FedEx sleep rooms
03-05-2013, 05:44 AM
#61
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Dec 2006
Posts: 2,094
..So the sleep room sign in person types in your employee number and it pops up the kind of room you are getting from VIPS (yes, VIPS knows) and gives you a key. It the changes the remote sign it controls in front of flight coordination, which has a display like:
Hub turn: 22
Work out: 14
Work in: 17
Other: 8
You would know if your kind of room is available and if you would be given a key when you type in your employee number at the sign in room...
Hub turn: 22
Work out: 14
Work in: 17
Other: 8
You would know if your kind of room is available and if you would be given a key when you type in your employee number at the sign in room...
If you do, feel free to implement FxCal across the board as a replacement to VIPS. If you need us to vote on it, just let us know.
03-05-2013, 05:47 AM
#62
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jul 2007
Position: 767 Captain
Posts: 3,989
03-05-2013, 06:02 AM
#63
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jul 2007
Position: Gear Monkey
Posts: 3,199
I agree completely
03-05-2013, 06:06 AM
#64
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jul 2007
Position: Gear Monkey
Posts: 3,199
Pipe - You are correct - There should be enough sleep rooms for all. Do not know if the Company planned for this amount this time, or just got all they could with the limited space or money.
Either way, all rooms should be used every night if someone wants one, but there should be a pecking order that is enforced.
Let me be a computer geek, as you would expect no less.
Let's say the agreed pecking order is:
Airport standby.
Hub turn, working in and out.
FedEx jump to MEM, work outbound.
Work inbound, FedEx jump outbound.
Other.
So the sleep room sign in person types in your employee number and it pops up the kind of room you are getting from VIPS (yes, VIPS knows) and gives you a key. It the changes the remote sign it controls in front of flight coordination, which has a display like:
Hub turn: 22
Work out: 14
Work in: 17
Other: 8
You would know if your kind of room is available and if you would be given a key when you type in your employee number at the sign in room.
The sign in computer would project the number of rooms needed that night for each category. It knows from VIPS the number of hub turners. Some guys never get sleep rooms, they could make a default selection in VIPS to have no room held for them. It knows from VIPS and JS, who would get rooms in the all the remaining categories. It would monitor off times and cancel a room slot when that bird was going to get to MEM too late to need a room. If a very early arrival did not claim the room by say an hour after arrival in MEM, it would cancel that room.
Point is, a smart computer at sign in, could enforce the priority of room availability, yet allow for max room utilization, getting all hub turn, jump in-work out, most of the work in-jump home category rooms and on some nights allowing 'other'.
All transparent to the pilot that has a nice screen at flight coordination to see if it is worth taking the 'walk of shame' back to the sign in desk.
And easy enforcement, as we are our own worst enemies and cannot and should not have to police ourselves on this point.
Either way, all rooms should be used every night if someone wants one, but there should be a pecking order that is enforced.
Let me be a computer geek, as you would expect no less.
Let's say the agreed pecking order is:
Airport standby.
Hub turn, working in and out.
FedEx jump to MEM, work outbound.
Work inbound, FedEx jump outbound.
Other.
So the sleep room sign in person types in your employee number and it pops up the kind of room you are getting from VIPS (yes, VIPS knows) and gives you a key. It the changes the remote sign it controls in front of flight coordination, which has a display like:
Hub turn: 22
Work out: 14
Work in: 17
Other: 8
You would know if your kind of room is available and if you would be given a key when you type in your employee number at the sign in room.
The sign in computer would project the number of rooms needed that night for each category. It knows from VIPS the number of hub turners. Some guys never get sleep rooms, they could make a default selection in VIPS to have no room held for them. It knows from VIPS and JS, who would get rooms in the all the remaining categories. It would monitor off times and cancel a room slot when that bird was going to get to MEM too late to need a room. If a very early arrival did not claim the room by say an hour after arrival in MEM, it would cancel that room.
Point is, a smart computer at sign in, could enforce the priority of room availability, yet allow for max room utilization, getting all hub turn, jump in-work out, most of the work in-jump home category rooms and on some nights allowing 'other'.
All transparent to the pilot that has a nice screen at flight coordination to see if it is worth taking the 'walk of shame' back to the sign in desk.
