FlexManFlex

Come on, what human being has a completely empty schedule for 7-12 months at a time? It’s not possible. The whole AE process is way outdated. It’s not fair to blame the pilot in most cases. There should be no reason why planning can’t move things around.

interceptorpilo

Agreed. Thanks for confirming my appreciation of “the Delta Family”.It’s a job at a big Corporation where no one goes out of their way to help anyone else. You are treated like a cog. No one (like blujuice) has any sympathy for you. Don’t expect any different. As soon as you realize that and treat it as such the better off you will be at Delta. Don’t believe the family BS put out by corporate shills. BTW did I say that I didn’t expect a chance of it falling on my vacation? Somebody on this board asked a question about having training moved for a life/family event and I related my negative experience. I put it in the context of “Delta Family” because I was still working under that impression when this happened several years ago.

captkdobbs

I'll second the CPO support system.

I made the mistake of not checking the "Retain Vacation" box on the AE and almost screwed up a life event. As soon as the projected training document came out, they had liquidated my vacation and I was projected to train in the month of my event. As soon as I saw this I sent a 'mia culpa' email to training admitting my mistake, agreeing that it's contractually compliant, but is there any way to get the one weekend off...no response. When the monthly 'training window' (shadow period) was published, my event was smack dab in the middle of the footprint; I sent another request to training, this time CCing the CPO, with a willingness to work around the weekend, I just needed to be there Saturday night and Sunday. Again, no response from training. I stopped into the CPO and talked with them about my situation and explained that I'd been trying to be proactive and flexible, but had gotten no traction; they were in the loop in a reasonable time, I hoped, if needed.

When the training schedule was published they had me in 'E' periods the entire weekend; it's almost like they TRIED to screw me. (I know, probably not, but holy cow, how much worse can you make it?) I went back into the CPO and they said they'd see what they could work out.

After some haggling, training ended up dropping the entire footprint and rescheduling it for the following month. I had to scramble to build a month schedule around my event out of open-time since it was after the monthly schedules came out (not the greatest trips, by the way) but I got the time I needed and didn't lose pay.

Moral of the story: 1) Remember the "Retain Vacation" checkbox. 2) Be proactive and flexible. 3) Hope the CPO can affect change as there are no contractual guarantees, and contract admin can't enforce something that isn't there.

Hawaii50

Agree completely. AEs come out so infrequently and we’re expected to “not bid” if you have any life event on the horizon? That’s BS. Our systems are archaic in so many ways and the AE/training process may be at the top of the list.

FlexManFlex

(Please no one get on to me, I know this isn’t a big deal to some folks on here but it matters to me.)

Yes! For example, there ~may be~ an AE next week and it’s not even talked about. No information, nothing. Crew Resources didn’t even mention it in last week’s news letter which really has me confused. Someone said BS mentioned it in some meeting I guess. Yet they expect us to have a perfect plan in place when bidding is open for the the 10 day window. We don’t have a clue what’s going on and it’s nearly impossible to plan yet they blame the pilots for bidding on the AE.

Look, I love my company and I’m extremely grateful to be working at my dream airline. Every company has their fair share of problems and the AE system is a huge problem in my opinion. We get maybe 3 of these a year. They are a huge deal when it comes to affecting home life. We gotta plan and know what the heck is going on. The company acts like it’s a non-event, just another day in the office but these things are way bigger than that.

PhilMcCrackin

Seems like this AE coming up will have its first conversion date for August 1st. Unfortunately, my seat lock is up August 2nd. This technically means I’m ineligible on this bid correct?

ShegotheD

Correct, your seat lock has to be expired prior to bid closing.

MJP27

You can still bid. However, it not likely to be awarded (companies discretion )

FangsF15

That's just not true. At all. It's like you are willfully ignorant on this issue, and/or want a special countdown page updated daily. Historically, there have been 4 or 5 AE's a year, every year, never less than that. I think this current 5+ month gap is the longest single 'dry spell' in my time here. Also historically, there has never been much indication from CS about future AE's, other than an occasional statement in an AE announcement (which came without notice, btw) about when they thought the next AE might be. BS gives WAY more info than there has typically been. Even to the point of posting the AE days before it goes 'live', and answering direct questions from the masses about details as known on Skyhub or via direct email. And it is not helpful that people snipe at him when his 'best guess' ends up being different, because his bosses changed a variable. He ends up riding the end of the whip just like we do. But if you want to snipe him, he'll just go back to the way they used to do it: Complete silence - that way no-one can complain when it didn't come out exactly at the appointed hour, or there weren't exactly as many X's as (supposedly) promised. I get waiting is hard, but dude....

So you'll have to forgive some of us who have learned the art of having a modicum of patience when it comes to AE's. It will come out when it comes out. But in this case, It has been posted a multitude of times, with a source for you to go listen for yourself, that the next AE will be "late June", and will have a decent number of A positions, which will drive movement in every category.

But to your point, I'm not saying it's a perfect system, but it's what we have. Going forward, the 150-day AE will have to drive more AE's on average. Plus, next year AE 'golden days' start. And a year after that, preferencing your spot (with the precision of a dull axe, but still...) And I totally don't understand why you think you only have 10 days to plan. You can input in iCrew today, what you want, with 99 qualifiers. It should only take a minor tweak, if that, once the AE memo is published.

FlexManFlex

You’re missing my point. I’ve only been here for 5 years so I get that it hasn’t been long but what I’m saying is I don’t care how it use to be I care about how it should be. It is an outdated system. There needs to be more information on them like weekly updates on the future plans with routes, etc from networking. I enjoy this kind of stuff and many others do too. That’s great that BS is giving us more info now than we have gotten in the past. We can agree to disagree but I’m sticking to the fact that we should be kept in the loop more with what networking is thinking and what the next 6 months look like. I know I’m probably coming across as dumb and ignorant but I’m confident they can do better.

My buddies with business 9-5 type jobs have a meeting every single day which management discusses any new information with them. If everything here is constantly changing, which it is, then why don’t we have daily meetings/information posted discussing those changes? 99% of this forum is guessing and speculating. Daily meetings like a quick 5-10 minute video from network and planning would solve that. Just food for thought. I’m not here to change your mind!