Newsletter

Summer News

May 28, 2018 09:00 By Brice McGee (SAN LEC President)

Terminal 1 and 2

On May 20^th, our morning OGG, HNL and LIH flights started departing out of T2 using Gates 20, 21, and 22 (these are the gates our SJD & PVR flights arrive into).

Baggage check-in will remain at T1, and passengers for three of our Hawaii flights will head over to T2 to depart out of gates 20, 21, and 22.

Knowing which terminal to go to for your flight is key, as well as knowing where the closest KCM for these gates is located.

Transition Training

Everyone must go through both Recurrent Training (RT) and Transition Training (TT) this year. Recurrent Training certifies you on Boeing aircraft and TT certifies you on Airbus aircraft.

It is currently planned to start bidding for both aircraft types in January 2019 for flying in February 2019.

Next Year’s RT will certify you on both aircraft.

Being as SAN does not have a training facility we are the only base that is provided with a hotel/hotels and travel pay. Travel pay is based on the shortest route flying between SAN and the base you choose to do recurrent. Depending on the flight schedules for your travel day your TFP for travel could fluctuate, for example in order of highest tfp for travel to lowest.

ANC: SAN-SEA-ANC, SAN-PDX-ANC

LGB: SAN-SEA-LAX limo LGB, SAN-PDX-LAX limo to LGB or SAN-SFO-LAX limo LGB

SEA: SAN-SEA

PDX: SAN-PDX

Keep in mind you are not required to take those flight but that is how your pay will be determined for travel purposes. If you have questions please reach out to your Scheduling Chair San.Scheduling@afaalaska.org or your Officers SAN@Afaalaska.org

Pairing Changes

As we move toward fleet integration, flying is being shifted from Boeing to Airbus, and from Airbus to Boeing. Our pairings are changing more than they typically do because of seasonal flying changes. We expect more changes in the future.

We’ve heard from many F/As who are unhappy with these changes, and who are upset that their preferred pairings are no longer available. This is not limited solely to San Diego. Unfortunately, it is likely to continue. We’ve all seen the ‘network realignment’ articles on Alaskasworld.

Please know that your officers and the SAN Scheduling Committee continue to advocate for improved pairings, but ultimately the company’s decisions are based on cost. Both our Scheduling Chairs and Crew Planning are very aware that these changes are unpopular. We have been told that a communication from Crew Planning on this subject is forthcoming, but do not have a specific date.

Professional Standards

Conflicts and/or issues with Coworkers

In San Diego we are lucky to have a great team of Supervisors and Management staff.

Please keep in mind that many personal conflicts should be taken to your Professional standards team and not taken immediately to management. Often AFA EAP/ Professional Standards can resolve the problems or issues without Management becoming involved. Once management is aware of the situation that could lead to someone’s discipline and or possibly even termination.

Our Employee Assistance Program (EAP) Chair and Reps can be found here: http://afaalaska.org/san/committees

Calling out Sick or Sick Family

Less is more

When calling in sick, the only thing that scheduling needs to know is that you are calling in either sick, sick family, FMLA or Workers Comp period. They do not need to know why, what symptoms or anything else related to the illness. You don’t need to apologize, and you don’t need to explain.

Contacted by Management?

Know Your Rights

If you receive a call from any Inflight Supervisor, it is best to first clarify if the conversation could lead to disciplinary action. If the answer is “Yes,” at this point you can request that the union be involved in any further conversations. However, even if the supervisor states that the conversation won’t lead to any discipline, if at any time you feel the questions to be leading or uncomfortable you can once again end the conversation by saying you will only continue with a union rep present.

Having a union rep there is insurance. It is an advocate and a second set of ears to ensure that your point is understood clearly by the company and not misinterpreted.

Keeping Current with AFA Information

There are several ways to keep up to date with your Council #15 news! In addition to your regular email updates, the information can be found at: afaalaska.org/san

Are you on Facebook?

Like the Official Council #15 page at: https://www.facebook.com/AFA-Council-15-San-Diego-249262698862442/

We also have the SAN AFA and SAN TRIPS pages that are not public and you need to ask one of your friends who is in the group already, or one of the Officers to add you.

