Southwest to ‘trim headcount’ after growth in costs

[AFcitrus]

Thanks guys, that's what I figured.

A lot of our people are looking at Jamie's seniority calculator and thinking they are going to be more senior than they really are, which is what prompted the discussion when I told some of them that I was going to wait until all 700+ of our F/O's who are junior to me get over there to "plug the hole" in other bases while some attrition moves some of your senior F/O's up to the CA seat.

They didn't understand why the seniority calculator isn't correct; it didn't take into account all our people who bid 717 CA becoming F/O's instead which changes their seniority pretty dramatically when you insert 550 or so CA's at the top of the F/O list by the time the transition finishes.


Thanks again, guys.

Even before the 717 announcement senior FO's were going over thinking they would have the seniority Jamie's calculator said. It wasn't until they got to the base bid part of training that you saw their eyes get big and they dropped the "F" bomb. They couldn't believe how much more junior they are than they thought they'd be because all those junior to them in the calculator who were still at Airtran. They got the raise but they're commuting from GA/FL to OAK/LAS to sit reserve - possibly making less than as a senior line holder in ATL.

Lear, from my perspective the dropping trips and picking up in other bases as an FO looks good on paper but doesn't work very well. Maybe it works better as a CA. You don't "drop" anything. Someone has to take it from you - even if there is plenty of reserve coverage. And they can't take it unless someone takes their trip, and so on, and so on. Furthermore, one doesn't see a lot of trips in "give away" unless it's in the heavy flying months, when you don't want to pick anything up. Conversely, in the slow months like now when you want to pick up flying, few trips are available. It's like a catch 22. Now, there will be some movement as people look to pick up flying dropped around a vacation. But that is not the norm in my experience.

By the way, you can only trade trips in ELITT starting four days in the future. You can't even see available trips before that day. And when ELITT opens the 25th of each month, everything except the cruddy stuff is gone in 1-2 minutes. As for open time, well you can only see it 3 days into the future and can only bid for it starting the day before (in seniority order). I'm not sure why folks over here claim there is so much flexibility in the system, I'm not seeing it. Structurally I think we had a much better system at AT, if the company would have kept their hands off it.

Not saying there aren't some nice improvements here, just that I think the open time/trip trade system is over-rated. Oh, and that monthly 107 TFP, 17 day off average that was highly touted ---NOT.

 

[Lear70]

Even before the 717 announcement senior FO's were going over thinking they would have the seniority Jamie's calculator said. It wasn't until they got to the base bid part of training that you saw their eyes get big and they dropped the "F" bomb. They couldn't believe how much more junior they are than they thought they'd be because all those junior to them in the calculator who were still at Airtran. They got the raise but they're commuting from GA/FL to OAK/LAS to sit reserve - possibly making less than as a senior line holder in ATL.

Lear, from my perspective the dropping trips and picking up in other bases as an FO looks good on paper but doesn't work very well. Maybe it works better as a CA. You don't "drop" anything. Someone has to take it from you - even if there is plenty of reserve coverage. And they can't take it unless someone takes their trip, and so on, and so on. Furthermore, one doesn't see a lot of trips in "give away" unless it's in the heavy flying months, when you don't want to pick anything up. Conversely, in the slow months like now when you want to pick up flying, few trips are available. It's like a catch 22. Now, there will be some movement as people look to pick up flying dropped around a vacation. But that is not the norm in my experience.

By the way, you can only trade trips in ELITT starting four days in the future. You can't even see available trips before that day. And when ELITT opens the 25th of each month, everything except the cruddy stuff is gone in 1-2 minutes. As for open time, well you can only see it 3 days into the future and can only bid for it starting the day before (in seniority order). I'm not sure why folks over here claim there is so much flexibility in the system, I'm not seeing it. Structurally I think we had a much better system at AT, if the company would have kept their hands off it.

Not saying there aren't some nice improvements here, just that I think the open time/trip trade system is over-rated. Oh, and that monthly 107 TFP, 17 day off average that was highly touted ---NOT.

You're not the first of our guys who has gone over that I've heard that from.

It seems you really need to be in the top 1/3 (or be camped out in front of your computer for ELITT) to have any luck manipulating your schedule as well as we have been able to over here (when, as you mentioned, scheduling leaves the system functioning on automatic like they're supposed to).

There's not much available for open time right now over here, I was only able to SAP one trip for next month, but the rest of my line is decent anyway, weekends off, blocking 77 and crediting 84 on 18 days off and weekends off, Thanksgiving off from two days before until the Monday after.

I'm thinking I'm just going to camp out until all the junior guys go over. From what I'm hearing, it's only $1,000 a month more after taxes sitting on reserve versus what I make here, including crashpad costs, etc, and it's just not worth it for that.

