Kurt Heidemann:
Today's SWAPA number is eight, that's how many new overrides are being implemented and paid between now and March 1st.
Lexi Taylor:
Today we're going to talk to SRC Chair, Scott Plyler, and SWAPA Manager of Schedule Analytics, Meagan Nelan, about where we stand so far with implementing the new contract, what's further down the line and what the membership should expect going forward.
Kurt Heidemann:
I'm Kurt Heidemann.
Lexi Taylor:
And I'm Lexi Taylor. And here's our interview with Scott and Meagan.
First of all, there seems to be a lot of questions about what's being implemented and why. Can you elaborate on a timeline and how you decided what goes first and what goes next?
Scott Plyler:
Well, we started work on the prioritization probably in the summer last year. Mostly what we were looking to is to expedite the items that impacted the most pilots and had the most benefits. Obviously you see things like pay coming in, pay multiples, LCO, all that stuff, but a lot of that requires tech as well. We were trying to find what could be done manually first, even if it's a little bit messy, and then get the tech later. All that requires a little bit of patience as we build and work through these manual processes, but at least we get paid now and we get more of these things implemented sooner.
One other thing we want to do is reemphasize that all of these dates are no later than dates. A lot of them could be moved up sooner. Some of these first ones, it's a big rush to get things done, so I don't anticipate many things being moved up here the first few months, but as we get into this cadence and work on collaboration, we're probably going to see some things get moved up. Right now though, it's just about prioritization and bundling certain items together that go together. Maybe one item could be done sooner, but we want to do some of these things as a package, like when we do all the ELIT changes, we want to do those as a package. A lot of the reserve items, we want to do that as a package just to keep things all together. We did that in the timeline as well.
Kurt Heidemann:
Speaking of that timeline, walk us through the big items that have already been implemented as of February 1st or DOR.
Meagan Nelan:
I would say that the biggest thing from our scheduling world would be the leg change override. Probably worth pointing out that there was a lot of technology already being worked on even before we had a ratified deal in preparation of that successfully going through. They were already putting some work into that CWA logic to then add. You'll see there's two new columns pertaining to LCO within your pairing. It's also in your payroll report and happy to see that that's all been launched successfully and it's in line with what we intended for all that to work.
Kurt Heidemann:
Scott, anything to add? Any other major changes besides LCO pay multiples that sort of our pilots were most interested in capturing upfront?
Scott Plyler:
One thing was the reserve being released on the last day when they actually get in at block in, if they didn't have anything on their board. We even saw one pilot get reassigned two minutes after the block in. We called them on it and they came out of it. We're seeing things like that being implemented and being followed by scheduling. That was a big improvement for reserves.
Lexi Taylor:
What kind of education are you seeing for pilots to know what's going to be implemented next?
Scott Plyler:
Well, we use the weekly snapshot. We'll probably have some additional emails going out as well. SRCs all working on an update for the scheduling handbook. We're looking to put that out in early March for all the DOR February and March changes. We have RP articles. We have one on LCO and pay multiples going out in February. I know Compson working with us on a new contract version with the implementation dates on it. I know a lot of pilots will find that helpful so they can actually reference in the contract in one place what's actually been implemented, what's still waiting on.
Meagan Nelan:
That's probably been one of the struggles is that you're having to reference the contract, you're having to reference an implementation schedule. You're having to reference all the various Comm that we've put out. Having it all in one document is going to be good for everybody to then reference what's coming next.
Kurt Heidemann:
And I'll add, we presented this and we've shared that with the company, the implementation and speak to the listeners about that sort of process about working and we've had our first joint implementation meetings. How has that kind of been?
Meagan Nelan:
Well, it's probably worth noting that this is going to continue to require constant updating. Scott already mentioned that these were all no later than dates, but once we start seeing further testing and further work done on the programming, we're going to have more finite targets of okay, exactly on this day they're going to flip whatever switch and that's going to be the next thing that goes into CWA. Once we have better information and more updates, we're going to have to constantly be updating all the dates within that contract reference so that the pilots have just the best information of what's happening.
Lexi Taylor:
Do you see any contentious items coming out of those joint implementation committee meetings?
