LAA and LUS Flight Attendants’ Consolidation October 1 2018
 

I understand that LAA and LUS FAs are merging flight schedules on October 1, AND LUA and LCO FAs are also merging together that same day. Just wanted to pass along the notice - might be a good day to avoid traveling on those carriers!

Good point. I've had a trip booked for Oct 3rd for the entire year, as soon as I saw this thread title it hit me.

Here's to hoping they all learn how to play nice with their peers.

I have a PHL-CLT-MSY routing on the 2nd. Crossing my fingers.:D

Why? Flight bidding routines mean that FAs work with different FAs every month, if not every week.

How will this impact travelers? Do you expect it to cause flight delays?

Or the LAA FAs "train" the LUS FAs not to do PDBs.

Hopefully not - PDB was consistently offered after the UA/HP merger - by both ex-USAir and ex-America West F/A's.

Merging...Now??

What year exactly did this merger begin?

:eek:

Ha - not because they might not get along (although who knows.) But I'll be surprised if the computer systems integrate flawlessly. (Hopefully they will!) (BTW, United and Continental FAs are ALSO merging on October 1st.)

Nov 1st

If the date is this close, they've presumably already done the flight bids and everyone knows their schedules, so what bad things exactly do we expect to happen ... ? It's not like a reservation system cutover when the IT may or may not work on the day.

Hopefully nothing! But FAs that I've talked to expect at least a little disruption.

https://mailchi.mp/apfa/a-message-of...ase-presidents
"A few weeks have passed since the Company presented their new attendance/performance policy with a planned implementation date of October 1, 2018. That same day, they will finally achieve what they have been trying to accomplish since 2015; Full Operational Integration (FOI)...Fast forward to October 1st. The Company will be implementing the full JCBA language on the LUS side which includes TTS/UBL, ETB, ROTA, ROTA-D, JCBA PBS, and Rotating Reserve. On top of all of these changes, we will be navigating through a new attendance policy. Our membership has enough stress and anxiety over the changes coming with FOI and the frustration of dealing with the Company’s IT failures."

The question is will one side lose something they like, for example ease of trading trips. Most of the FA seemed happy as it will open the opportunity to work new routes and nicer LAA a/c (772, 777, 788, 789). In addition, there will be opportunity to transfer to other bases. A few months back I met a CLT based FA living in MIA very happy at the prospect of eventually transferring to MIA and no need for commuting. About a month back I met a MIA based flight attendant living in TN looking forward to being able to transfer to CLT (and therefore a much easier commute.)

Thanks. I just booked my Oct 1 trip on DL F. Should go smoothly.

I suggest that anyone flying that day memorize the lyrics and break out in song, as necessary.

So, the issue is IT related? Likely affecting scheduling? Honestly, I can't see how the bidding process will change much. Don't most FAs reside close to their domicile or in the alternative, are accustomed to commuting to their domicile? I would be surprised to see much integration immediately, but I could certainly be wrong.

I had a fantastic PMAA FA who not only did PDB but also provided excellent overall service on DCA-MIA. I told her I wanted to get her name so I could leave a compliment and she told me it was her last week at AA, leaving for a better job...

Lots of people like to hate on CLT but you're gonna get PDB with the US CLT crews. ^

The LUS FAs successfully trained the LAA FAs to do credit card pitches, so hopefully the LUS FAs can use the same techniques to motivate LAA FAs to do PDBs consistently. However, the cynic in me says we will get the worst of LUS and LAA - inconsistent PDBs and consistent credit card pitches.

And PHL, too.

There is no spiff given for PDBs. Money talks.

Having sat at a hotel bar this evening where there are 2 downroute LAA crews on a layover, all I can say is that they are not looking forward to having both crews merged. Quietly reading my book enjoying my beer, there was no mistaking their comments.

In fact, how they openly discussed their colleagues and with such language, it was beggars belief.

We do not have our schedules for November yet, but the new bidding/scheduling programs are proving to be not working properly, for 26,000 FAs.

October 1 or November 1 won't mean anything for pax. It just means that FA's will be able to bid across crew bases and to other aircraft.

I flew on the morning the FOS's (Flight Operating System) were combined -- and was shocked at how smooth it went. That first CLT FA who bids into MIA or DFW will find it strange as will the ones going the other way.

And ... the PDB isn't just an AA thing. I've flown paid four paid F flights on AS and DL this month and didn't get anything besides a small bottle of water at my seat. On the last DL flight, an FA came out and talked to the gate agent who then made an announcement that
"we're trying to get the flight out on time, so there will be pre-departure beverages today."

Seriously, all the airlines understand this is a top dissatisfaction point and its so easy, yet FA's don't want to do it. If you could increase your businesses customer satisfaction rate with its top customers simply by (a) offering them a drink when they board, (b) calling them by their name, and (c) thanking them individually for flying on American .... you'd then have a lot of negotiating leverage in contract time!

I'm EXP on AA and DM on DL, so feel like I have a decent sized data set to say that DL is incredibly more consistent about providing PDB to the point that, as you note, when they don't do it they explicitly acknowledge it as a problem. AA I probably get it about a quarter of the time*, where as DL it's 90%+. That's a massive difference in how the service is being delivered to customers.

* I mostly fly LAA routes.

I'm EXP on AA and 1K on UA. UA serves PDBs over 90% of the time, as well. UA FAs will squeeze through the boarding passengers to get the drinks served, and even stop the queue to get back upstream. Frankly, I've never seen a flight delayed in any way because PDBs were served.

Here's an idea: start giving FAs commissions for doing PDBs - I bet we'll see an increase in PDBs.

"Old" US had been on (then AA's) Sabre FOS (and Reservations) for several years. I think going all the way back to the Piedmont merger.
When HP took over US, for the "new" US they oddly chose Shares for the combined RES and Sabre for the combined FOS. For US-->AA, my guess is that the only "cut over" was to schedule all flights within in the same Sabre partition. The main hurdle, getting everyone trained on Sabre FOS, happened during the HP-->US merger.

Back when I worked in the industry, AA's Crew Scheduling application (which we called CREWS) ran on the same mainframe as FOS. And while tightly integrated with FOS, it was thought of as a separate application. AA (and later Sabre [ --> EDS --> HP ] ) actively marketed FOS to other airlines, but not CREWS. FOS allowed some flexible options to adapt to other airline's specific operation parameters, but at the core all airlines operate per FAA (or similar) regulations. For CREWS, the "core" is the union contracts.
For AA alone, it seemed constant program changes were needed as the Pilot and FA contract updates always leap-frogged each other.

I was a FOS Programmer and never worked CREWS, plus I left the industry 16 years ago. I have zero info if/when/how the progression of HP-->US-->AA mergers used CREWS or not.
I would hope that the different "segments" of pmAA's crews had long ago been merged into a single crew sked platform ... that this next step is simply to allow cross bidding (elimination of segments).
But if this step involves moving all crews onto the same platform, I can easily see it being messier than the FOS cutover.

I'm 100% PDBs on UA, hence my shout out to them on my tweet. :)

This is a MAJOR point of competition for someone like me who buys domestic FC tix.

LAA/LUS Flight Attendant Consolidation?
 

Yes https://www.dallasnews.com/business/...nt-integration