And easy enforcement, as we are our own worst enemies and cannot and should not have to police ourselves on this point.
Let's attack the 800 lb gorilla with some technology and innovation.
03-05-2013, 12:28 PM
#65
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jul 2006
Posts: 503
I don't see that anything has been done in the sleep room area for several weeks. At the very least, they should move the recliners into unfinished rooms. At least then you can have a dark place with somewhat less noise to sleep. If mgt does not like that then go buy a bunch of old army bunks and put them up where the flight ops admin used to be, throw a bunch of futons on the floor of the old TV room, hang hammocks in a conference room.....DO SOMETHING. If you do not get a room on a turn you are hard pressed to sleep. It really is sad.
03-05-2013, 01:10 PM
#66
Organizational Learning
Joined APC: Nov 2005
Position: Directly behind the combiner
Posts: 4,948
There should be a sleep room available for every pilot who is on Airport Standby or hubturning. Those can be tracked through VIPS.
After Airport Standbys and hubturns, the tracking gets complicated. The priority for assigning those rooms -- the pecking order -- is debatable, and the methodology for tracking can become far more complicated.
That would be V1.0, and I have a feeling we'd be somewhere in the neighborhood of V3.6 before we could find a compromise on pecking order that the majority would support.
Not everyone gets to Memphis or home on a FedEx jumpseat. Some people jumpseat on commercial airlines to get to Memphis in the morning so they can operate out in the afternoon. Some people operate in to Memphis in the middle of the night and take a commercial airline jumpseat home early in the morning.
Some people drive long distances. One might make the argument that a person driving to Little Rock after operating in from Great Falls needs a sleep room more than a pilot who is jumpseating to Orlando.
The pecking order is just the first problem. The bigger problem for the computer is collecting the data, because it's not ALL in VIPS. How do you know pilot X is coming to Memphis on AA or DL? How do you know that pilot Y is driving to Birmingham as soon as he's off duty?
I think we'd wind up back at the point of lumping all of those categories into "OTHER" and releasing rooms on a space available, first-come first-served basis.
So the sleep room sign in person types in your employee number and ... gives you a key. It the changes the remote sign it controls in front of flight coordination, ...
You would know if your kind of room is available and if you would be given a key when you type in your employee number at the sign in room.
I think we could do that now, and should. I don't know where the "sign in" desk will be when the remodel is complete, but it might wind up being closer to Flight Coordination so the "walk of shame" could be eliminated.
But let's talk about the walk of shame. If you are on an Airport Standby or are hubturning and a sleep room is not available, there should be no shame in walking to the nearest computer terminal to update your status as fatigued. I know that's not practical now, but when there are enough sleeprooms for everyone on Standby or hubturning, it should never be acceptable for them to not have a room.
As for the "Others", it's no different that any other "Space Available" options a traveler can use. If it's available, great, if it's not, oh well. Woulda been nice, didn't hurt to ask.
And then you'd have The Company asking us to go into VIPS to confirm we're going to use the Sleep Room the same way they've tried to get us to confirm the Hotel Rooms we plan to use. The Contract requires us to cancel hotel rooms that we don't plan to use, and many people won't even do that. They wait until the last possible second to allow for contingencies that occur at the last second.
But now we see The Company going beyond that and requiring us (through VIPS programming -- you view a certain screen, you cannot view any other until you take a certain action) to CONFIRM hotels you intend to use -- an EXTRA-contractual requirement.
I think we'd see similar behaviour, with pilots being reluctant to "cancel" their sleep rooms because they "might" want to use it, or "might" change their mind at the last minute. I know I'd rather be safe than sorry -- I'd want the room "just in case" I get to Memphis and feel tired. And I wouldn't be surprised if we suddenly one day found ourselves being required to CONFIRM in VIPS the sleep rooms we intend to use.
The system could monitor ETAs, but it could not track what Crew Scheduling has planned for the pilot. What if the pilot arriving late is on Reserve, and Crew Scheduling removes him from his scheduled outbound and puts him on a later outbound. Now he needs the sleep room again.