Scott Plyler:
Right now we haven't had a lot of contention in those meetings. We have had to bring up a lot of issues, things that have come up either in how they're executing things or how the process wasn't working ideally. Honestly, the joint implementation committee meeting this past week was just one of many meetings. We've had them with crew planning, we've had with scheduling, with scheduling training, we've had it with IT and we have daily, almost hourly emails going back and forth about implementation items just to make sure there's clarification on what we did agree to in the room. That way it gets programmed correctly. We've had previews of the training materials for the schedulers that we were able to go through and make sure that they were correct based on our understanding of what we had agreed to, just to make sure that they start on the right foot and we don't have to undo any kind of education on this new contract. So far we've had a lot of collaboration on it.
Kurt Heidemann:
Would you consider that, obviously it's a positive, but you mentioned the reserve guy who got assigned two minutes later and we called him on it and they said no. It sounds like there's generally a good faith effort so far, that the company's doing its best. Would you say that or do you think that they could do better?
Scott Plyler:
Right now, I think there has been a good faith effort. The whole purpose of the rewrite was to reset policies, practices, understanding of the contract, and I'm seeing that that's what's actually taking place. Trying to collaborate, make sure we all have the same understanding about how things are going to work going forward. We have a lot of, not just the notes from negotiations, but now we have emails and texts going back and forth just clarifying over and over again that this is the way things need to work going forward. And we haven't had a whole lot of pushback on how it's going to work going forward. We've had more discussions about we're having an issue with the tech in order to implement that. How do we want that done manually? What's the expectations for when something will be done? That's mostly what we've been working through.
Lexi Taylor:
Megan, you mentioned pallets will have to look at multiple places to see if it's implemented or if it's using current contract or the old contract or a bridge. Can you speak a little bit more about the bridge process?
Meagan Nelan:
Sure. I mean, we don't really have an elegant solution as far as a one-stop shop to get all your questions answered. And that's just kind of the nature of this having a whole rewrite of a document that's not all implemented day of ratification. It's coming in waves. You're going to have to still use old book provisions for some things until they're able to get the technology in place or get the training in place, get the new provisions in place. I mean, we're taking it one issue at a time. We're trying to put out education as best as we can. It requires some patience from everybody involved to then navigate what goes in when and what's right for now and not letting things fall into excess grievances that we can just handle.
Kurt Heidemann:
Lexi, I'll jump in and add to that. When we're going through that document and trying to set dates, it's not as simple as saying vacation changes in 2027 or whatever because some of it changes immediately, like shifting vacations and then other things don't change until next year's bidding where floating vacations will go away and then some things don't change until the actual vacation bidding process of any two weeks happens in a couple of years. It's not as simple as saying vacation changes then. I think that's part of what we all as an NC and SRC and everybody, Comm that's involved in this is struggling to give as much detail as we can without making it just totally down in the weeds where you lose track of everything.
Scott Plyler:
One example of where we even had to do some collaboration on the bridge is we just introduced LCO and pay multiples February 1st. Well, that was originally intended to be just pairing starting February 1st, but in actually doing the programming for it, they found they had to do that at the duty period level. We actually captured pay multiples for pairings starting in January, rolling over. We actually have two different payrolls within the same pairing, but ultimately they pay the pilots more. Of course we're not going to argue with that, but it's things like that. Do we really want to hold our feet to the firearm one way or the other? Are we being a little bit flexible and collaborative with that? And then we can be then more flexible and collaborative in other ways when maybe they have something that's not quite as beneficial to pilots.
But if we're getting something corrected and done the correct way, they tried to do it, they made a good face effort, it didn't quite work or it broke something else, we've been able to make some accommodations for that just to make sure that it actually gets done right going forward. That's been the spirit of this.
Kurt Heidemann:
Scott, you mentioned that they moved up the pay multiples by a couple of days. Originally we had told everybody that it would start with the pairing that began on the 1st of February, but now you're saying that it could capture in the middle of the pairing. Is there a concern by the union that that creates an uneven playing field, that we're changing the rules of the game on short notice? Are we concerned about our pilots saying, oh, I would've bid on something if I had known that it would've started on the 31st or whatever?
Meagan Nelan:
Well, we've been consistent that all of these states renew later than dates with the goal of if we can have it implemented sooner, everybody's best interest is to start complying with the new language as quickly as the technology will allow. I feel like we've set good expectations there that it's everybody's goal that if they can flip that switch a day early and afford our pilots what we've negotiated, then I don't see why we would want to fight that.
Scott Plyler:
It's not like a pilot has actually lost out on something, it's just some other pilot has gotten an additional benefit, they've gotten a windfall, and I don't think we should be jealous of that. We should just expect that, hey, I'm probably going to get some windfalls in the future for myself on some other thing that got implemented early.