Receive the most important information via text (we do not send out all communications via text, just the ones that are the most important!). Register for texts at: https://www.remind.com/join/afalec15

Do You Have Questions, Issues or Concerns?

On June 1 we will have 378 F/As in San Diego and possibly growing to 395 by the end of the year and in an effort to keep track of everything in one place we are asking that if you have questions, issues or concerns that you please go to https://support.afaalaska.org and ‘open a ticket.’

We particularly ask that you use this resource for scheduling, pay and reserve concerns. We need the information requested on the form to research your concern. If you would like to talk to an officer or committee chair, please go to www.afaalaska.org/contact, and look through the officer and/or committee lists for contact information for your local representatives.

In Solidarity,

Brice, Melanie and Stephen

December Update

December 28, 2017 12:30 By Brice McGee (SAN LEC President)

San Diego Committee Update

We would like to welcome Joe Coneglio to the Reserve Committee (chair), Vanessa Woods to Air Safety, Health & Security and Pablo Fregosa to Government Affairs. Reach any of our committee members at http://www.afaalaska.org under the SAN committee tab.

It’s a busy time of year for our scheduling chair JR (Jack) George. To help lighten his load, we ask that you use the local San Diego scheduling email address for all questions: san.scheduling@afaalaska.org, you can also copy in your Officers at san@afaalaska.org.

Please do not send text messages, IM’s or tag us in Facebook, it is too hard for us to monitor. Many times the information needs to be forwarded to other individuals and an email (with snap/screen shots) is the format that helps us, help you!

JCTE

We are well aware that there are continuing problems with JCTE (Crew Access) and with payroll errors. Please go to support.afaalaska.org to report payroll issues, scheduling problems and reserve concerns. Not only does this provide an opportunity for AFA to track trends in order to resolve problems, but also it allows us to research each individual situation and respond.

We are finding that many Flight Attendants do not know how to track their hours and pay. Our payroll system is very complex with all the different rates, depending on each situation. The following guidelines may be helpful:

· Flight Crew Pay Sheets live forever, unlike Rosters, which currently vaporize after 60 days. To see a print out of what you were paid for, look at the Pay sheet for the month at issue. You will also find your running sick leave usage and vacation totals in the upper right-hand corner of each sheet.

· Save your original line award. Keep a screenshot of every change you make to your awarded line, and in particularly any trips that operate irregularly. Do the same with reserve assignments. This is the material you’ll need to determine whether or not you were paid properly for your flying or reserve duty, and to determine leave eligibility continuing health care benefits and vacation accrual during a leave.

With the start of winter, and the attendance issues, please copy and print or bookmark the following information to assist you in determining your legalities and pay: http://afanewsletters.org/docs/2/Irregular%20Operations.pdf.

We know that this feels like extra work and agree that it shouldn’t be necessary. It will be necessary information in order to file a ticket at support.afaalaska.org, so that we can resolve your issues as quickly as possible. Without supporting documentation, which can be easily attached to a ticket, it is much more difficult and time consuming to resolve individual issues and to track larger problems. Please know that we are working diligently to ensure that each problem is addressed and rectified as quickly as possible.

Recurrent Training

If you are having any significant problems with the Cornerstone app, please reach out to one of your Officers and take screenshots if possible. We are always a little concerned when new apps or updates are launched and want to hear how the process is working and that there are no huge issues.

Speaking of recurrent training, FAs traveling to recurrent from SAN were not getting paid correctly since possibly the implementation of our current CBA 12/14.

Brice brought this to the companies attention last April. We were receiving 11 tfp when traveling to LGB, but you should have been paid 18.6 (5.8 to travel up, 6 for recurrent, 5.8 to travel back, +1 for an extended duty day = 18.6 tfp plus $75 for doing the at home workbook). An audit has been completed and the pay corrected, but we recommend that you look at your pay sheet and verify for yourself.

End of Year Reminders

Remember to convert your unused guest passes before the end of day December 31^st.

