Widgets

I call it pro-union propaganda because you're trying to describe the unionized pilots as well taken care of in contrast to the FAs who you're describing as being screwed without hotels or meals. I'm guessing as a NWA FA you used to be unionized and either retired or wish you were unionized now. I'll take my 6% raise from last week and remember why Delta doesn't need a union to mess things up. My only local coworkers who support unionizing are lazy/rude to customers, don't care about doing their jobs well, and likely just want job security to protect them from bad performance reviews. I suspect the same pattern prevails across the system.

I haven't heard of masses of people quitting because of this IROP anywhere. TBH it's not really that bad on the employee side. Employees who want to work extra get to work extra.

apodo77

That would be a bad look if true.

gloyster

... and I am sure that Delta has found the few states that don't and plopped a call center there

Widgets

Haha. But IME, Delta has gone to state legislatures and lobbied for better work rules that its employees support. I testified at my state legislature on behalf of a bill supported by Delta. It benefited both employees and the company. Remember... happy employees don't vote for a union. Delta knows that, so it keeps its employees happy.

Down3Green

There's been a lot of discussion here about whether the Crew Scheduling computer system "went down". Some have pointed to the thread on the AirlinePilotCentral forums as proof that it did. I was right in the middle of this having started a 4 day trip on Wed afternoon and just finishing last night and as far as I know, the computers never went 'down'. What my fellow pilots meant on that thread was that holistically, the entire system of rerouting and more importantly communicating those changes broke down. This is not the first time it's happened, and there are calls to fix it every time it does, but those changes come slowly. I will say that there were some things enacted during this IROP that came from 'lessons learned' from previous ones that may have helped, but obviously they weren't enough given the outcome.

I should start by saying that what many of you are calling Crew Scheduling is actually what we call Crew Tracking. Crew Scheduling is in charge of making sure that there is a complete set of pilots or F/As to start their trips. That trip may be a one day turn or it may be a 9 day global romp, but Crew Scheduling makes sure that there are crewmembers assigned to sign in for those trips on day one. Once you are signed in for that trip and the flying starts, you are now under the purview of Crew Tracking. Any changes to your trip once it starts are made by Crew Tracking. Because the Crew Trackers are more operational in nature, they are physically located in the OCC while the crew schedulers are of in another part of the building.

If I start a 10 leg four day trip, it’s not uncommon for Crew Tracking to notify me after leg 4 that I’m now going to a different city because perhaps some other crew has had a mechanical. This is what we call a “Reroute”. There are a number of ways they may notify me of this Reroute. It could be inflight using the ACARs datalink. It might be using their Robocall Crew Notification system to leave a voicemail. I can also just call them up, particularly if I have questions about new report times or hotels in a city where I wasn’t supposed to be. The hold times to talk to them during your average everyday Reroute are normally measured in seconds and often you get right through. A Crew Tracking Reroute by its nature is often a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. If you pull one crew out of the middle of their trip, you may have to do likewise to another crew to complete the first crew’s trip or the Crew Trackers may have to alert the Crew schedulers to find some Reserve pilots to finish off that trip. Things can also get interesting if they split a crew because perhaps one pilot gets sick mid trip or has a family emergency. Crew Tracking does indeed have a computer program designed to reassemble bits and pieces of trips broken up by Reroutes (it even has a codename). As far as I know that program never failed but the data going into it no doubt became corrupted because the IROP got so big that Tracking no longer knew where many crews were located and the phones became so jammed that nobody could communicate where they were and what they were supposed to be doing. Don’t forget, there are over 20,000 F/As and 13000 pilots floating around the system

Let’s take a plane like a 737 headed from Columbus into ATL. When they get there, it is likely that the plane itself heads out to LAX, the pilots get off and go to LGA, and the F/As get off and head to DFW. So everytime a plane comes in late to ATL, it possible that there will be 3 delayed follow on flights. If you get a typical summer Tstorm in ATL that moves through in a half hour, there will be follow on flights that get delayed but Crew Tracking can handle that with a few judicious Reroutes. Now let’s shut down ATL for a whole afternoon such that our original 737 gets diverted to Knoxville and can’t get out and the pilots time out. Now some crew in LAX that was waiting for that plane later in the day never gets it and the delays and cancellations start to cascade. That flight crew in LAX was supposed to get out and spend the night later in Denver. Now they’ve waited in LAX so long they’ve timed out and they need a hotel to start crew rest so they can at least be used in a timely manner tomorrow, but the phone lines to Crew Tracking have become jammed and they don’t know where to get a hotel or inform Tracking that that’s where they are going. They have to use their own money to arrange transportation and go to a hotel that may not even be a Delta approved site and they just disappear as far as the system is concerned.