 

[scoreboardII]

Top third? You need to be top 15% or your not much beter on bidding/trading unless you put lots of time into it.

Can you explain how the trip drop thing works? I can see being able to drop a trip back to the company for no pay, and only if the trip is below what the reserve pilot would be paid for sitting, and only if they have enough reserve pilots. Thats one problem here, usually to few reserve pilots, although, not lately.

 

[Lear70]

Top third? You need to be top 15% or your not much beter on bidding/trading unless you put lots of time into it.

Can you explain how the trip drop thing works? I can see being able to drop a trip back to the company for no pay, and only if the trip is below what the reserve pilot would be paid for sitting, and only if they have enough reserve pilots. Thats one problem here, usually to few reserve pilots, although, not lately.

Here it's not a factor of how much the trip is worth, rather, simply if they have reserve coverage above the "floor" on that particular day / series of days.

The reserve floor is a pre-determined percentage of how many people they need on reserve on any given day, which changes on weekends and holidays and by time of year (heavy summer months require more reserves for example).

Then they take the number of open trips on that day (or that fall into that day, for instance a 3-day started on a Tuesday but is still factored into Wednesday and Thursday's coverage because you have to have a person for each duty period).

If there are more people available than the coverage "floor" plus uncovered trips in open time, then you have flexibility to simply give your trip back to the company, down to 30 hours per month. If not, then your drop is denied.

Non-vertical trip trades are trading a trip you have with a trip the company has uncovered that aren't on the exact same day(s) you're trying to get rid of. Vertical trades are always granted, as long as it's the same base, because it doesn't change the coverage. Non-vertical trades do the coverage check and, if any ONE day doesn't have coverage and the trip you're trading OUT of falls on one of those days, your trade is denied.

Otherwise, adequate coverage gets your request granted, regardless of what it does to your credit, up or down, except you can't go below the 30 hours min per month. In SAP - your version of ELITT - you can't go below 70 hours which sucks right now because many lines are already right at 70 hours so you can't SAP unless you add time first.

The system works fairly well for flexibility, although it basically puts all the flying onto reserves for weekend trips and red-eyes. Few people want those, so they always end up in open time, unless there's nothing to pick up in its place for those guys who get those lines like November - very little movement in open time because there's only a handful of trips available to trade into and people don't want to go low credit.

As for your thought of giving back more than what a reserve guy credits daily on a guarantee rate broken down, the company really doesn't care because they know most of us are trying to pick up MORE credit over the same days, so the high-value trips go to line holders, leaving low-credit and uncommutable stuff for the reserves.

As a matter of fact, they'd prefer to pre-assign the high-credit stuff to reserves, knowing they won't break guarantee in most cases, but we got rid of that in the last contract, making them leave open time available all month until 72 hours prior to the trip, anything inside that is marked premium or MUST be assigned to a reserve, and we have two pilots who have full scheduling software access to see what's going on with trips. Half the time a reserve knows what they're doing if it came from open time about 3 days in advance. The rest of their flying is last-minute sick calls.

We also have a trade board where we can trade amongst ourselves, but it's not used much because most people aren't legal to pick up a full trip without getting rid of theirs first.

All in all I like the system, and would prefer a hybrid: what we have with the ability to break the trip up into pieces like you do in case a pilot wants part or all of it.

 

[scoreboardII]

OK, thanks, so you give a trip back to company you also drop the pay, basically give everything regarding that trip back to company.

I can see how that would work.

I couldn't see our scheduling guy going for that however, we have trouble getting them to have proper reserve coverage, and then they do crazy stuff like extra fly trips at premium with a few reserves still available, or worse split trips and export them out of domicile with reserves available, makes not sense.

 

[Lear70]

OK, thanks, so you give a trip back to company you also drop the pay, basically give everything regarding that trip back to company.

I can see how that would work.

I couldn't see our scheduling guy going for that however, we have trouble getting them to have proper reserve coverage, and then they do crazy stuff like extra fly trips at premium with a few reserves still available, or worse split trips and export them out of domicile with reserves available, makes not sense.

Our scheduling people do that, too. I think they get a certain leeway to make trips premium during tight staffing days, knowing the schedules were built that way, then they can retain some reserves for their OWN, ummm, "errors", when the crap hits the fan unexpectedly.

That's why sometimes you'll see (or we USED to see) premium time available with reserves left. They knew better than to use ALL their reserves days in advance so they kept a few for schedule integrity for last minute issues and paid us the premium to take the trip in advance. Sometimes they'd even split the trip up (VERY rare here).