What if that very early arrival decided to make a quick run to the crashpad, or McDonalds, or goes to the computer to submit his monthly bid before taking a nap during the last hour of his hub turn?
Whoa. You know that's not possible. Computers aren't smart. From one Comp Sci guy to another, we both know that computers are dumb -- they only do exactly what we tell them. The problem we're always trying to solve is how to tell them what we mean for them to do. What we meant to say in English didn't exactly match the algorithm we wrote in the computer's language. They don't do what we want, they do what we say.
So we revise the algorithm, and sometimes change the revision number.
CBA language isn't that flexible or easy to change.
I like the remote "ROOMS"/"NO ROOMS" idea.
I like the idea of tapping VIPS to enforce the rules ... until I consider the implications of giving VIPS access to the Sleep Room Monitor. There are already misgivings about how many different people have access to our VIPS calendars as it is. Do we really want to give that access to another vendor?
Ehh, maybe we can invent a special terminal where we can touch our ID card to a reader and the screen will display a color-coded light. Blue gets me an Airport Standby room, Green gets me a hubturn room, and Orange puts me on the Space Available list.
Or ... maybe we could put those card readers on the doors to each individual sleep room, and we could sign in to VIPS on any terminal and have the sleep room assigned to us directly -- eliminate the Sleep Room Monitor altogether.
Or ...
It would be so much easier if we could just count on each other to follow the rules.
.
Not everyone gets to Memphis or home on a FedEx jumpseat. Some people jumpseat on commercial airlines to get to Memphis in the morning so they can operate out in the afternoon. Some people operate in to Memphis in the middle of the night and take a commercial airline jumpseat home early in the morning.
Some people drive long distances. One might make the argument that a person driving to Little Rock after operating in from Great Falls needs a sleep room more than a pilot who is jumpseating to Orlando.
The pecking order is just the first problem. The bigger problem for the computer is collecting the data, because it's not ALL in VIPS. How do you know pilot X is coming to Memphis on AA or DL? How do you know that pilot Y is driving to Birmingham as soon as he's off duty?
I think we'd wind up back at the point of lumping all of those categories into "OTHER" and releasing rooms on a space available, first-come first-served basis.
So the sleep room sign in person types in your employee number and ... gives you a key. It the changes the remote sign it controls in front of flight coordination, ...
You would know if your kind of room is available and if you would be given a key when you type in your employee number at the sign in room.
But let's talk about the walk of shame. If you are on an Airport Standby or are hubturning and a sleep room is not available, there should be no shame in walking to the nearest computer terminal to update your status as fatigued. I know that's not practical now, but when there are enough sleeprooms for everyone on Standby or hubturning, it should never be acceptable for them to not have a room.
As for the "Others", it's no different that any other "Space Available" options a traveler can use. If it's available, great, if it's not, oh well. Woulda been nice, didn't hurt to ask.
But now we see The Company going beyond that and requiring us (through VIPS programming -- you view a certain screen, you cannot view any other until you take a certain action) to CONFIRM hotels you intend to use -- an EXTRA-contractual requirement.
I think we'd see similar behaviour, with pilots being reluctant to "cancel" their sleep rooms because they "might" want to use it, or "might" change their mind at the last minute. I know I'd rather be safe than sorry -- I'd want the room "just in case" I get to Memphis and feel tired. And I wouldn't be surprised if we suddenly one day found ourselves being required to CONFIRM in VIPS the sleep rooms we intend to use.
Whoa. You know that's not possible. Computers aren't smart. From one Comp Sci guy to another, we both know that computers are dumb -- they only do exactly what we tell them. The problem we're always trying to solve is how to tell them what we mean for them to do. What we meant to say in English didn't exactly match the algorithm we wrote in the computer's language. They don't do what we want, they do what we say.
So we revise the algorithm, and sometimes change the revision number.
CBA language isn't that flexible or easy to change.
I like the idea of tapping VIPS to enforce the rules ... until I consider the implications of giving VIPS access to the Sleep Room Monitor. There are already misgivings about how many different people have access to our VIPS calendars as it is. Do we really want to give that access to another vendor?
Ehh, maybe we can invent a special terminal where we can touch our ID card to a reader and the screen will display a color-coded light. Blue gets me an Airport Standby room, Green gets me a hubturn room, and Orange puts me on the Space Available list.