Record Improvement S32.G.4– should be applied by mid January, For those of you that had 4 or fewer points at the end of 2017, and you had zero points assessed in NOV, DEC you will be starting 2018 with zero points. Please allow about two to three weeks for the attendance Supervisors to apply your Nov/Dec record improvement. Once this has been done, let us know if there are any discrepancies.

AFA Council 15 San Diego Facebook Page

Since the base opened we have been using the SANFA Facebook page, this page is used both for trip trading posts as well as AFA posts. Being as its easy for things to get lost with so many postings, Your AFA Officers started a new “Official” Facebook page called AFA Council 15 San Diego click on the link and like our page, there you can find all the latest news from AFA without having to search through numerous trip trading posts.

Text Notifications from AFA

To reach more of our base (including those who are not on social media or don’t check their email often), your LEC Officers started a new way of communicating with our members in San Diego through text message alerts. This program is completely optional. But we feel that it’s a great tool to get information out to everyone quickly. We will not overwhelm you with texts. And we do realize some people may have to pay for texts, so again this program is optional and the information will be available as always on the AFAalaska.org website, emails, and on our Facebook page.

The enrollment process is simple, all you need to do is send a text message from your personal phone.

Open your text messaging application. In the send to field enter 81010 and then enter @AFALEC15 in the body of the text and press send.

You will then receive a reply asking you to enter your full name. Once you send your name, your officers will receive notification and then you are all set to receive texts.

Please ignore the 3^rd question where it asks if you are student or teacher we are borrowing this technology from school districts as to save costs from designing a system or paying a company to send mass texts and you do not need to download the app.

We hope you like our new service. And as always, we welcome your feedback / questions Please help us spread the word and get your fellow crew signed up.

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and we wish you a Healthy and Happy New Year!

March Newsletter

March 24, 2017 09:00 By Brice McGee (SAN LEC President)

AFA Council 15 San Diego Facebook Page

Since the base opened we have been using the SANFA Facebook page. This page is used both for trip trading posts as well as AFA posts. Because it is easy for things to get lost with so many postings, your AFA Officers started a new “Official” Facebook page called AFA Council 15 San Diego click on the link and Like our page. There you can find all the latest news from AFA without having to search through numerous trip trading posts.

Text Notifications from AFA

To reach more of our base (including those who are not on social media or don’t check their email often) we are excited to announce that your LEC Officers started a new way of communicating with our members in San Diego through text message alerts. This program is completely optional, however, we feel that it’s a great tool to get information out to everyone quickly. We will not overwhelm you with texts. We do realize the possibility of text costs, therefore justifying the option. The information will be available as always on the AFAalaska.org website, emails, and on our Facebook page.

The enrollment process is simple. All you need to do is send a text message from your personal phone.

Open your text messaging application. In the send to field enter 81010 and then enter @AFALEC15 in the body of the text and press send.

You will then receive a reply asking you to enter your full name. Once you send your name, your officers will receive notification and then you are all set to receive texts.

We hope you like our new service. And as always, we welcome your feedback/questions. Please help us spread the word and get your fellow crew signed up.

Keeping Track of Trends

Data and Flight Attendant Reports

Your AFA representatives have recently started using a new program to track issues reported by our members. Our goal is to track and trend as many issues as possible. The key to this program’s success will be hearing from YOU! We need to hear from you every time you have an issue. With all five bases tracking and compiling information we will be able to present stronger cases to management.

When you report an issue, please include your personal email address, phone number and Peoplesoft number. Include as many details as possible, Trip Number, Flight Number, screenshots of phone call time stamps/trips… etc.

Send your issue to the appropriate Committee Team.

Scheduling Issues Line Holders San.Scheduling@afaalaska.org

Reserve Issues sanfa.reserve@gmail.com

Officers San@afaalaska.org

Professional Standards

Conflicts and/or issues with Coworkers

In San Diego we are lucky to have a great team of Supervisors and Management staff. Please keep in mind that many personal conflicts should be taken to your Professional Standards team and not taken immediately to management. Often AFA EAP/ Professional Standards can resolve the problems or issues without Management becoming involved. Once Management is made aware of the situation, an investigation could commence, both parties may be brought in and interviewed and any potential witness(es). The outcome could lead to discipline and or possibly even termination.

