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        You are here: Home / Latest News / [L-AS] November 2018 PBS Bid Awards

        [L-AS] November 2018 PBS Bid Awards

        October 15, 2018 18:00

        This message is for Legacy Alaska Airlines (L-AS) Flight Attendants

        Trouble with the November 2018 PBS bid award

        The Master Executive Council (MEC) was informed on Friday, October 12, 2018, that the wrong one-position (“D”) pairing file was loaded into NAVBLUE PBS.  That file did not contain all the one-position flights—in excess of 1000—requiring staffing coverage. Management and AFA were initially going to pursue a re-award under the usual contractual procedure.

        However, management advised AFA that a longer than normal lead time would be required to re-open bidding because the correct D position pairing file had to be sent to API for hotel assignments prior to loading into NAVBLUE. Neither party was confident that API would be able to turn the file around over the weekend, so the conservative estimate was for API to finish processing the file on Monday 10/15, bidding to open Tuesday 10/16, bidding to close Sunday 10/21, bid awards to post Tuesday 10/23 and trading to finally open on Thursday 10/25.

        Such an extensive delay to first round awards in order to accommodate the re-award would have been unprecedented. The MEC was even more apprehensive because November is a holiday month. However, the MEC was also extremely concerned that Flight Attendants would not be able to exercise their seniority to bid on all known flying if a re-award were to not occur; this would be in violation of Section (§) 10.E.5, which reads, “All known flying, including scheduled and confirmed 14 CFR part 121 charters, will be placed in the PBS program for bid.”

        The MEC voted against a re-award via roll call

        After vigorous discussion about all the implications, the MEC voted three to two for a re-award (For: C15 SAN/McGee, C18 LAX/Green and C30 ANC/Pinkston; Against: C19 SEA/Taylor and C39 PDX/de’Medici; Abstaining: C35 SFO/Osborne). As is her right under the AFA Constitution & Bylaws (C&B), Council 19 Seattle President Terry Taylor requested a roll call vote, in which an issue may be voted on using the number of members in good standing in each council. The MEC ultimately voted 2934 to 1899 against a re-award (For: C15 SAN/McGee @ 377 + C18 LAX/Green @ 1141 + C30 ANC/Pinkston @ 381 = 1899; Against: C19 SEA/Taylor @ 2317 + C39 PDX/de’Medici @ 617 = 2934; Abstaining: C35 SFO/Osborne @ 821). Council 35 SFO President Melissa Osborne abstained from both votes because the issue did not impact her members; all C35 member are currently Legacy Virgin America (L-VX) Flight Attendants and bidding under the L-VX work rules and related systems.

        Implications

        Consequently, November 2018 bid awards are now final and trading will commence on schedule. The tradeoff is that the MEC has waived the provisions of §10.E.5 specific to the ‘missing’ D position pairings for the month of November 2018; therefore any potential grievances pursued under that provision would have no standing in these narrow circumstances. Here is the breakdown by domicile of the missing one-position (D) pairings that will go into Open Time prior to the commencement of Open Time trading: 56 in ANC, 148 in SEA, 21 in PDX, 35 in LAX and 5 in SAN.

        The MEC knows many Flight Attendants will be glad that November 2018 trading was not delayed until late October, but it is also possible that just as many will be upset by the award and the waiver to §10.E.5. This was truly a no-win situation for AFA and for all L-AS Flight Attendants. However, be assured that your elected leaders will continue to advocate for you under the democratic processes of the AFA C&B to the best of our ability.

        In Solidarity,

        Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Linda Christou, Lisa Pinkston, Terry Taylor, Mario de’Medici, Melissa Osborne, Tim Green and Brice McGee

        Print Friendly, PDF & Email

        Filed Under: Latest News, Pairing Construction, Preferential Bidding System (PBS) Tagged With: 2018, NAVBLUE, PBS

        Comments

        1. Percy espinosa says

          October 15, 2018 at 18:38

          The flight attendant work group is held to a very high standard in work performance, training and attendance etc. I want to know if the person or persons at responsible for this mistake will be held responsible for a mistake that has affected the 5k plus flight attendant group? What changes or steps are being taken to avoid this problem in the future? Thank you

          • Jeffrey Peterson (MEC President) says

            October 17, 2018 at 14:31

            Agreed the FA group is held to a very high standard. The error was made in Crew Planning, so management would be responsible for following up with this employee. AFA can and does provide feedback in circumstances like this, but we have no authority to directly coach or council the employee.

            Not sure if you saw the “November Pairings Issues” email from Managing Director of Flight Operations and Resource Management Ryan St. John on Monday, but in it he mentions implementing “a more formalized checklist” in order to prevent the error from happening again.

            Dear Boeing Flight Attendants,

            In the interest of transparency, we want to let you all know what you will see for November Boeing pairings. Due to human error, some (5.8%) of the D-position flight attendant pairings were inadvertently missed and did not get loaded into the PBS system for bidding. Due to the compressed timeline, the decision was made together by management and AFA to post the uncovered trips in Open Time, and staff with reserves and FA pick-ups. The reserve compliment for the month of November is adequate to cover these trips. I understand this has the potential to impact your schedules for the month, so please accept our sincere apologies for any trouble this may cause.

            We are putting a more formalized checklist in place to ensure this does not happen in the future. Below are additional details of what happened, who is impacted, and what we are doing to keep it from happening again. Please reach out if there are any questions.

            Thank you for all you do!

            Ryan

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