Meagan Nelan:
And I mean to the company's credit, they could have just sat on something and waited based on what that implementation agreement was, but that's the good faith effort to try to get this contract in place as quickly as the systems will allow.
Lexi Taylor:
Scott, what's the next few things on the implementation schedule that are supposed to happen?
Scott Plyler:
Well, we have a whole lot of things starting in March, including capturing the first four minutes of overfly as being paid is a lot of the rest of the overrides kicking and the ground time override, late return override, long duty override, reserve release override. Almost so many of these, but they're all going to start showing up in your payroll report. That's one thing that we do have to educate on. They have LCO in the pairing display, but all the other overrides are going to wind up just being in the payroll report.
Meagan Nelan:
And maybe not initially. It might be a no-fly initially. Again, that goes back to the heavy front load of all the pay provisions. Some of them being manual though. You might not see a line item that says GTO in your payroll report. You might just see a non fly, but the point is that they're trying to make the pilots whole by paying what was agreed to with all these new pay provisions.
Scott Plyler:
And right now, one of our analysts, KT, has built out the pay audit tool that does the February pairings with LCO and pay multiples and then all the additional overrides for March pairings. We're going to be able to have that product out soon. We're just testing a lot of edge cases right now, but we should have that product out in early March. You can check your February pairings and then March pairings going forward, and that will have everything all listed out. You can sum up what you see in SWA and you see what's on our payroll audit report and you can just get a good feel for where did I get overrides, how much was it and was I getting paid correctly by the company?
Kurt Heidemann:
One thing you guys mentioned during many of the roadshows that I think is probably worth just a brief discussion here in implementation is the fact that a lot of our overrides may or may not affect SkySolver or they certainly won't upfront. Is this meant to change behavior and if it doesn't, what happens?
Scott Plyler:
Well, part of this was to be transformational. If items that were pain points for our pilots don't get addressed, then at least you get paid more for having that pain point. In the end, if the company does reprogram Solver to take these things into account and you get paid them less often, the flip side of that is you're having better quality of life, which is also a goal for us as well. A lot of folks don't like having excessive reroutes or deadheading all over the system and things don't make sense like that. They'd rather get home on time when they told their family they would and they have commitments. It works both ways. Either you get paid more or your quality of life is better. As of right now, Solver, that programming is in works, but I don't think a lot of it is actually looking so much at all of the overrides that are being paid.
It's just looking to actually have better solutions. They certainly have problems in Solver where it's not trying to get you back to your original pairing, it's trying to get you back to your last iteration. Well, if you're five iterations in, then it's trying to get you back to something that might've been kind of dumb to begin with. Those are the things they have to have. The solver solutions make more sense first before they even start trying to figure out how to work around some of these overrides. And that is going to take a while.
Meagan Nelan:
Yeah. To be clear, they haven't started any work on SkySolver. This has all been very much focused on pay. The next is going to be your duty limit roles, which will drive some of what Solver does, but the Solver work got pushed kind of further back in that implementation schedule. The LCO has been independent logic of that.
Scott Plyler:
A lot of the solver work is related to the footprint protection and that is ant even slated till the middle of 2025.
Kurt Heidemann:
Before we move on, because you two, you and Dan O'Connor, the third member of the SRC that were really involved in negotiations, you had meetings at the company specifically on SkySolver. Can you just tell the listeners the rumor is, and SWAPA has kind of said it before, that they do drive to the lowest cost solution and that's part of the logic. Is that something that happens and is that something that they are going to try and fix?
Scott Plyler:
Well, during our meetings it really became apparent that wasn't part of the logic necessarily. It just so happens that when you're on a rigged pairing or low duty period pairing with lots of rigs on it, well you're the most available. You've got block time available, you've got duty time available, and you're the one that they tag. You used to get paid move up, move up pay. For the entire day, you get premium pay. Well Solver wasn't programmed to keep you away from that either. Again, the outcomes kind of pointed towards one thing, but it was just coincidental that a lot of times it was driving down or minimizing costs just because you already had rig on your pairing, but that was because you weren't being very productive to begin with. You were definitely more available for reassignment.
Kurt Heidemann:
And the way that our contract was written in that the rigs would absorb all the extra flying. We've sort of solved that in 2020, would you say?