Jean Sharrock jeans4112@yahoo.com

Ava McWilliams avaeap@yahoo.com

Lisa Rhodes lisa.rhodes.alaska@gmail.com

Shari Clark ownyourlife4ever@yahoo.com

Loretta Fogle lorettafogle@gmail.com

Contacted by Management?

Know Your Rights

Having a union rep there is insurance. It is an advocate and a second set of ears to ensure that your point is understood clearly by the company and not misinterpreted.

$$ Transportation is the Company’s responsibility $$

Over the last few months we have seen a steady increase in crew schedulers pawning their responsibilities off on Flight Attendants. There has been a significant spike in the number of reports from Flight Attendants that have been told to find their own transportation.

Contractually, it is the Company’s responsibility to provide transportation to and from layover hotels and airports. That includes coordinating and paying for it. You are not required to pay upfront and then wait for reimbursement.

If you are ever asked to pay for a hotel room or transportation or a Visa required to enter a foreign country (yes, that did just happen!) by Crew Scheduling- Contact your AFA Reps immediately! SAN@afaalaska.org

Merger Update

National Mediation Board Makes Single Carrier Determination

The National Mediation Board (NMB) responded to AFA’s application to have the board investigate whether Alaska Airlines and Virgin America are operating as a single transportation system for the craft or class of Flight Attendant. The NMB ruled that the carriers are indeed a single transportation system.

The NMB will now address Flight Attendant representation at each carrier, and AFA is expecting to be declared the representing union at both carriers shortly after a 30-day waiting period.

Odds and Ends

When using the Matrix App, you must “dial in” each of the dates of the trip you will be dropping. So if your trip runs the 12, 13, 14^th, you must dial the first month/day and enter, then the second month/day and enter and then the third month/day and hit enter. Please remember that you must also call scheduling!

There have been reports of phone numbers and addresses changing in Peoplesoft with the JCA switchover. It is a good idea to go in and make sure your contact information is correct. Also it is wise to check your pay, point accrual, banked points, etc. as there have been some reports of “inaccuracies” after the JCA switchover.

In Solidarity,

Council 15 News – September 2015

September 4, 2015 20:38 By Stephen Couckuyt (SAN LEC President)

Dear San Diego Flight Attendants:

October bids are posted; please note the Open Time changes beginning in September:

Posting of trips for trade: 14th at 20:00 PT
Open Time trading & FA to FA trading: 15^th(see below for base start times)
Out of domicile trades, pick-ups and giveaways: 17^that 09:00 PT
Trading/Open Time start times for each base:

SAN 09:00 am PT
PDX 10:00 am PT
ANC 11:00 am PT
LAX 12:00 noon PT
SEA 14:00 pm PT

Save the Date – October 8^th from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm we will have a joint AFA Meeting with the LAX base. SAN based F/A and MEC President, Jeff Peterson, will be the guest speaker. Place to be determined (somewhere between LAX and SAN).

Scheduling Notes from Chase Vandergrift

Not much in the way of news from the last scheduling meeting. The eMaestro update went live today and is a “go” for September 15. The one thing to note is that now SAN trading will be first at 9am, which is a change from our usual 2pm. Both FA-to-FA trades and open time will happen all at once.

Hotels – we are about 2 weeks away from a new tool on the inflight page which will allow you to enter your pairing number and it will tell you what hotel you are staying at. It will not work for 1000 pairings but most of the time, those have an original pairing number listed at the bottom or a comment referencing the pairing the hotel is from at the top.

The SAN PBS base visit is first on Oct 5^th from 9:30 to 13:30, for people with bidding questions. I believe Sabrina from crew planning and Steve Poynter will be on hand.

We plan to have a pairing/trip suggestion box in place in our Inflight office if you would like to give me your feedback or feel free to send me an email – chase.vandergrift@gmail.com

– Chase

Tips & Reminders:

Vacation Bidding starts September 8^th – refer to Bulletin #2015-0212 for more information.

