February 5, 2013 @ 1630 PT
Dear Flight Attendants,
Alaska Airlines management has notified the Master Executive Council (MEC) that there is a problem with the pairings in Navtech’s PBS. Déjà vu, right?! The good news, however, is that the pairing numbers are not anticipated to change, nor is the issue expected to affect the closing of bids.
This time the problem lies directly with Navtech and not Alaska Airlines. Many if not most of the pairings are reflecting layovers with a duration that is incorrect by thirty minutes. This is suspected to be a recent programming glitch of some kind. The MEC has been told that Navtech has “all hands on deck” in order to fix the error. Once it has been corrected, the revised pairings (again, no new pairings!) will be loaded.
The bid packets were pulled off the Inflight page earlier today as soon as the error was brought to Alaska Airlines management’s attention. Management will now load the correct pairing information onto the Inflight webpage directly from the AOS pairing optimizer program so that Flight Attendants have an accurate reference to work off of for bidding. Bidding in Navtech’s PBS will remain open. If you are comparing the pairing information between what is in Navtech and what is posted on the Inflight webpage, the only differences you should see is a discrepancy in layover duration in many of the pairings. All other information should be the same: pairing report and release, pairing numbers, layover cities, etc.
AFA has requested that Alaska Airlines management send out notification to the entire group regarding this issue as soon as possible.
In solidarity,
Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Terry Taylor, Yvette Gesch, Melanie Buker, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn and Sandra Morrow