Scott Plyler:
We've solved most of the rig absorption specifically with the reassignment pay. LCO pays above the pairing pay, it's an override. It's not absorbed into the rig. Certainly if you're on a rig day and they reassign you and the legs will absorb some of that rig, the straight pay of the legs, but as part of the reassignment, you're always going to get paid some kind of override, mostly LCO, and that pays on top. You're always going to get paid something more, but there are some examples where, yes, some of the rig does get absorbed, but you are still getting paid more with override.
Lexi Taylor:
I feel like that was mostly pay stuff for March. Is there anything else coming down the line that's not pay related?
Meagan Nelan:
Well, some of that timeline change is going to come into play where monthly open time and Eli are going to open earlier, and then in April you're going to have that shorter timeframe for bidding, the 9:00 close. You're going to have hourly closes starting at 1300 onward for those April pairings. I think open time is going to be probably more commuter friendly since they're going to be awarding things earlier in those timelines. And then also the full rigs goes into play, which I know that's kind of pay too, but it's open time. The quality of your open time is going to improve.
Scott Plyler:
Also, the small changes to the commuter policy where they're actually guaranteeing you a deadhead to catch up with your pairing. The deadhead release provisions where you no longer have to call back and wait 30 minutes and that thing is if they don't have anything on your schedule and it's the end of your pairing, you will be released at the time you make the phone call.
Lexi Taylor:
Megan, you also mentioned at roadshows that y'all are going to be part of the scheduler training. Has that happened? How's that going? What's going on there? Yeah,
Meagan Nelan:
Yeah. Actually I think that when this podcast drops next week we'll probably be in session literally over at Southwest. We've already had the opportunity to preview the briefing slides that they're going to be using for that first round of scheduler training and we had some inputs, clarifications, very well received. We've had a very good back and forth with some of the leadership and crew scheduling on just making sure that intent is properly delivered, the right kind of examples are being used to explain what the changes are, and I hope to continue seeing just that ongoing collaboration of that information sharing, that transparency and just that opportunity to be involved.
Scott Plyler:
Yeah, we've definitely had a lot of collaboration with Gabe Peterson over the company. I'd say give him a kick tail if you want to look him up on SWA life. He's definitely been spearheading the implementation and making sure that everything gets clarified. We probably answer questions from him three, four times a day, just making sure it's done right. He's been very conscientious about that and we appreciate it.
Meagan Nelan:
He's had a huge commitment to getting things right. We're very fortunate to have that working relationship.
Lexi Taylor:
All right. Well to wrap it up, Scott, will you give the membership your perspective of how this implementation could go the most smoothly?
Scott Plyler:
Right now we're having a lot of collaboration. We're being involved in setting expectations, setting whatever the standards are for what's being implemented. That definitely needs to continue. I think we're getting better at that process just over the first two weeks of this. But we also need everybody to keep in mind that unlike all the other airline contracts that got ratified in the last few years, this one was a complete rewrite. There are so many moving parts and so many changes to the provisions, small and large, that it is going to take a lot of time. One individual provision could be moved up, but if it's part of a package or it wasn't a priority, then that's why it's running a little bit later. And we just got to reemphasize that. We have so much manual implementation waiting on tech later that there will be some messy processes. We're watching this, we've got our own pay audit product to watch your pay and we're keeping track of all these other things.
Certainly give us a call if you see something is wrong or that you think something's out of place or hasn't been implemented and it's not matching up with the contract, gives us a chance to try to address that. We do have our eyes on a lot of different things right now and I feel we do have some good collaboration going on to try to get this thing implemented and implemented correctly.
Meagan Nelan:
The other thing that is on our radar is we are having joint implementation committee meetings every other week. We have that scheduled, I believe all the way through May. That'll probably continue on beyond that because we have an ongoing implementation workload to keep track of, but that's going to just ensure we have those constant touch points and that we're all staying in the loop on progress and able to then share that information with the membership.
Scott Plyler:
It's not just those meetings. We meet with IT, we meet with planning, we meet with scheduling. We're part of the scheduling training now. We have a lot of different touches besides just emails and phone calls. We actually got a phone call while we're sitting right here during the podcast.
Meagan Nelan:
Gabe's calling me.
Scott Plyler:
We see a lot more collaboration than we ever have and so far it's going pretty well from our perspective.
Lexi Taylor:
Thank you to Scott and Megan for coming on the podcast to talk to us about implementation.
Kurt Heidemann:
If you have any feedback for us at all, please drop us a line at [email protected]. We really do want to hear from you.
Lexi Taylor:
And finally, today's bonus number is 45. That's how many additional individual scheduling items SRC will be tracking for the rest of the year for implementation.