Q: If Alaska management doesn’t meet the Mar 2, 2019, goal and must apply L-AS rules on L-VX, who won’t have the coverage to comply what happens? Cancelled flights? Altered schedules? Operational assignments? Shouldn’t these kinds of penalties be more one sided and less disruptive?
A: Flight Attendants have voiced concerns that management will either willfully delay Full Integration or because the IT systems will not be capable of integrating at the time. However, if the TA is ratified and if management does not meet the target goal of March 2019 to combine the Flight Attendant Groups, then management must build the pairings on the L-VX partition under the same duty-time limitations and rest provisions as the L-AS Flight Attendants. While this is a “penalty” for the Company in terms of productivity, it is a great protection for the L-VX Flight Attendants.
Management will have ample warning and time to prepare for this deadline, and they will take measures to avoid disruption in the network. However, it will be inefficient for the Company and an inconvenience that may involve moving around flying. Again, this provision was put into place as an incentive for management to meet the deadline and as a long-term protection for the L-VX Flight Attendants.
