guppie

In July, there were 23 Flt Ops cancellations.
In August, there were 49 Flt Ops cancellations.
We operated approximately 62,000 flights each month according to Howard. Do the math on that.

Andy

I would consider 65% of reserve days used as critically undermanned. I'm not going to dig through the data but I suspect that NB reserves worked their butts off to get the percentage that high.

All of the premium pay that popped up last month should be a clear indicator that the company is undermanned for our surge months. I'm not looking forward to the upcoming holidays.

guppie

That's the way it should work. A little tight on manpower in summer and on holidays, a little fat the rest of the year. Critically undermanned?
Maybe by the old UAL standards, but .08% cancellations at the PEAK of summer is jack squat. Tells me they could push it WAY farther. See SWA if you want to see understaffed. JA is the only way they run that place during the summer.

Andy

Do you have a number on the amount of premium pay spent this last summer? There's a reason why we've been announcing so many extra newhire classes this winter.

That .08% cancellation rate came at a high price in terms of premium pay. Absent premium pay, the cancellation rate would have been significantly higher.

Sunvox

Yes, the monthly reports detail premium pay, and no, it wasn't much different than last summer.

Also you can't say with certainty that without premium pay people wouldn't pick up trips. Premium pay is part of today's equation so pilots have adapted. If it didn't exist they would adapt in a different way. I know of one senior Airbus captain who played the drop then pick up game. If premium pay wasn't an option, I'm not sure he would have dropped anything. Ironically he picked up a trip he dropped, and got paid twice. Not a good process from a profitability standpoint, but I suspect that particular situation is not normal.

guppie

Andy, you know it costs less to pay premium pay during the summer and holidays than it does to pay full year salaries and bennies to be fat. As an added bonus... when the party stops, maybe we won’t have to furlough 2,172 pilots.

fanaticalflyer

Bingo! And that's the part the old UAL guard needs to get. I'm sick of hearing we need to be manpower positive. That's old school and not competitive with our peers. And not fiscally efficient either. We need to be rightly staffed. To have to senior man for 4 months out of the year is much better than wasting money on salaries, benefits, 401Ks, etc. for the other 8 months. This summer was an anomaly because the senior manning was high in certain fleets and definitely at certain bases. The training center was under construction and constrained along with the leftover wide body displacements. We will be back to normal for next summer. Yes, there will be some senior manning but no where near what we've just seen. I saw high SRM on the 757, 2 and 3 years ago in LAX and not just during the summer . it was minimal this summer and almost zero outside of summer. That's why the super senior guys started leaving, that normally would have hung out for SRM. This super-critical shortage stuff from Andy is way off. Our operations were the best in years.

Andy

An alternative solution is to add flights to destinations that are marginally profitable during the slower times of year. Florida, Hawaii, the Caribbean, Costa Rica to name a few. Grow the block hours and grow the airline.

IHateYou

Future chief pilot.

4V14T0R

Isn’t that what Kirby is doing? Not necessarily those destinations, but more capacity growth during off peak.


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