During the two-week pause of Recurrent Training (RT), management has redesigned the program with the assistance of a vendor that was contracted to help facilitate the process changes. Many of those changes were solidified through an alpha test of the redesigned RT 2020 and subsequent beta test over the past week. AFA leadership participated in the tests along with senior Inflight Instructors and a small group of line Flight Attendants.
Management sent an “RT Improvement Plan” email (February 8, 2020) on Saturday that outlined what Flight Attendants can expect for the relaunch of RT on Monday, February 10. Not surprisingly, many of you had questions or concerns about that communication.
Summary of and commentary about the RT Improvement Plan
Hands-on time has increased from 90 minutes with no time allocated for emergency equipment to 2.5 hours including doors and emergency equipment.
However, 2.5 hours is still not enough because of resource constraints. Once one factors in the number of students, instructors, drills, etc., an individual FA will likely have only a few minutes for any particular door drill. The Master Executive Council (MEC) strongly believes management should allocate more hands-on time.
Thirty minutes of hands-on training is now available before the start of every RT class.
AFA has lingering concerns with the emphasis on voluntary uncompensated training outside of negotiated training hours. This is not an acceptable long-term solution due to the totality of the circumstances.
Scheduled open houses to allow for voluntary practice time on equipment.
Same objection as above: Voluntary uncompensated training outside of negotiated training hours is not an acceptable long-term solution.
The completion packet has been streamlined by condensing the number of drills from 31 to 20.
Condensing is good, but AFA has advocated for more trimming where allowed by regulation.
The instructors are again able to provide direct feedback after unsuccessful drill attempts.
Direct feedback should never have been eliminated in the first place. The MEC believes this is an epic fail on management’s part.
Instructors audited the program content for accuracy.
Excellent! However, who thought it was a good idea to not have the instructors audit the program content for accuracy before now?
Upgraded the RT website to enhance the user experience.
The upgrades are subtle, so the MEC questions how much this will actually enhance the user experience. However, we do appreciate the effort.
Pre-class material, videos, and classroom content has been audited to ensure accuracy.
Is it painfully obvious that quality assurance is extremely under-resourced in Inflight Training?
Topics still being actively explored
Separately, the Master Executive Council (MEC) has taken part in several meetings with management this past week for continuing discussions about the evolving RT situation. A key discussion occurred on Thursday with Vice President of Inflight Ron Calvin, VP Labor Relations Jenny Wetzel, VP Safety & Security Max Tidwell, VP Flight Operations John Ladner, MD Inflight Operations Michaela Littman and MD Labor Relations Carmen Williams.
Topics of particular interest that are still being actively explored:
- Revamping the “Special Track Training” program. (A Flight Attendant is currently put into Special Track Training following the third unsuccessful attempt of any drill evaluation.)
- AFA’s grave concerns regarding potential termination of employment following a fourth unsuccessful attempt.
- Whether self-correction during drill evaluations was possible. Management committed to clarifying with the FAA and to report back as soon as possible.
Management intends to submit a proposal to the Federal Aviation Administration for a redesigned Special Track Training program early this week that will hopefully resolve the first two issues above. The FAA has up to 16 working days to accept or reject the proposal. In the interim, AFA and management have agreed to not allow any Flight Attendant to proceed to the fourth drill attempt; affected FAs are currently being pay protected, but this doesn’t lessen the emotional impact.
Accountability and oversight
AFA has asked management to disclose which specific changes to the RT program were required by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as a result of its audit of the Inflight training program last fall and which changes were management’s discretion. The parties will continue that conversation this week. Additionally, the MEC is scheduled to meet with one of the FAA Cabin Safety Inspectors assigned to Alaska Airlines this coming Wednesday.
We anticipate publishing another RT update in the coming days pending any new developments.
In Solidarity,
Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Linda Christou, Matt Cook, Terry Taylor, Mario de’Medici, Melissa Osborne, Tim Green and Brice McGee
Carey Prenderfast says
We need to receive our study materials earlier. I have RT in January and we did not receive our study materials till January 2nd. More time is needed to study before RT.
Brian Palmer (MEC Vice President) says
Our MEC completely agrees with you, the RT CBT home study and other supporting training materials should be available to January RT students by December 1 at the very latest. Management failed to deliver this year and our Flight Attendants deserve better. Going forward, management has committed to improve how they develop the RT CBT home study and supplemental materials and have told our MEC that they will have these available to Flight Attendants with a January base month in early December for 2021. We will be keeping a very close eye on management’s process of developing these items and plan to hold them fully accountable to meet the timeline that they have committed to.
Kirsty Estrada says
I participated in Portlands open house this morning. I appreciate the ability to have hands on time. I was not able to get through all the emergency equipment in the hour and fifteen minutes scheduled.
The way the training was conducted was helpful but not sufficient. I feel like the instructors should have walked each person thru the entire door procedures then had the student try the drill. I would like them to stop the drill if I did anything wrong, so I can correct that action/behavior. Then be able to start again. I feel like letting people continue the drill in training with incorrect verbiage and or actions is not helping people learn.
Brian Palmer (MEC Vice President) says
Management has said that the turnout for the RT open houses far exceeded their expectations, but they are taking steps to improve the experience which might include adding additional instructors or limiting attendance to ensure everyone gets adequate hands-on time. I’ll share your feedback regarding how instruction on door drills is being done with our AFA Inflight Training Committee so they can share it with management. On a side note, our MEC is continuing to push management to incorporate even more hands-on instruction and practice time during actual RT classes to ensure all F/As are set up for success for the various drills.