MEC Reserve Committee Report

Date: November 9, 2011

The November System Reserve Meeting was held November 9, 2011.  In attendance for AFA were Kaitlin White, MEC Reserve Chair and Jeff Heisey, MEC Secretary Treasurer.  For the Company David Hammon and Terri Miazga, OPBSK attended.  Topics discussed included:

The monthly meeting began with a discussion on Christmas Wish List. (CWL)  Terri, Jeff, and Kaitlin have had previous discussions regarding the communication for CWL to Flight Attendants.  The Cover Letter for the December Bid Package as well as the Operations Update, formerly Onboard Updates,  will both include details for the process.  We wanted to ensure the language printed in this documentation was consistent with the language in the agreement.  Christmas wishlist is scheduled to be live on December 1 from both the United MEC website (www.unitedafa.org) and SkyNet.

David told us there are currently 30 people completing training to become crew schedulers.  They are expected to be on the operational floor sometime in January.  For the next several months there is an increased need for training as our crew desk merges into a combined operation with the Hotel desk (BQ).  This increased training schedule will limit the availability of controllers.  As a result of these demands, only one (1) supervisor will be assigned to each shift until May.  Please let the members of you your Local Reserve Committees of this limitation and ask that they advise you if they are having difficulties resolving issues that are time sensitive because you cannot get a hold of a controller or manager. 

Continuing Issues

Problematic ID’s with international deadheads being built out of LHR

For the third month we brought up the issues associated with building IDs out of LHR to cover FRA with minimal connection time to the working segment from an International offline dead-head segment.  The company has advised us an email has been sent out to the planners to avoid building these IDs unless absolutely necessary.  We hope that this issue has been resolved and ask that any IDs built in the operation where the FA is unable to attend briefing due to short connection times be sent to the MEC Reserve Committee.

ONSB Positions out of DEN

The Denver Reserve committee has noticed an increase of the daily stand-by positions in the last few months. Specifically, there has been an additional 0515 ONSB position added and 3 1800 ONSB positions.  At the recommendation of AFA and after a review of the aircraft schedule, the Company has reduced the 0515 ONSB positions to one for the remainder of the month in DEN.  We ask that monitoring of ONSB usage be done at each location when changes occur.

Providing Scheduling Names

We have asked the Company to remind schedulers to provide their names when contacting Flight Attendants as a matter of practice.  While we understand the Company does not want to provide “scripts” to the schedulers it is essential for the Flight Attendant to know who they spoke to when receiving an assignment.  Please continue to remind your Flight Attendants to ask for the schedulers name if it is not provided to them when they pick up the phone. 
Denver has received reports of scheduling attempting to assign Reserves on stand-by to an ID beyond the “scheduled maximum duty day”.  While each of these issues was addressed and resolved by local officers or committee members we have asked for schedulers to be reminded of the contractual limitations to the initial assignment of a ONSB Reserve. 

1-day conversions have appeared to be high in the past few months, specifically in DEN.  We have asked that the Company also consider the changes to the flying in Denver as well as historical data when determining the needs of the operation.

Two automation issues were brought forward out of SFO.  The first was in response to an overlap ID from a Lineholder month to a Reserve month.  The Flight Attendant arrived on the 1st day of the month at 0945.  Typically when a RSV Flight Attendant is scheduled to arrive and debrief before noon there is a –RSV or a –CLLR visible in their line.  In this case the Flight Attendant only had their ID number and was unaware that they were a part of the CLLR process on the night of the 30th.   We have asked the Company to provide us the details as to when these underlining Reserve days appear in the Flight Attendants schedule and when they don’t.  We will provide you with more information as it is received.
The second automation issue was involving a Flight Attendant who had maxed out for the month and the scheduler was unable to release her/him during the CLLR process.  If you encounter any of these line errors please let the MEC Reserve committee know for follow up.  Terri was going to be investigating this issue as well.