NATIONAL SCHEDULING COMMITTEE MEETING

March 16, 2004

Meeting began at 9:00 AM. NWA represented by Brian Moreau (Director-Inflight Planning &Contract Compliance) and Suzanne Balzer (Director-Flight Attendant Scheduling & SLIC). Committee attendees were Tom Geiman-National Coordinator, Greg Boorsma-System Coordinator, Darick Ishihara-Reserve Coordinator, Tracy Walker-PFAA E-Board Liaison, Base Chairs Paul Marr (BOS), Pam Hathaway (MEM), James Yung (NYC), Dean LaFontaine (SEA), Paul Modean (LAX), John Bumanglag (SFO), Lea Wilcox (MSP), Daniel Grey (DTW) and Anne Kinnamon (DTW). PFAA Base Reps JoAnne Kazemi (SFO) and Russ Callison (MEM) attended. NWA FA Managers Stephen Weathersby (MEM), Yvonne Hill (LAX), Joann Taylor (MSP) and Lauri Gomez-Riehle (DTW) attended.

 The meeting began with a discussion of “Carmen.” That’s the brand name for the newest form of the NWA optimizer program. Carmen replaced “altitude.” Carmen is used for the construction of domestic patterns and has helped reduce penalty pay (as defined by NWA) by 50%. In the future, Carmen will be used to construct international patterns as well.

 Carmen works under constraints (hard and soft) as programmed by NWA. Hard restrictions cannot be violated. These would include FARs and contractual work rules. They also include the EWR rules (no originating departures before 0700 or arrivals after 2100). Soft restrictions can be violated though Carmen tries not to. Examples include no domestic patterns longer than 5 days, no one day patterns out of LGA, try to keep common crew on same aircraft when transiting hubs.

 Any optimizer program is an “economic” tool. Optimizer programs are used by most airlines to get the most economic productivity from crews. They are not meant to measure your quality of life. High economic productivity is achieved with multiple day trips, longest possible duty periods with the most flight time, and short layovers or high value turns (no hotel cost). In theory, any optimizer will try to build the longest pattern possible.

 This led right into the topic of too many domestic 5-day patterns and especially ugly 4-day and 5-day patterns at all bases, especially those on the West Coast. This flying includes daily coast to coast flying, very early departures in multiple time zones, extremely short layovers and many long hub sits with the result being crews that become physically ill and irritable long before the trip is over.

 Unfortunately under current economic constraints, current contract language and the nature of NWAs current hub and spoke (route) structure there appears to be little relief in sight. NWA refuses to take the “human factor” into the equation. Any relief will have an associated cost and they are not willing to go there. It appears that if FAs want to be rid of these undesirable, long, grueling patterns we will have to change the constraints (work rules) used by Carmen. That means negotiating improved contract language. Thoughts on this should be brought to the attention of your next Negotiations Committee.

 Ironically, Hector Adler stopped by to thank the committee for its involvement and commented that a FAs schedule is the most important thing to them and how a good schedule makes for happy FAs and happy FAs make for good customer service.  Hmmm.

 NEW FLYING

 NRT-PDX     NWA agreed to begin this route after negotiations with the city of Portland and the state of Oregon. Guarantees are in place that local governments will make up any revenue shortfalls for a certain length of time (this is common in the industry). Flights will begin in June with DC-10 aircraft, transitioning to A330-200 in October, subject to aircraft deliveries. HNL base will staff these flights for two primary reasons. 1) HNL is extremely overstaffed and this pattern will help to alleviate that. 2) HNL and SFO are the only bases sending DC-10 common crews to NRT. HNL has two daily flights to NRT, SFO one. If SFO did the PDX trip EVERY international pattern at that base would be 6 days or longer. With HNL doing PDX that base will continue to see the range of 3 to 8 day patterns (including seasonal KIX and MSP when base headcount can accommodate) it now has. When HNL base is flying NRT (2), KIX, PDX, GUM and SPN they should expect to see minimal mainland flying and possibly less south of NRT Purser flying.

 PDX PATTERN                          #21    HNL/NRT    12:30PM     3:45 PM        8:15 Block

                                                #6      NRT/PDX      3:10 PM    8:15 AM        9:05 Block

                                                #5      PDX/NRT      1:50 PM    4:15 PM       10:25 Block

                                                 #22    NRT/HNL      9:10 PM    9:35 AM        7:15 Block        

                                             35:00  six-day trip, not extended duty

 757-300 HNL/WEST COAST     These flights begin in July and will be staffed with five or six FAs. No Pursers as per contract. Will most often be staffed with LAX or SEA crews, though HNL reserves can expect to be on these flights occasionally and HNL may see some domestic patterns pop up in open time using these flights to begin a domestic pattern (not often). No SFO/HNL flight for now. NWA is looking at LAX/Maui, and LAX or SEA/Kona.

