Dear Seattle Flight Attendants,
I realize in the past few months Seattle experienced a change in the type of pairings we normally see. I want to thank you for taking the time to email and share your thoughts with your Seattle scheduling committee, the AFA pairings analyst, Karen Ferrell, and me. I am working with Karen to try and balance the flying for all of us. However, Karen is only part of the equation, as we have the company pairing analyst team to reach out to, as well.
I have spent most of this week compiling your emails to share with Andy Schneider, Chad Koehnke, and his pairings team. Also, the MEC is trying to evaluate data from the April runs to see if we can try to enhance the flying for Seattle, ensuring the other bases receive their desired flying, too.
It’s not uncommon to experience months where the flying seems a little off. Part of this is due to aircraft rotation, mid-month schedule changes, and rapid growth over the past few months. However, drastic changes that affect our quality of life, productivity, and financial status should not occur as often as they have been the past few months.
Equitable flying for all flight attendants is the ultimate goal of AFA. With the amount of growth we are experiencing AFA is trying to understand the best way to apply filters for the optimizer and work with multiple influences that affect pairings.
I have sent an email to Andy and Chad with hopes of alerting them to your concerns and the necessity to work with AFA to find a balance of flying for pairings that does not affect Seattle’s quality of life. At a moments notice any base could face, and a few have experienced, a deterioration of the quality of life in their parings and when this happens it’s imperative that AFA evaluate the reasons and work to find solutions.
We need to work together to find a process that ensures flight attendants in all bases can rely on the pairings to provide quality of life, productivity, and most importantly, equality in the type of flying.
I thank you for your patience and support while we work to find a better process.
In solidarity,
Laura Masserant
LEC President, Seattle
