Earlier today, a CCS priority message was sent to all Flight Attendants advising of what was thought be the need to action just under 10,000 schedule messages resulting from what was thought be a number of flight cancellations from March 27th through the end of the month.
Regrettably, after most open windows had closed for today, United management became aware of a major error that impacted hundreds of flights, changing the status of these flights from operating to cancelled. The error resulted from the loading of an incomplete data file to the systems that award flight attendant and pilot schedules. All flights with an arrival date of March 27th and continuing through March 31st were incorrectly updated in COSMOS to show as cancelled, and this information was subsequently transmitted to CCS. Multi-day pairings with a final segment arriving on March 27th potentially have been impacted.
Late tonight, United management was able to confirm that the cancellations affecting arrivals on 3/27 through the end of the month were reflected in error in our schedules. When they became aware of the issue, the problem was immediately corrected via the transmission of file corrections through COSMOS. These file corrections changed the status of these flights back to operating. As a result of the restoration of these flights, any impacted pairings should now be correctly displayed in CCS. If they are in lines of flying, the lines are correct. If the pairings were in open time, they are correctly in open time and will be available for trading when the windows re-open at 0700 tomorrow.
Flight attendants who may have successfully reached Crew Scheduling and requested a schedule change based on these cancellations, may contact Crew Scheduling at 800-FLT-LINE, Option 1, or send a virtual chat to request the scheduled pairings be placed back into their schedules. Based on information researched during this process, it is anticipated that the number of pairings with a segment arriving 3/27 through the end of the month that were changed is very small.
Please keep in mind that because of the changes that have occurred throughout the day and the resulting confusion, the Crew Desk continues to experience high call volumes and longer hold times.
United management working on this issue late into the evening have expressed their apologies for this error as well as their understanding of how this impacted the ability of those with these affected pairings to complete trades. In the coming days, your MEC Officers will continue our discussion with United management as we work to find a way to mitigate the adverse impact of this error on Flight Attendant quality of life resulting from the trading limitations that resulted.