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Open Time Trial

AFA wants to clear up any confusion regarding the open time trial. CBA §12.F.10. [Trial Period], states that, “Minimum trial period of twelve (12) months from the month of initial implementation (unless canceled earlier pursuant to F.9., above), which will be determined in the Contract Implementation Schedule. The trial period may be extended by mutual agreement.”

AFA and management agreed when all or most programming is updated the trial period will begin. AFA wants the trial period to commence when all contractual open time features are available and programmed.

The purpose of the trial is, “to create a better more equitable trading system that increases Flight Attendants’ flexibility in modifying their schedules and to improve predictability of staffing and limit the impact of sequence drops to OT on reserve coverage.” CBA §12.F.

In order to fulfill the purpose of the trial, the system must be completely programmed allowing the Flight Attendants and management to utilize it under real conditions. “If the trial creates a liability that cannot be supported, either the Association or the Company may decide to end the Open Time Trial prior to twelve months provided the parties have attempted to modify the Threshold Sequence Number pursuant to §12.F.8.” CBA §12.F.9.

During the trial period, AFA will survey Flight Attendants regarding their satisfaction with Open Time trading on a monthly basis per §12.F.8.d.5. The Master Executive Council (MEC) will continuously review all available information—including the survey—in order to determine if the Open Time trial is working for the Association. The voting members of the MEC (the LEC president of each base) will decide on behalf of the Association whether or not to end the Open Time trial pursuant to §12.F.9.

eMaestro is currently being reprogrammed with the correct contractual applications for the Open Time trial. Once the new code has been properly tested and approved, it will go live. Based on the latest estimates, we are anticipating the Open Time trial to officially begin in the next month or so.

If you have comments, concerns or suggestions please contact your LEC president.

In solidarity,

Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Gesch, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Sandra Morrow and Stephen Couckuyt

AFA-Alaska-Logo-Transparent-Background

Temporary Waiver to Allow Crew Scheduling to Withhold Trips from Open Time for Assignment to Reserves at Noon

Temporary contractual waiver in order to minimize Junior Assignment

In order to minimize Junior Assignment for tomorrow, the Master Executive Council (MEC) has granted the temporary ability for Crew Scheduling to pull trips from Open Time for Christmas Eve assignment to Reserves effective immediately (approximately 12:30 PM PT at the time the waiver was granted).

 

Therefore Section 10.E.d [Open Time] should be temporarily interpreted as the following:

 

Crew Scheduling may remove sequences from OT no earlier than 2:00 12:00 PM PT for reserve assignments for the following day except as provided for in Section 7.F.1.a. [“Job Familiarization” Flights…]. Any sequence not assigned to a Reserve by 6:00 PM PT will be returned to OT. Any sequences that become available after 2:00 12:00 PM PT will be subject to the withholding provisions of 1.d., below.

 

Any other contractual citations that refer to the withholding of trips at 2:00 PM PT for assignment to Reserves should be temporarily interpreted as noon. Example of 10.E.1.c [Open Time]:

 

Crew Scheduling may withhold a sequence from OT for up to fifteen minutes (:15) when necessary to determine a Like Sequence pursuant to Section 10.R. [Reassignments] and 12.J. [Crew Scheduling Trading Errors], or a Reserve or JA assignment. This includes sequences that become available between 2:01 12:01 PM PT and 6:00 PM PT the day prior to report. If Crew Scheduling does not assign the sequence within fifteen minutes (:15) but neglects to return it to OT, a Flight Attendant may contact Crew Scheduling and request the trade/pickup on a first-come, first-served basis. If the Flight Attendant then flies the sequence, s/he will be paid one (1.0) TFP in addition to all applicable compensation.

 

Although the contractual time is 2 PM under the current contract, trips could be pulled at noon in the previous contract. Therefore, the MEC does not anticipate a significant impact compared to the benefit received by minimizing JA.

 

“Premium” Premium Open Time

 

Inflight management has agreed to start widely using “premium” Premium Open Time, so we are appreciative of the step in the right direction. Crew Scheduling has posted double time (2x or $$ in eMaestro), but AFA will continue to strongly advocate for the use of additional premiums in order to further minimize JA and protect the operation.