 CHARTERS     NWA is bidding aggressively on military charters, both domestic and international. We have idle wide-body aircraft that can be used easily for this flying. Most trips are not known early enough to be built into analysis and will show up in open flying. These charters are very profitable for NWA.

 A330-300     Three more aircraft are scheduled for delivery this year. One in March will be used for DTW/CDG. One in April will be used for DTW/AMS. One in May will be used for DTW/FCO (seasonal), then transition to DTW/LGW in the fall.

 A330-200     Seven aircraft are expected this year beginning in July. First route will be NRT/ICN beginning in August. September- SFO/NRT. October-PDX/NRT and NRT/PEK. November- SEA/NRT and NRT/HKG. December- NRT/SIN.

 The introduction of the A330-200 to south of NRT flying will make Purser/chaser pattern construction very difficult for several months. Factors involved in pattern construction include completion of A330 training by base, possession of Chinese Visa and number of Pursers each base sends to NRT each day. This is actually a third reason why HNL base was chosen for NRT/PDX route and A330 training. Since HNL sends two Pursers to NRT each day, having them A330 qualified will help a lot with pattern construction. HNL Pursers should continue to expect to see few 3-day patterns if KIX ends again in the fall of 2004. Some bases should expect to see some very unusual patterns during the transition of the A330 into the NRT operation. Trips of 8 to 12 days might happen. By October virtually all FAs in DTW, SEA, HNL, SFO and the Pacific Division will be A330 trained. This qualification is in SLIC and SLIC will not award you an A330 trip if you don’t have the qualification.

 GLODEN WEEK 2004     There are some additional GUM and SPN frequencies scheduled for Golden Week. No other additional frequencies planned.

 AMSTERDAM     MSP/AMS is double daily operated by NWA. KLM will add a third seasonal flight this summer. KLM is resuming AMS/ATL (halted after 9/11). NWA has ambitious London expansion plans if we ever get approval to use Heathrow. No plans to expand at Gatwick.

 SKY TEAM     Some decisions are expected in April or May as to NWAs entry into Sky Team. There are no firm plans as of today. Additional flying to Europe is completely dependent on final Sky Team acceptance and aircraft availability. If one looks at the current Sky Team members (Air France, Delta, Alitalia, and Korean Air among others) you can easily imagine the possibilities of new NWA routes and/or additional frequencies.

SCHEDULING

STAFFING     No plans for further recalls in 2004. About 1200 are still on furlough. No plans for additional long term leaves. One month leaves will continue to be used to deal with base overages. Only the months of July (20) and November (50) show any possibility of a system shortage of FAs.

In general the hub bases continue to be understaffed while all other bases are overstaffed. This concept is based purely on economics (it is generally most economic to construct all domestic patterns from the hub bases). Most non-hub bases were originally staffed to larger sizes when they had multiple international departures. Most now have one or two. That has created the perceived base overstaffing problems. There continue to be no plans to force transfers to change base sizes. However, beginning in June NWA will be looking at which bases to open (in August) for transfers. At that point if you transfer into an open base you are not replaced at your old base and it becomes smaller.

HIGH DENSITY     Current staffing guidelines call for 12 FAs (3/9) for full ship (30/400). As of 3/16/04 base management will again be able to call scheduling to request an additional (12^th) FA if the load at that time dictates. If you are in NRT and become aware of a staffing situation attempt to call your base first to have them request an add FA.

PURSER      The numbers of Pursers being trained in April and May are:  DTW-68, HNL-11, MEM-26, SEA-7. This training is contractual and will bring all bases up to the X plus 200% minimum requirement.

HNL has seen a wide variance in the number of Purser hours over the last nine months. There are two reasons. 1) Loss of KIX flight. 2) It’s easier when building analysis to move the Purser position for the whole month rather than day by day. So if we lose MSP/HNL, we lose it for the entire month and that causes a large variance in hours.

CREW COORDINATORS     Neil Kennelly answered a few questions about Crew Coordinators. CCs take over once your trip report time begins. They oversee pilots and flight attendants. There are 23 CCs. Typically there will be 6 on for morning shift, 6 for afternoon/evening and 4 overnight.  CC will try to let crew know of definite delays when we are at a layover hotel. They may not do so if an aircraft swap is possible which could eliminate or minimize the delay.

New “Crew Recovery” system is working well. It “red flags” problems much earlier than previous systems. This leads to timelier rescheduling and better options for coordinators. CCs do look at your rescheduling preferences (time permitting) though not as much as schedulers do.

When report times are changed downline due to crew rest legalities, the layover station is not normally advised.  Eventually, any change in report time will pop up on the crew name list that the CSAs use when verifying IDs at the gate.

CREW SCHEDULING     Suzanne Balzer is Director, FA Scheduling and Operations. There are five Duty Managers (Sandy Montijo, David Zweber, Kris Pearson, Nikole Wittenberg and Randy Thompson), 23 schedulers and 5 clerks. Suzanne has taken over SLIC duties from Brian.

