Council 19 November 12th Q and A

Dear Seattle Flight Attendants,

As many of you may have seen, the TA summary was released on line this morning. If you missed the blast email, please follow this link to view the TA Summary:

http://afaalaska.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/AFA-ALA-TA2-Summary-11.7.14.pdf

Along with the TA Summary email this morning the LEC Presidents released a memo stating their reasons for the stance on the TA. The LEC Presidents of ANC, PDX, SAN and I voted “yes” to send the TA out for your consideration, but we did not take a stance on how you should vote. You may be wondering why we are taking this position now; versus the “Yes” stance we took with TA1. Well, the answer is simple: We do not believe it is our responsibility to tell you how to vote.

After TA1 failed I personally promised many of you that I would not vote to send out a TA the second time unless I believed it would meet or exceed your expectations. I truly believe that this TA meets, and in many cases, exceeds your expectations for pay and quality of life issues. The negotiating committee did an amazing job of regaining many of the provisions that were lost in TA1 and gained incredible pay increases across the pay scale.

Why do I not support encouraging you to vote YES? Again, I believe that YOU have to consider this TA and vote according to your individual circumstances. I was elected to represent your best interests and I believe that I am doing this by affording the ability to make you own informed decision.

In case you are wondering if I will vote YES on this TA? Absolutely! This is an incredible TA that will set new industry standards not only for us, but also for all Flight Attendants.

November 12^th SEA LEC Q & A Session

Want to discuss the TA Summary? Have questions or need clarification? Join your LEC Officers on November 12^th and we will be happy to help you understand the changes.

Where: London Room, SEA TAC Airport Conference Center

Time: 9am-4pm

Parking on all floors except 4 is FREE.

If you cannot make this event, please attend a road show in December. Seattle road shows will be on December 5^th and 10^th. Locations: TBA

Make sure you update your address with AFA International by November 12^th to ensure your ballot is mailed to you!

The vote closed on December 17^th.

Update On Vacation 2014 Open Time:

Many of you had issues, once again this year, with Vacation Open Time. I met with Chad Koehnke, Director, Crew Strategy & Administration and Elizabeth Ryan, Managing Director of Labor Relations to discuss the problems. I put forward the following issues:

1. IT issues and no ability to contact a “live” person in a timely manner,
2. Base Trade calendars not updated prior to the opening,
3. The ability to view open days prior to opening,
4. “Overwhelming” of the system and no access at midnight.

Chad is tasked with working with IT on these issues to make some improvements for the 2015 Vacation Open Time, and will meet with AFA in September next year to ensure that these issues are addressed in time for 2016 bidding.

One question posed to Chad and Elizabeth is the reasoning for the 12:00am start date. The answer to this question is this: The system that Vacation Open Time lives in is separate from any of our other FA IT systems. This antiquated program is “hard wired” to start on a certain date only. There is no ability to set a start time on the given date.

Hence, the reason why Vacation Open Time begins at midnight- it is actually starting on the day. We expect this problem will be fixed eventually with the new crew tracking system, but until then Chad and Elizabeth have promised to work with AFA to ensure that we address as many of the problems possible considering current system limitations.

December Pairings

Every December the company experiences a reduction in passenger traffic during the first few weeks of December. Historically, the company has managed the reduction by reducing the schedule in the front half of the month.

The department in charge of our flight schedules is network planning. Their job is to allocate aircraft based on flight schedules. When passenger demand decreases, as they do certain times of the year, network planning has to reallocate aircraft to meet this need.

In addition, this Fall, one airplane a day is pulled off line for the interior cabin design upgrade and the live streaming addition.

What does this have to do with your December pairings?

The first part of December’s flight schedules has been reduced. In the second half of the month, our planes are in the air an average of 150 more hours per day in comparison to the first half of the month.  This imbalance makes it very difficult to build consistent pairings throughout the month.  This change did impact the pairings in early December and we want to remind you to double check your bids! Make sure you are considering the impact of the reduced pairings and are bidding enough to cover yourself.

Chad Koehnke realizes this extreme change will impact the Flight Attendants normal bid schedules this year and is working to reduce the impact for the 2015 December schedule. year and is working to reduce the impact for the 2015 December schedule.