 

Premium pay

 

Any premiums are paid on flights flown and not on Minimum Pay Rules (MPRs) or Sit Pay. All TFP is credited at straight time towards your 480 TFP thresholds, Quarterly Productivity Premium (QPP) and other similar provisions. For example, a 5.0 TFP trip at 2x premium is paid at double your trip rate but still credited at 5.0 TFP towards your thresholds. It is somewhat of a flight attendant urban legend that “the trip is worth 10.0 TFP.” It is true that the trip is worth the equivalent of 10.0 TFP at straight pay, but it’s really not paid out that way.

* * *

 

We apologize in advance if anybody is inconvenienced by this temporary departure from the norm.

 

In solidarity,

 

Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Gesch, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Sandra Morrow and Stephen Couckuyt

AFA-Alaska-Logo-Transparent-Background

Junior Assignment December 2015

CSKD is currently JA’ing in Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles

 

Crew Scheduling is currently utilizing the new Junior Assignment (JA) language in Section 9 Junior Available and Premium Open Time in order to staff flights over the next several days. AFA believes JA is currently limited to the Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles domiciles, but there are no guarantees that other domiciles will remain unaffected.

 

So what happened to staffing?

 

Going into this week management believed staffing was more than adequate. However there has been a significant spike in sick leave utilization over the past several days that exceeded staffing resources. Inflight management directed Crew Scheduling to start JA’ing in order to maintain the operation just after 10 AM Pacific Time this morning.

 

No “premium” (2x or greater) Premium Open Time

 

Despite the fact that your Negotiating Committee specifically advocated for a tiered Premium Open Time system in order to maximize flexibility for Crew Scheduling and minimize the potential for JA, management has refused to utilize Premium Open Time higher than a 1.5x premium. Why would management want to force flight attendants to fly when they are scheduled to be off duty and pay them a 2.5x premium rather than offering Premium Open Time to eager volunteers at, say, double time (2x premium or listed as $$ in eMaestro)? Or alternatively, if the Company anticipated that it was going to pay the JA premium of 2.5x, but Crew Scheduling could find an eager volunteer through Premium OT at the same premium (2.5x premium or listed as $$$ in eMaestro), wouldn’t it make sense to take the volunteer over the draftee?

 

We believe Inflight management has been unwilling to offer Premium Open Time any higher than the standard (1.5x premium or listed as $ in eMaestro) because they fear creating an expectation that such premiums will be routinely available around the holidays. There is a certain logic to that line of thinking, but the Master Executive Council (MEC) does not understand how avoiding setting expectations for “premium” Premium OT is better than JA’ing. The Company is going to spend more money JA’ing than if management had sweetened Premium OT to 2x premium prior to JA’ing.

JA eligibility

 

A flight attendant cannot be Junior Assigned on vacation or while off duty—any JA notification must occur while on duty and prior to the conclusion of the scheduled debrief period. The list is comprised of all flight attendants on duty during the JA period in question and who are legal to accept a JA. Assignments are made off that list in reverse seniority (junior) order.

 

A flight attendant cannot be JA’d into any day that was traded away or dropped from her/his original schedule as long as the day(s) has not been subsequently restored prior to JA. There are several other contractual provisions in Section 9 that govern JA procedures, which are too numerous to detail here. A JA list will be posted after the fact and accessible via the World of Inflight.  If you believe that you were JA’d out of order, you will have the ability to review the list yourself or you can seek assistance from AFA.

JA procedures

 

Under the new contract, Crew Scheduling may JA up to the full calendar day prior to the trip. Unfortunately, Inflight management waited until after 10am this morning to JA, which very likely resulted in artificially inflating the seniority of those who were ultimately JA’d. You see, Crew Scheduling lost the opportunity to potentially JA anybody who returned to domicile prior to 10am this morning. If JA had been initiated earlier, many more flight attendants would have been in the JA pool.

 

AFA believes management waited so long because they were seeking a contractual waiver from the MEC. Management asked if the MEC would allow Reserves to be assigned earlier than provided by contract, believing this would minimize the need to JA. The MEC declined the waiver, and JA began shortly thereafter.

 

In our opinion, Inflight management ironically made JA worse by going more senior as a result of the wait. This is extremely unfortunate considering that AFA provided the exact same feedback and recommendations to Inflight management earlier this year. Very similar circumstances occurred during the last and only other time we have JA’d under the new contractual rules.

