3US, but is nicknamed “Scuber” (rhymes with the word tuber) by those who work with the program. This software replaces a system that we have referred to in the past as the “Optimizer”. The Optimizer software was adequate, but US Airways no longer wished to purchase any enhancements to upgrade the software. In the past 10 years, US Airways, put little to no money into crew scheduling software. For East crews this software purchase was a MAJOR upgrade to their current system. Whenever change
is implemented, you can expect some issues to surface, and the
first issue was in trip distribution. One of the main reasons that the West Flight
Attendants were the last to implement the software is because
the software initially did not take trip distribution into
consideration. In
other words, AFA did not want to have a system that didn’t
show any regard to the number of one, two, three and four-day
pairings that were produced. The West 1999 Flight Attendant Agreement
(contract) carries language in Section 6- Bid Administration
that has historically provided AFA involvement and input into
the generation of monthly pairings, a provision the East flight
attendants do not have.
Section 6, Paragraph A, subparagraph 3 states, “The
recommendation of the Union Scheduling committee will be given
reasonable consideration in the final construction of pairings
and monthly lines of time.” AFA has always provided input
into the lifestyle considerations of the
pairings. Another problem that was encountered with the implementation of the new software is the ability to interface with other scheduling software. Currently, the Company utilizes three different software vendors to produce the West Flight Attendant schedules. “Scuber” generates the pairings, AOS produces the bid lines, and SBS (who owns Maestro) is used as the Crew Management software. A lot of little issues have had to be worked out over the past months to get the new pairing software to work efficiently with the other systems without generating errors. The May bid was built with the help of a “Scuber” programmer. Considerable time was spent trying to get the right distribution. In fact, that time spent actually brought the number of 4-day trips down from 34% in April, to 26% in May. In April, only 17% of our bid consisted of 3-day trips. In May that number increased to 27%. When I refer to three and four day trips, I am referring to three and four calendar days, not three and four duty periods. This interpretation of duty period vs. calendar days has been a source of controversy between the Union and the Company. The Company always wants to show us statistics that are based on duty periods, not calendar days. The Company considers a three duty period trip; with a 35-hour layover in YYC; covering four calendar days to be a 3-day trip. We completely disagree! One improvement that you will notice with the May pairings is that most three day-trips are worth 15 credit hours or more. Likewise, most four-day trips are worth 19 hours or more. This is especially noticeable on the mixed equipment file. This new system appears to do a better job at combining hours to meet credit hour goals. However, many of the three and four-day trips will only operate once a month. While AFA would like to see consistency, we are pleased that yield has not been sacrificed. There were also some problems with what we call “trip compression”. You will notice that the same exact pairing will show up several times in the bid, under different pairing numbers, and on different dates. Hopefully this issue will be resolved in the near future. Issues with the 757/A321 file continue due to aircraft routing. One big disappointment in this bid is the generation of a short 757 SAN overnight that is ONLY worth 3 hours and 37 minutes. Yes, you understood correctly - a two-day trip that is worth 3:37. The aircraft is routed SAN-PHX, then continues on to Hawaii, so, the overnight has to stand-alone. The company claims that in order to avoid a two-hour ETOPS check prior to the start of a Hawaii flight, a one-hour flight from SAN-PHX can be substituted and still meet FAA requirements. Unfortunately, we will likely see this pairing continue throughout the summer. This pairing is very hard to build into a line and still have minimum days off. Whenever I see a pairings such as this SAN overnight, I must give serious consideration to the fact that we need minimum daily credit negotiated into our next contract.
In May, US Airways is scheduled to operate five (5) A321 aircraft on the West. With the small A321 fleet, and the 757’s devoted to Hawaii/Cancun flying, there aren’t many options when it comes to building pairings with the A321s. By December 2009, there should be thirteen (13) A321’s in the West fleet. AFA is looking forward to seeing many more scheduling options with this aircraft in the next year and beyond. Sometimes it is difficult to understand what Scheduling Planning is thinking when they schedule an aircraft into certain markets that provide few scheduling options. For the May and Summer 2009 schedule, the first two daily PHX-PHL flights will be operated with West based A321’s. FINALLY, someone has figured out that we need more seats out of PHX to connect into the International bank that begins at 4 pm (EST.) If you plan to non-rev out to PHL this summer, remember that this aircraft has 3 cabin jumpseats that are not utilized by minimum crew. Also, take the time to go online and look at the FA Policies and Procedures Manual (Combined Carrier Reciprocal Cabin Jumpseat Policy) and print of copy of the current East and West Jumpseat policies. I am amazed by the number of Flight Attendant’s who do not know the policy. Please don’t leave gate agents to the interpretation of our jumpseat policies. If it is West operated metal, (flights number 1-699 are West metal), West Flight Attendants have priority 1 hour prior to departure. The verbiage that I always carry with me states, “On aircraft operated by USW-F/As, USE-F/As will be assigned the Jumpseat after USW-F/As.” Finally, here is an update on the PBS presentations that AFA Council 66 has been hosting since December of 2008. To date, we have had approximately 60 West Flight Attendants attend one of our presentations. The PBS vendor has provided us with a DVD format that only takes 45 minutes to view, depending on the number of questions asked. Our original presentations lasted over 2 hours. We ask the Flight Attendants in attendance to stay for a few minutes after the presentation is complete to get their thoughts and comments. In general, most Flight Attendants who have attended a presentation are very pleased that information was presented and surprised that the overall system was different than their initial expectations.
Safe Flying and
Happy Travels, Jane Flinn MEC President, Lisa
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