Upcoming Events:

September 9^th – 11^th – FADAP (Flight Attendant Drug and Alcohol Program) Melanie, Brice and several of our EAP Representatives will be attending this conference in Baltimore.

September 10^th – Bi-Monthly Air Safety, Health & Security Committee Meeting

September 15^th – Quarterly Uniform Meeting

September 16-17th – MEC Meeting

September 18^th – Benefits Meeting

Please feel free to contact one of your Officers or Committee Chair/Members if you have any questions or concerns you would like answered.

The PBS Committee and Crew Planning will be in the bases in October and November to help with your holiday bidding and answer any questions you may have about pairings.

Oct 5th – SAN 9:30 am-1: 30 pm

Oct 6th – LAX 6:00 am-1:00 pm

Oct 7th – PDX 6:15am-1: 30 pm

Oct 8th – SEA 5:00 am-1:00 pm

Nov 5th – ANC 9:00am -3:00 pm

Nov 6th – ANC 5:00 am-12: 30 pm

Nov 9th – SEA 5:00 am -1:00 pm

In solidarity,

Stephen Couckuyt – SAN AFA Council 15 President
Melanie Buker – SAN AFA Council 15 Vice- President
Brice McGee – San AFA Council 15 Secretary

August 2015 Council 15 News

August 6, 2015 18:46 By Stephen Couckuyt (SAN LEC President)

Dear San Diego Flight Attendants:

September bids are posted. We wanted to remind those of you that may have been awarded the September/October staffing adjustment leaves, that any carry in trips you are awarded with tfp flown into the month you are on a leave, your insurance will be covered. This does not include turns that depart on the last day of the month and return on the 1^st.

If you have questions about any type of Leave that you have vacation or company mandated meetings/training during the period, please contact one of your Officers or our benefits chair Sonia Quackenbush, for more information on insurance and or pay during that period.

Here are a few notes from Chase Vandergrift’s last scheduling meeting:

Scheduling News August 2015

An update on San Diego’s disappearing turns! Help is on the way. For September I was able to get daily turns locked for the SAN base. This is the first time this has been attempted so it’s an experiment and not guaranteed to stay but they were able to lock both daily SJD departures as turns, so that is 8 positions in addition to the other turns the system will construct on its own.

9:55 report
238 SAN-SJD 10:55-14:00
233 SJD-SAN 15:00-16:01
Debrief 16:16
Duty 6:21

11:50 report
248 SAN-SJD 12:50-15:55
239 SJD-SAN 17:00-18:02
Debrief 18:17
Duty 6:27

This is also welcome news to those of us who like multi-days but don’t really enjoy doing a Cabo turn on the end (or start) of a 3 or 4-day trip. I realize SJD isn’t the ideal turn for everyone and there won’t always be an early morning option for those that prefer to be home between noon and 1, but getting the 5.0 TFP ADPG (instead of 4.6) and being only 2 carts round-trip in the back should help sweeten the deal. This seemed like the best compromise since the pairing optimizer will still be able to use the early SEA/PDX departures to construct other trips that may bring some occasional variety to our usual layovers on certain days of the week. You’ll also see the not-so-regular SEA/PDX early morning/late night turns in addition to these. We did discover they currently lock almost all of the LAX Mexico flying as turns but do not do so for SAN so I am going to lobby for this to become a permanent change if people like it. Trips you love? Hate? Please send me your feedback on the pairings for September at: sanscheduling@gmail.com.

New Open time Delayed. We were as frustrated as everyone else to hear that it will be another month before the new open time rules go into effect but we have been assured there will not be any further delay and the testing is progressing well. The bad news is that this does push everything else from the new contract implementation timeline including the new reserve self-assignment back by about 60 days. The good news is that a new replacement program to e-maestro has been selected and is scheduled to be implemented by next fall. Hopefully that project can stay on track. The software is called JCTE (Jeppesen Crew Tracking Enterprise) and is apparently the one that AA uses so if you have friends at American ask them how they like it. It will add a ton of new features including a mobile interface.