Who knows, your scheduling people MIGHT be interested in doing that with as many reserves as we're going to have once everyone is over there, at least until the coverage evens back out to levels they're at now. Or they might not, not wanting to set a precedent.

Just nice to be able to dump your trip back into open time and someone almost always takes mine before they're given to a reserve, especially folks who live in base. 7 hour day trips are nice for guys who live there. Not so nice to commute to.

 

[funnyman12]

Im fairly junior and was able to drop a trip over thanksgiving, pick up a mon-wed trip, and now have 6 days off in a row over thanksgiving and the weekend off. I urge SWAPA to at least look at some benefits of our scheduling section. We do have some good things in our CBA that could benefit SW pilots. Also i have had EVERY trip, on BOTH ends, be commuttable for almost 6 years. This is not an exaggeration.

 

[scoreboardII]

But at what cost? Our reserve coverage was around 4-6 percent, now higher lately. Do you have long call short call out reserve? We only have 2hr call out no matter what.

 

[Lear70]

But at what cost?

Commutability costs in trip productivity.

On the 737 here, a non-commutable trip averages about 6.5 hours per day credit, equivalent to about 7.25 Trips per day, 22 TFP 3 days, 19.5 hour credit for us. Most of my trips are like this, but only average 18.5 credit because I bid the ones with 24 hr MBJ/CUN/AUA/PUJ or 24 hr west coast layovers on day one or two.

Commutable on one end but not the other (a.m./p.m.) is about 6 hours per day average for us. Commutable averages 5.5 hrs per day. So 18 days off working 4 3-day trips commutable is 66 hours credit if it's commutable on both sides drawing guarantee at 75/76 hours (30/31 day month). They tend to add a day trip here or there to those lines to get the credit closer to guarantee, but I drop them to stay around guarantee.

Sure I could get an extra day or two "off" if it were uncommutable on one side (am/pm) with the same credit, but I lose 4 days off with 4 commutes anyway, so two extra days off still leaves 2 days of commuting I don't get back. Commutable lines on both sides are worth the pay loss in terms of actual days spent "working" (which includes my commuting day - that's not a day off).

Our reserve coverage was around 4-6 percent, now higher lately. Do you have long call short call out reserve? We only have 2hr call out no matter what.

We have PLCR, LCR, SCR, and RR.

Pre-assigned Long Call Reserve took the place of our build-up lines, basically they take open time that's left over after SAP (ELITT) and pre-assign it to the PLCR pilots, and what days you're not assigned a trip, you're still on Long Call Reserve.

Long Call Reserve is a 12 hour call-out, you are phone available 24 hours a day, but once they call you they basically consider you "in rest" for that 12 hours you're getting to work. On day 1 you can't be called out any sooner than 12 noon (they try, you simply remind them of the limit and they call someone else).

LCR's are mainly designed to be used for trips that are left in open time that no one picks up. At the 72 hour mark, they put them on LCR pilots rather than make them premium.

Short Call Reserves are two hour callouts just like you guys. A LCR pilot can only be transitioned to SCR once per month.

Ready Reserves are on standby at the airport. We never see this in MCO and I'm told it's become much more rare in ATL as well. Primarily it's DESIGNED to be used as a tool to cover system meltdowns. They see a squall line of thunderstorms headed for ATL or a hurricane coming up from the Caribbean, they can activate some pilots to SCR to cover things. This becomes especially important because our pilots and F/A's aren't paired together for the trip or even the day, and you could have one airplane at a gate with pilots and no F/A's or F/A's and no pilots because their respective crews are sitting on the tarmac waiting for those gates to free up so they can park. With RR's, you can more easily pull and swap crews to get things done when ATL goes to hell in a handbasket, which happens 2-3 times a year.

However, RR's tended to get abused in the last CBA. Less so in this one.

LCR is nice, and goes QUITE senior in the months like Sep-Oct or Jan-Apr, because the odds of you getting used more than one or two trips a month are somewhat slim, especially with lots of reserve coverage (we're currently in the 40% range). LCR in MCO went to the #4 F/O and #6 CA the last few months. ATL is similar.

 

[scoreboardII]

That all sounds good for the junior, but probably wouldn't float due to not being voted nor seeked by the union, very senior oriented. Put another way, having a reserve pilot available is one less premium pay opportunity for a senior bubba. Especially PLCR or LCR.

What percentage of each of those different reserve slots are available? Like I said, we have run as low as 4%, contractually 6-8, and now running about 10%. I can't see the company agreeing to a more flexable reserve, we can't get them to agree to keeping AM and PM's split (you have a PM reserve and they can make it an AM second day or keep an AM pilot late last day into a PM line).