Or ... maybe we could put those card readers on the doors to each individual sleep room, and we could sign in to VIPS on any terminal and have the sleep room assigned to us directly -- eliminate the Sleep Room Monitor altogether.
Or ...
It would be so much easier if we could just count on each other to follow the rules.
.
03-05-2013, 01:26 PM
#67
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Aug 2006
Posts: 3,931
Either way, all rooms should be used every night if someone wants one, but there should be a pecking order that is enforced.
So the sleep room sign in person types in your employee number and it pops up the kind of room you are getting from VIPS (yes, VIPS knows) and gives you a key.
You would know if your kind of room is available and if you would be given a key when you type in your employee number at the sign in room.
The sign in computer would project the number of rooms needed that night for each category. It knows from VIPS the number of hub turners. Some guys never get sleep rooms, they could make a default selection in VIPS to have no room held for them. It knows from VIPS and JS, who would get rooms in the all the remaining categories. It would monitor off times and cancel a room slot when that bird was going to get to MEM too late to need a room. If a very early arrival did not claim the room by say an hour after arrival in MEM, it would cancel that room.
Point is, a smart computer at sign in, could enforce the priority of room availability, yet allow for max room utilization, getting all hub turn, jump in-work out, most of the work in-jump home category rooms and on some nights allowing 'other'.
All transparent to the pilot that has a nice screen at flight coordination to see if it is worth taking the 'walk of shame' back to the sign in desk.
And easy enforcement, as we are our own worst enemies and cannot and should not have to police ourselves on this point.
So the sleep room sign in person types in your employee number and it pops up the kind of room you are getting from VIPS (yes, VIPS knows) and gives you a key.
You would know if your kind of room is available and if you would be given a key when you type in your employee number at the sign in room.
The sign in computer would project the number of rooms needed that night for each category. It knows from VIPS the number of hub turners. Some guys never get sleep rooms, they could make a default selection in VIPS to have no room held for them. It knows from VIPS and JS, who would get rooms in the all the remaining categories. It would monitor off times and cancel a room slot when that bird was going to get to MEM too late to need a room. If a very early arrival did not claim the room by say an hour after arrival in MEM, it would cancel that room.
Point is, a smart computer at sign in, could enforce the priority of room availability, yet allow for max room utilization, getting all hub turn, jump in-work out, most of the work in-jump home category rooms and on some nights allowing 'other'.
All transparent to the pilot that has a nice screen at flight coordination to see if it is worth taking the 'walk of shame' back to the sign in desk.
And easy enforcement, as we are our own worst enemies and cannot and should not have to police ourselves on this point.
I think Fleet Fatigue Monitors should be hired to work on issues other than crew errors and squeezing savings from us.
Last edited by Gunter; 03-05-2013 at 01:59 PM.
03-05-2013, 03:52 PM
#69
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2007
Posts: 2,540
Question: granted I'm on the outside looking in, but for all you guys doing hub turns out of MEM why not eventually aim for some kind of a "Port" system, a la WestJet. Basically everyone is based in MEM, but crew sked builds lines that start and end in larger outstations. Some trips it works out, some it doesn't. Point being, as you work the bugs out of the system you could eventually work it so most of the pilots flying domestic could start and stop their trips in cities much closer to home.
03-05-2013, 04:20 PM
#70
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Nov 2006
Position: 767 FO
Posts: 8,047
Question: granted I'm on the outside looking in, but for all you guys doing hub turns out of MEM why not eventually aim for some kind of a "Port" system, a la WestJet. Basically everyone is based in MEM, but crew sked builds lines that start and end in larger outstations. Some trips it works out, some it doesn't. Point being, as you work the bugs out of the system you could eventually work it so most of the pilots flying domestic could start and stop their trips in cities much closer to home.
For the MEM based, about half our trips start at MEM and half start elsewhere. The issue isn't really where we start, it is what do we do for the 2.5 to 5.5 hours where we sit around and wait for the packages to be sorted. Our system for getting to the outstations isn't bad, wouldn't want to see a whole lot of changes there except for how the company cheats us on ticket prices.
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