As the delays and cancellations mount, you now have a problem with getting crew to show up for sign in on trips that started after the IROP began. Many of us are commuters. We live in a city hundreds to thousands of miles from our base. We fly in using our non rev status to start our trips. A base like NYC, the second largest is around 70-80% commuters. ATL is less so, probably around 40%. As flights cancel, with huge loads from Spring Break, there are no seats left for crewmembers to commute in on. Now trips are going unfilled because nobody can report. One of the great ‘fixes’ in this case was that by Friday, they started positive spacing crewmembers en masse just to get trips started. Whoever came up with that idea deserves a medal because I haven’t seen that done on such a large scale. They also rolled out a system that came as a Lesson Learned from prior events that essentially allows us to ‘text’ Crew Tracking and tell them where we are and what we need (e.g…. ‘must get a hotel’….’running out of duty day’….’missing a First Officer’….etc) . This is critical when there’s simply no live humans to talk to and your current location looks nothing like the trip that they are currently showing on line.

This is way too long and none of it helps you if you were caught up in the delays and had important plans altered. But hopefully it might give some insight as to what happened. Believe me that we get frustrated when we want to fly people but I’m missing a First Officer or the plane that I’m waiting on keeps delaying and I’ve been sitting at the airport for 8 hours and my duty clock is running out.

Widgets

Thanks, Down3Green. Learn something new every day

NoleATL

The Atlanta hub is too big. The more centralized a system is, the bigger the impact when something goes wrong. I imagine it is impossible to prevent such occurrences as Delta is experiencing now. You may be able to minimize it a bit, but not a material amount.

chrislevin

Great write up. It seems more and more a management problem, as in they should have preemptively cancelled flights on Wednesday and perhaps some on Thursday before the storm and then make proper arrangement as where equipment and crew would be.

They do have a lot of hubs, there is no reason to let ATL bog everything down.

nichelle

@Down3Green, thank you for your post. Without real information, people speculate and try to fill in the gaps. That's human. So, I appreciate the information. While it doesn't change the experiences we've had, I think it helps to understand the facts of the situation.

DCAproducer

Just adding a data point; I called the Medallion line around 4:30pm EST today and the recording told me DL could call me back in around 4.5 hours. I've never seen it that backed up and I flew last August when DL's computers collapsed.

NWAFA

Yes, I am retired. That's the difference. I don't have to fear retaliation, you do. You're trying to sugar coat what is happening as not such a big deal when in reality, the operation should have recovered by now.

Fly Safe!

NWA FA

kxc262

Flying BOS-ATL-MCI tomorrow in the evening. Flights looking pretty empty, but I guess I should expect delays and no chance of a VDB.

Widgets

Yes, the operation should have recovered by now.

On a separate issue, your claims that Delta employees are quitting because of this IROP and labor laws are being violated isn't supported by any evidence. It's distracting from the real issues here. I'm not sugar coating the situation, but I'm saying it's not so bad that Delta employees are deciding to quit their jobs over it.

Down3Green

Glad to do it nichelle. During the trip I extended my duty day to complete a leg (the FAA allows that once per trip for 2 hours at pilot discretion) and got to the hotel at 5am.....finished the next day at 3am because of delays. I made a million PAs to the pax trying to explain what was going on. I also tried to act as den mother to a group of F/As when we were later stuck at a hotel trying to figure out what to do when none of us knew where we were supposed to be.

I feel like I worked pretty hard and did the best I could.....but having said that, I saw the huge stacks of cushion mats piled high at MSP that meant hundreds of people spent the night on a hard floor. I saw scores of people pleading on their phones trying to salvage their 'dream vacation'. Believe me, I'm aware of the human toll this disruption exerts

arlflyer

Thanks!