Did you know crew-planning sends out text alerts that you can sign up for? Look for informational bulletin #2015-0155 if you’re interested in signing up. Some of the alerts seem redundant but others could be useful.

Once signed up you’ll get alerts for the following events:

Recurrent bidding open for XXX
Recurrent bidding closed for XXX
Recurrent training posted
PBS monthly bids open
PBS monthly bid close
PBS monthly bid posted
Bid protest ends
Open time available
Vacation bids open
Vacation bids close
Base trades close
Vacancy bid open
Vacancy bid close
Leave requests for XXX month due
Vacation trading available
Hotel change in planning process (tells the crew to read bulletin XXX)
Hotel hotline posted

These alerts can be received on your personal device but not on the IMD. A solution is in the works to provide these to the IMD in the form of push notifications but we discussed that most of us don’t use the IMD off the aircraft very much, and certainly don’t carry it around on our days off. Remember these are sent as text messages, so be sure that your carrier’s plan includes them to avoid extra charges.

People still seem to have a lot of questions about line averages. To possibly help clarify we recommend reading “Bidding Windows” on the Navtech PBS splash page. If someone wants a MAX line they can still use the MAX TFP option, which should guarantee their line, is built between the base line average +10 TFP (we haven’t heard of this being denied yet unless you are one of the very last line holders in the base). To add to the confusion the threshold at which PBS decides to stop adding TFP to your line and the base line average can be different. Also, no matter what the system will always try to get your line to the threshold or above even if you don’t specify MAX TFP; so essentially everyone’s bid is set to MAX by default. Since there is no longer a MIN TFP option what is happening is more senior line holders are finding their lines stacked with one or two extra trips to push them above the threshold. That’s because early in the award process it is easy for the system to find pairings to fit your bid preferences. As the system reaches more junior lineholders it has a harder time finding available trips and if nothing is available that fits their bid preferences but their line has reached the minimum window it will simply complete the line and move on. This creates a situation where more senior lineholders in general are seeing lines built higher than more junior bidders. For senior bidders it is possible to trick the system into thinking there are no other trips available to put on your line and that is to ask it to avoid any pairing >1TFP. This has been used with varying amounts of success, but in theory if you have a legal line and you insert this preference the system should then ignore all the remaining trips available and complete your line. This is seniority dependent and may not work in all cases but it’s one technique to try. -Chase

From Brice McGee – Council 15 Secretary:

San Diego based? We have an app for that.

I would like to present to you something exciting and exclusive to San Diego flight attendants that I have been working on.

SANAFA App

Inside this app you will find links to the contract, various forms, jump seat agreements, known crew member info, base news, and hotel crew care.

More items to come soon. Please let me know if you find any errors or if there is something you would like to see added.

Please open the following link using your Android, or Apple device. (Phones, tablets)

http://m.magmito.com/131271/843219counci

Instructions:

IPhone/ IPad: Click on the link. It will take you to the Magmito website click on install, it will download to your device. You will see a box with an arrow coming out of it that says add app to your home screen.

Android phones / tablets (there are a few more steps than iPhone) Click on the link it will take you to the Magmito website. Click on install. It will download to your device. Click on the downloaded file, follow the instructions; it will say install blocked, because the app did not come from the Play Store. Click on settings; scroll down towards the bottom until you see Unknown sources, click on that. It will give you a warning that downloading from unknown sites may be harmful. Click on OK, and then click on INSTALL.

Anytime Your LEC adds new content your app will ask you if you wish to update to newest version.

IPhone users the update is easy, Android users you have to follow the steps basically for installation.

The only issue I have found so far for fellow android users are when you first try and launch the app it will say SANAFA has stopped, click ok and open it again. It will open the 2^nd time.

I have found no issues with the IPhone.

Your AFA leadership hopes that you enjoy the APP and find it useful, this was a labor of love that I’ve worked on for the exclusivity of our SAN Flight Attendants. Please let me know if you have any issues or questions or even suggestions for additional content.

Remember, for our SAN base; tell everyone, “We have an app for that!” – Brice

In solidarity,

Your LEC Officers – Stephen Couckuyt, Melanie Buker, Brice McGee

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