Members of your Master Executive Council (MEC) and Alaska Airlines management met earlier today to review the problems with Vacation Open Time trading and to address Flight Attendants’ frustrations and concerns with the system.
After several hours of troubleshooting with the IT department, the parties have agreed to re-open Vacation Open Time trading beginning Wednesday, November 2nd at the same published times for each domicile:
- SAN – 9am PDT
- PDX – 10am PDT
- ANC – 11am PDT (10am local)
- LAX – 12pm PDT
- SEA – 2pm PDT
You will be able to log into the vacation trading site beginning at 12:01am on November 2nd to view open vacation days and to split/merge vacation slots in preparation for Vacation Open Time trading opening. Actual trades will not be processed until the published opening time.
Management has agreed to honor all successful Vacation Open Time trades that occurred on Friday prior to pulling down the system. At AFA’s request, management will also restore Vacation Open Time availability to the same levels they were prior to the Friday start. If you are planning to trade into or out of the first five days of January, management will still allow those days to be traded for at least 24 hours before restricting the days in order to accommodate PBS bids.
However, the MEC continues to recognize these accommodations do not make up for TFP lost due to wasted schedule adjustments, for restoring open vacation days nor for lost opportunity for those who cannot adjust their schedules to be available for trading on November 2nd. We will be connecting with management tomorrow to further address these unresolved issues.
The MEC will provide another update after that meeting.
In Solidarity,
Your MEC—Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Satterlee, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Tim Green and Brice McGee