 

Trading JA and Pay

 

Flight Attendants may trade or give away JA assignments. Until the new JA rules are programmed into the new crew management system, flight attendants will be able to post a JA trip on the eMaestro bulletin board using a workaround: Crew Scheduling must first remove the default “PP” label code. Crew Scheduling was initially unaware of the workaround earlier in the day, but going forward they have been informed of the interim procedure. For your information, the new system is called Jeppesen Crew Tracking Enterprise (JCTE) and it is scheduled to go live later in 2016.

 

Suggestion: use the “Comments” field to indicate the trip is a Junior Assignment at 2.5x premium. Junior Assignments are paid at 2.5x premium for all flying (excludes Minimum Pay Rules and Sit Pay). If a JA is flown on a flight attendant paid holiday (e.g. Christmas), the total premium is 3.5x for flights flown on the holiday.

 

Crew Scheduling must manually process the actual trading of the trip(s) in eMaestro. It is Crew Administration’s responsibility to reconcile the JA pay with the trip, but we anticipate this will all be automated in JCTE. Until implementation of JCTE, we recommend that you submit an Activity Claim Form on the World of Inflight in order to claim the JA premium.

 

Recommendations so far

 

In summary, AFA would have preferred that Inflight management had more aggressively utilized “premium” Premium OT once management had identified a staffing need prior to the date in question. If increasing premiums did not improve staffing and management deemed it necessary to JA, that decision ideally should have been made much earlier in the morning in order to sufficiently widen the pool.

 

* * *

 

There are many moving parts to the operation at the moment, so it will likely take some time to gather all the facts and for management and AFA to debrief the holiday staffing. In the meantime if you have any questions or concerns, contact one of your local Scheduling Committee members or Local Executive Council (LEC) officers (ANC 30 | SEA 19 | PDX 39 | LAX 18 | SAN 15).

 

 

In solidarity,

 

Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Gesch, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Sandra Morrow, Stephen Couckuyt; and MEC Scheduling Committee Chairperson Jake Jones

AFA-Alaska-Logo-Transparent-Background

AFA Alaska MEC Pairing Analyst Interviews

Your Alaska Master Executive Council (MEC) would like to take this opportunity to thank Sherrijon Gaspard for stepping up to the plate as MEC Pairing Analyst for the last six months. Regretfully, she recently stepped down from her position due to unforeseen family circumstances. The MEC is now in search of qualified individuals interested in becoming the new MEC Pairing Analyst.

Background

  • The official title in the AFA Alaska MEC Policy Manual for the AFA Pairing Analyst is MEC Scheduling Committee Vice Chairperson—Pairing Construction. The Pairing Analyst is chairperson and sole member of the Pairing Construction Subcommittee, which is a part of the Scheduling Committee. See below for additional information.
  • Both the Crew Planners and the AFA Pairing Analyst individually use a computer system provided by Jeppesen to construct pairings each month.
  • The pairings in our bid packets are “optimized” (usually for least cost) and built using a computer program designed by Jeppesen. Inflight management selects the final pairing solution to be used.

Additional Background from the AFA Alaska MEC Policy Manual

PAIRING CONSTRUCTION SUBCOMMITTEE

Scope

(i)        The Pairing Construction Subcommittee will work with the company and the Inflight Crew Planning Department to build Flight Attendant pairings

Policy/Responsibilities

(i)        The Pairing Construction Subcommittee shall consist of the MEC Scheduling Committee Vice Chairperson—Pairing Construction.

(ii)       The Subcommittee shall:

(A)       Regularly communicate with and provide updates to the MEC Scheduling Chairperson on the activites of the subcommittee

(B)       Meet on a monthly basis with the Company and the Inflight Crew Planning Department to review problems and suggested resolutions regarding construction of Flight Attendant pairings and monthly lines of flying.

(C)       Maintain a permanent file for all local schedules for the use of the MEC Scheduling Committee.

(D)       Keep the MEC informed on all activities relating to the pairing construction process.  When meetings or communications are due to unusual scheduling activities, a written report will be made.

(E)       Keep the membership informed of the results of the pairing construction process on a monthly basis through the MEC Communications Committee Chairperson.

