7.09.20 – APFA CLT Base Brief – August Allocations

Thursday, July 9, 2020

August 2020 Allocations

Good Day CLT Flight Attendants,

We had our monthly allocations call with the Company this week to look at how the trips will break down for August. The good news, we saw a 16% increase in the number of trips. We have roughly 1004 actual trips as opposed to 867 in July. Our active headcount is 1601. We will need 860 Lineholders and 298 Reserves. There will be 443 VLOAs offered with 70 hours attached. Bidding is now open and closes on Saturday the 11th at Noon (CDT). Click Here for the 70-Hour VLOA Ballot for August.

Our trips break down as 13% 1-days, 64% 2-days and 18% 3-days. There is one rocket, 5 red eyes and 3 pink eyes. The real difference in domestic trips from July to August is the increase in 2-days away from 3-days and 1-days. There will be no European International flying returning in August. ODANs are down to 2% of the flying. Not a lot of diversity to the trips but we welcome the increase, this may be the peak of our flying for a while. International bookings have not come back, and Charlotte still has no Gateway status to accept European flights. The Company is still pressing the CDC on this status, but the government remains “difficult”. Flights to London are slotted and the British Government has a “Use it or lose it” rule on those slots. These slots are extremely valuable to the Company’s long-term strategies, so as soon as the flights can run, they will. The Company has said they will operate them at a loss rather than lose the slots. Right now, they are asking for a waiver on using the slots so stay tuned for any developments in that area. Right now, London and Munich are scheduled to return in October and next year we are only scheduling service to Frankfurt. The loss of international service to Europe accounts for about 20% of our summer schedule and 12% of our winter schedule. This will be the bulk of the trip reductions with other bases taking huge hits as they have more year-round international service. Our NIPD or Caribbean service will include CUN, PLS, MBJ, CZM, SJU, NAS and SXM with actual layovers in SJD, STT and MEX. People are buying tickets for domestic flights and then the Caribbean & Mexico. The demand for Europe is just not there and the result is a planned decrease of 25% for international flying through next summer.

ODANs took another big hit for August. We had 14% of our trips as ODANs in May and 5% in July. They now compose 2% of the flying for August. There are only 3 bases with ODANs, CLT-MIA-PHL. The company has said they will build and add ODANs as the schedule offers.

With the increase in flying, the optimizer has created more “productive” trips from the company standpoint. There are more 3 leg and 3 leg two days and the sit time (connection time) between flights looks like it’s back for good. About 26% of the trips have a sit time of over 2 hours when changing planes in a base city. This was reduced in June when they decided to build trips that were mirrored with the pilots.

August trips were independent for the most part, with only a few duty days being built the same as the Pilots or keeping us with the aircraft for the entire day. As a result, the victory laps at the end of the trips are back, fly into Charlotte – sit for 2 hours- then do a turn to complete the trip. The high sit times mean longer duty days and shorter overnights. We did see shorter overnights overall, but the departure times for the two and three days were staggered  making them commutable and easy to double up on. Boise is back for a 16 hour overnight and the weekend 32 hours in SYR is still intact. We saw many different city pairs in our trips which is a sign that they are spreading out the time from base to base rather than keeping each base to traditional routes. When we asked some flight attendants what they thought about flying different routes, the majority of people system wide welcomed the changes. Flying the same city pairs can get boring apparently.

Our Reserve number is 298 or 18% of the base. Once again, the Company is basing the percentage on the total head count of active Flight Attendants, not the headcount needed to fly the Charlotte schedule. The real Reserve percentage is 26%. This number and percentage are way too high, these are December and January type numbers. The Company said the numbers for Charlotte were high because they intend to open 777 training for reserves to bid while on duty in August. 777 training will eventually become mandatory for our base, no word if they will be assigning training to reserves in August. When these Reserve numbers remain this high, it pushes the seniority back further and further and there is little chance of a reserve being able to break guarantee pay while on duty. Even with a reduced schedule, Charlotte’s Reserve number remain out of whack with the rest of the system. June saw three Reserves being used per day outside of standby shifts, and if five Reserves actually got a trip it was a good day.  The nature of our base has changed but the Company still clings to the old model. We will keep fighting for lower numbers so everyone has the opportunity to earn an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.

The LRD is now open and closes on Saturday, July 11th at Noon (CDT). PBS bidding will open on the July 14th and will close on July 18th.

Just to provide a comparison that may give you an idea of where things are, here is a breakdown of the numbers from August of this year to August of last year.

Management has stated this is the worst crisis to hit the airline industry ever. Later this month the company will announce additional leaves and retirement packages. They have announced two base closings, RDU and STL for February and they will become satellites of Charlotte and Dallas. We have just begun this odyssey and we know the future is uncertain. The cuts will hit deeper for some than for others. It is important now, more than ever, to take care of each other and look out for one another. APFA Charlotte will remain committed to providing the most up to date information we can so you can stay  informed and make the best decisions for you.

Take care of each other and stay safe. ~ The Charlotte APFA Team

In Solidarity,

Scott Hazlewood
APFA CLT Base President
[email protected]