NRT Crew scheduling will close. All Pacific Division FAs and IFSRs will be handled by MSP schedulers. NRT was parallel operation and its closing will save several hundred thousand dollars a year. Pacific division typically generates a very low call volume and few schedule changes. Conversely, MSP scheduling oversees more than 40,000 schedule change requests per month by US based FAs.

REPORTING     Some bases have experienced the “bat phone.” This is a dedicated phone at the base that they use to “sign in” (report) instead of a sign-in sheet. It is answered by the first available scheduler which has caused some hold times and stressed FAs. The system will be automated in the near future (not answered by a scheduler anymore) and will be in all bases by fall. No more sign in. Don’t be late!

When a FA makes the 2 ½ to 8 hour call and learns their flight is delayed there are two things that can happen. If the delay is scheduled to be less than 30 minutes report time is not changed-report as usual. If the delay is 30 minutes or more it should trigger an automatic transfer to a scheduler so you can be notified of your new report time.  If the report time has already been changed, it will be automatically voiced to you during the call.  If you have any confusion call a scheduler.

HOLIDAYS     Holiday pay is working. Less use of critical bid and very few sick calls on the actual holiday, but a lot of sick calls were made during the week between. High time was used extensively at the end of 2003. Many FAs that were in the system (flying) were forced to cover additional flying (more days) until they became illegal (30/7, 35/7 or 24/7). Some recalled FAs tried to get off flights when they thought they were illegal only to find that since they had not updated their SLIC screen since furlough they had a higher threshold than they thought. If you’re sick, don’t fly. But keep in mind the ramifications to your flying partners at certain times of the year.

CENTRY     Centry processes twice a day, PLAP and SLAP. Each run is done in the following order: 1) mutual trades, 2) centry requests by category, 3) one-way trades. Downward adjusts are done separately once a day at 11 AM and they only look forward 3 days. They are not part of PLAP or SLAP.

Schedulers see three notification codes when a change occurs to a FAs line: J, N, and O. J means the change affects a flight in the next four hours and the scheduler must immediately try to contact the FA (phone, page, ACARS). N means the change is more than four hours away. The contact need not be immediate but still must be made. O means the change to schedule was initiated by the FA (open flying, trade, etc.). Scheduling does not need to notify the FA, they must notify themselves.

CREW COMP ADD PROGRAM     This is a relatively new program used only to save NWA money through reduced short crew compensation. It is run daily after SLAP. It identifies flights for the next day where loads dictate an add FA. It then creates a one-day pattern. This pattern may show on the open board but it is too late for a lineholder to pick up or trade for. The only time these patterns will be created and assigned is if there are an excess of reserves at a given base and the reserves will clearly not reach the 75 hour guarantee. There is no hotel cost therefore since the pattern is virtually free to NWA (minimum per diem) they save substantial money by not paying short crew pay. You typically won’t see this during months or times when reserves are heavily used.

RESERVE     The reserve assignment board updates itself every time a scheduler does something to a reserve, therefore it changes often at large bases, less often at smaller bases. Currently if you want to drop one GDO you have to drop them all. This doesn’t make sense and there are ongoing discussions between NWA and PFAA to make changes.

Ideally, NWA would like 12-15% of a given base to be on reserve. This fluctuates depending on base hours and SLIC bid results.

A reserve preference must be entered before the SLAP in order to be used in that days assignments

(reserve assignments are done after SLAP). A generic preference stays in until a new preference is made. Remember that preferencing works best when there are multiple trips available to fly (larger bases). Only one reserve preference request stays active. 

DW CHANGED TO PP     Due to improved computer systems every DW position creates an E ticket file. This removes a seat for sale from PARS inventory. When a FA requests early or delayed DW, or is removed from the pattern, the E ticket is canceled and the seat is released back to PARS for sale. This process runs every six hours. When the number of common crews plus the number of remaining DW FAs equal the number of jumpseats on that aircraft all remaining DW positions may then be converted to PP. This releases more seats for sale. Obviously the earlier this can be done the better the chance to sell that seat. It’s all about money! Request for early or delay DW is on first come basis. As soon as you know you want it, request it. It cannot be done for the following month until a given base’s bid resolution period is over.

757     Brian is still looking at creating bid patterns specific to the 757-300 since it has a different minimum crew requirement. At this time we don’t have a large enough fleet to justify this. And it is less likely since many of these planes will be dedicated to the HNL/West coast market. There has been an increase in the amount of delays attributed to FAs arriving late to the gate of a connecting flight due to short connect times. The minimum connect time for the 757 has been increased to try to alleviate these delays, so sit time on 757 patterns will more than likely increase.

The next meeting of the National Scheduling Committee and NWA was set for November 9, 2004. A tour of the SOC (Systems Operations Control) will be planned.