9.15.21 – APFA DFW Base Brief – October 2021 Allocations

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

October 2021 Manning and Allocations Call
Manning Information is Preliminary and Subject to Change

Manning Information

• Active Headcount: 5,660
• Available Headcount: 5,274
• Bid Jobs/Line Holders: 4,412
• Reserves: 862 (16.3%)
• System Reserve: 16.2%
• No Voluntary (unpaid) Leaves of Absence (VLOA) will be available.
• Expected Open Line Average: 82.9 hours
• Expected System Line Average: 82.4 hours

 

Important Timelines

October Schedule Highlights

• Schedule Change: Thursday, October 7 and Sunday, October 31.
• IATA Winter Season Schedule commences: Sunday, October 31.
• Halloween: Sunday, October 31.
• Charter flights will operate for Professional and College football teams, and Honor Flights. A list of Charter flights is provided in the online PBS cover sheet.

 

Allocations Information

After a challenging summer that left Flight Attendants overworked and exhausted, Flight Service management finally agreed to meet with APFA leadership to discuss trip construction improvements. National and Base Leadership, along with Scheduling, Contract and Allocations Specialist formulated a list of optimizer programming changes for October.

APFA Communications sent a hotline on September 1, entitled “Improving Allocations/Forced Double-ups.” Below is a summary of trip construction remedies APFA presented to management.

• Shorter duty days to allow for mechanical or weather delays.
• Reduction of four-leg turns with excessive sit/connect times resulting in long duty days. Four-leg turns are unpopular and inundate open time.
• Isolate redeye flying in a sequence to provide adequate rest. The desired redeye flying pattern should be 1-1 only.
• Build domestic duty days to a maximum of 10 hours and provide a minimum of 12 hours rest.
• The longest duty day of a multi-day pairing should be on the first day of the trip and gradually become shorter on subsequent days.
• Return to a more hub-and-spoke base flying, or have crews follow the aircraft to reduce sit/connect times. The out-and-back flying that we had before created less havoc in irregular operations and allowed for cleaner splits and repair sequences if needed.
• NIPD flying should be stand-alone turns when possible. Since we have lost so much IPD flying, Flight Attendants prefer higher time turns. NIPD turns are desirable but become less desirable when added into a three-day trip, as it allows for the duty day to be extended to 16 hours.
• Less four-day trips, four-day trips should be commutable on both ends. When four-day trips lack commutability, they often end up in open time and deplete available reserves.

 

The allocations department reprogrammed optimizer software to incorporate many of APFA recommendations. Improvements include elimination of five-leg duty days, emphasis placed on keeping crews together to limit sit/connect times, and reduced duty day maximums during certain times of the day.

Many bases saw improvements in their October pairings; unfortunately for DFW, improvements were lacking. The base addressed the increase in four-day trips, decrease in turns, especially high time turns, increased sit/connect times, and pairings working excessive legs per day with short layovers and low trip values. We presented a list of problematic pairings to the allocations department for review and modification. Base Leadership will continue to work with management to adjust programming parameters to improve systemwide trip construction.

October is a 31-day crew month encompassing five weekends. The operation has two schedule changes that will affect flying throughout the month. The first schedule change on October 07 increases Caribbean flying. The second schedule change on October 31 is the end of the summer IATA schedule and the start of the winter schedule. DFW IPD flying is always affected with the IATA changeover.

The base will lose many of its summer seasonal IPD flights after October 31 schedule change. We are excited for the return of one of our LHR flights. The base will operate two daily LHR flights on 777-300.

DFW was allocated 335,025 hours for October an increase of 19,593 hours from September. AUS satellite base was given 1,841 hours a decrease of 324 hours, and STL satellite was assigned 5,008 hours, an increase of 489 hours from September. The airline is flying 78% of its block hours compared to October 2019.

3FA and 4FA Percentage of Sequences

• 1-Day: 27.9%
• 2-Day: 39.7%
• 3-Day: 22.3%
• 4-Day: 10.1%

3FA and 4FA Overnight Rest Distribution

• Overnight Rest 10-10:30 hrs: 3.8%
• Overnight Rest 10:30-11hrs: 9.2%
• Overnight Rest 11-12 hrs: 12.4%
• Overnight Rest 12-14 hrs: 18.3%
• Overnight Rest 14-16 hrs: 21.6%
• Overnight Rest 16-24 hrs: 30.7%
• Overnight Rest 24-34 hrs: 3.8%
• Overnight Rest Greater than 34 hrs: 0.1%

3FA & 4FA Productivity

• Credit Hours per Calendar Day: 5:18 hrs
• Schedule Block Hours per Calendar Day: 4:59 hrs
• Credit Hours per Duty Period: 5.39 hrs

3FA & 4FA Sit-Time

• 2 Hours: 11.3%
• 2.5 Hours: 7.2%
• 3 Hours: 2.9%

3FA & 4FA Leg Distribution

• 1-Leg: 24.7%
• 2-Leg: 49.1%
• 3-Leg: 25.5%
• 4-Legs: 0.7%
• 5-Legs: 0.0%

3FA & 4FA Duty Distribution

Duty length is calculated including sign-in and release time.

• 3 to 4 hours of duty: 4.8%
• 4 to 5 hours of duty: 12.4%
• 5 to 6 hours of duty: 6.6%
• 6 to 7 hours of duty: 3.8%
• 7 to 8 hours of duty: 9.8%
• 8 to 9 hours of duty: 14.8%
• 9 to 10 hours of duty: 14.6%
• 10 to 11 hours of duty: 15.3%
• 11 to 12 hours of duty: 14.9%
• Greater than 12 hours: 2.4%

3FA & 4FA Block Distribution

• 3 hours or less: 11.6%
• 3 to 4 hours: 13.3%
• 4 to 5 hours: 13.6%
• 5 to 6 hours: 21.2%
• 6 to 7 hours: 19.8%
• 7 to 8 hours: 15.9%
• 8 to 9 hours: 4.4%
• Nine hours or greater: 0.2%

DFW Combined Operation Percentage of Sequences

All equipment all positions.

• 1-Day: 25.1%
• 2-Day: 32.3%
• 3-Day: 31.9%
• 4-Day: 9.4%
• 5-Day: 0.9%
• 6-Day: 0.4%

 

Designated email for Allocations and Manning questions and concerns:

[email protected]

Be careful and fly safe!

In Solidarity,

Amber De Roxtra
APFA DFW Base President
(682) 422-7179
[email protected]

Amy Knox Green
APFA DFW Base Vice President
(972) 696-9766
[email protected]