(F)       Solicit feedback from the membership regarding desired pairings, trip lengths, and types of flying through Local Scheduling Committees and advocate for such during the pairing construction process.

(G)       Discuss any problems occurring within the pairing construction process with the Local Scheduling Committee Chairpersons on a monthly basis and will provide any suggestions for remedy of problems to the MEC.

Skillset/Requirements

  • Strong computer skills are a must.
  • Ability to independently meet several deadlines throughout the month.
  • Potentially frequent travel to Seattle for training and meetings. However, duties may generally be fulfilled remotely.

Duties

  • Build pairings solutions using a pairings optimizer computer program (Jeppesen).
  • Work collaboratively with Crew Planning in regards to pairing building.
  • Review, validate and comment on the monthly pairing solutions.
  • Write a monthly pairings report.
  • Correspond with Local Scheduling Committee chairpersons, the MEC Scheduling Committee chairperson, and LEC presidents regarding pairing solutions and related concerns brought forward by flight attendants.
  • Advocate for flight attendants in the pairing building process.

Time Commitment and Compensation

  • This is a paid position compensated by the Company under 27.P Company Business (CB) Flight Pay Loss with a 5% override and “A” pay. CB is compensated at 0.75 TFP per hour of work.
  • Estimated 16 to 20 hours per month (12 to 15 TFP per month), most of which may be accomplished remotely.

Reporting Structure

  • Directly reports to the MEC Scheduling Committee chairperson, who in turn reports to the MEC.

Interested?

  • The MEC will hold interviews on Tuesday, January 26, 2016. Bid around the interview date or arrange to adjust your schedule accordingly to accommodate.
  • Interviews will be at the AFA Alaska MEC office in Seattle. Our office is located in the Alaska Airlines Flight Operations and Training Center, Suite 280 at 2651 S 192nd St, Seattle, WA 98188.
  • Submit a declaration of interest and resume to MEC Secretary-Treasurer Yvette Gesch at yvette.gesch@afaalaska.org no later than 5 PM Pacific Time on Friday, January 15, 2016. Yvette will be able to provide additional information regarding transportation and booking of flights if necessary.

 

* * *

 

In solidarity,

 

Your MEC—Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Gesch, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Sandra Morrow, Stephen Couckuyt; and MEC Scheduling Committee Chairperson Jake Jones

AFA-Alaska-Logo-Transparent-Background

New “Temporary” FA to FA and Open Time Trading Schedule

Background

 

In light of recent technical issues with Open Time, the Master Executive Council (MEC) made a decision at our November meeting last week to temporarily change trading times for all bases. This is a temporary change that should end with an upgrade from eMaestro to the Jeppesen Crew Tracking Enterprise (JCTE) system next year.

 

The problem appears to lie with the current system’s inability to handle the amount of users when Seattle Flight Attendants access the system. As many of you know, technical issues with Open Time are not new. However, all trading within a base now starting at the same time has been consistently causing Seattle Flight Attendants to have trouble logging into eMaestro. The system completely shut down for over 30 minutes when Seattle Open Time began in September and, even though management implemented changes to accommodate the traffic for October and again in November, Seattle Flight Attendants experienced problems accessing the system.

 

Due to the on-going problems and the fact that these problems begin with Seattle’s start time, the MEC has decided to further alter FA to FA trades and Open Time(s) by splitting FA to FA trades and Open Time(s) to different days/times beginning in December for January trading. Again, this is a temporary fix until transition to JCTE. We anticipate the new schedule—which will be in effect in December for January trading and until further notice—will offset the ‘load factor’ to the system that allows every Flight Attendant, in every base, a fair opportunity to access Open Time and FA to FA trades.

 

NEW TRADING TIME LINE IN PACIFIC TIME

 

15th – FA to FA Trades

0900: SAN

1000: PDX

1100: ANC

1200: LAX

1300: SEA

16th – OT (Except Seattle)

0900: SAN

1000: PDX

1100: ANC

1200: LAX

17th – 0900 OT SEA

18th – 0900 Out of Domicile (ALL)

* * *

 

If you have any questions please contact your LEC president.

In Solidarity,

 

Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Gesch, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Sandra Morrow and Stephen Couckuyt

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