Toddnel

It's stands for International Service Manager and Flight Service Manager.

The different times is one thing I don't understand. We used to have the same van time in HGK until it was changed to the pilots leaving 30 mins earlier. The result is now the pilots sit at the airport waiting for the plane to be pulled up for 30 more minutes. Seems like a huge waste of money. I've never felt like we didn't have enough planning time.

Moombabeach

Van drivers give you the pickup time 90% of the time, and frequently it's on the hotel sign in sheet.

SpecialTracking

Why should we have to track down our pickup times? If someone is too lazy to incorporate it into our id audit trail then caveat emptor.



I guess that's why this thread has lasted this long.

Airhoss

Not true^^^^.

This a simple fix on the companies part there is no reason to be a management apologist. Instead of apologizing for management and their runaway incompetence the right answer is to demand and assure that these issues are fixed.

hopeSales

Airhoss, we can give this attitude a name. How does CALism sound?

CRM114

Is the ISM and FSM a Flight Attendant position or are they a non-crewmember concierge? (UA has tried the concierge thing in the past)

Under different contracts, the FAs can have one showtime and the pilots have another. The company obviously would love to save money and lump everyone into one van although someone is probably having their contract eroded by that practice. The "time behind the door" in the UPA and 117 rest rules will help them do the right thing, but I still maintain it's each pilot's obligation to check the math and adjust as needed. It's well within our contractual right to not be forced into showing up early to work out of convenience to someone else.

nopac6

I don't understand it either. Before we lost LAX-NRT to the 787, they had us showing up in ops TWO HOURS before departure time. Ridiculous! I don't know if that's been corrected but what a waste of time that is.

Now, we're being dropped off so late in HNL that we're arriving in ops 40 minutes before departure time. If I have to talk to TOMC or dispatch about ANYTHING, I'm not getting to the cockpit until 20 minutes before pushback. That's nuts too.

The only place that seems to nail it every time is LHR where we almost always walk into ops 60 minutes before departure. That's perfect for me.

nopac6

That's true and it seems like there has to be a way for that to be sufficient but right now it isn't sufficient because very often, the van driver's time doesn't agree with the sign-in sheet's time. Then you call the transportation company on the phone and get a 3rd time. If you could ever get through to the hotel desk, they'd probably give you a 4th time.

That's why the UA guys are fixated on this. When the pickup time was published IN the pairing, that was always the "genuine" universally accepted standard. And I don't remember there being discrepancies very often when that was the policy but if there ever were discrepancies, everybody would default to the time listed in the pairing and that would eliminate any doubt or confusion.

It was a good system for us. I think the CAL guys probably think we're nuts for obsessing over this because they presumably had a system that worked too and it didn't require having the pickup time published in the pairing. Whatever, let's use that system then. Anything that can eliminate the constant confusion that exists over what frickin' time we're supposed to be down in the lobby. It seems so unnecessary.

nopac6

That's exactly right. There are differences in contracts to start with, and now it's further complicated by 117 rules that only apply to pilots.

I agree with what you're saying about it being each pilot's obligation to enforce the contract but that's a different issue than what's being discussed here. We can't determine if the pickup time is in compliance with the contract if we can't even figure out what the pickup time is!

nopac6

Hey Todd, since we have you on the frequency, please allow me a little thread drift.

I noticed the company has EWR-HKG scheduled at exactly 16:00 block time (obviously to avoid the need to have a 2nd captain). How often does that flight go over the 16 hours?

The reason I ask is because ORD-HKG is something like 250 miles less distance and they're planning that at 15:55. I pulled up both flight plans for yesterday and they were both planned to cruise between .82 and .83 so there's no difference there. They're both flying polar tracks so the winds should be pretty close.

The company used to plan LAX-NRT in the 777 at 11:55 in the winter in order to avoid adding the 4th pilot but the flight went over 12:00 so often that the FAA went ballistic and forced them to put a more realistic time on it.