5.04.23 – APFA DCA Base Brief – June 2023 Staffing and Allocations

June 2023 DCA Staffing and Allocations

Thursday, May 4, 2023

When PBS processing begins, if additional Line holders are needed, those with Reserve status will be changed to Line holder status in the following order:

1. Tentative Flight Attendants whose preference was Lineholder in the LRD process.
2. Reserve Flight Attendants who toggled to Pref LH in the LRD who were unable to hold Line holder status in LRD.
3. Most junior Reserve Flight Attendants involuntarily moved to line holder status after all the above have been utilized.

Important: If you are in one of these 3 categories above, you will want to bid 7 layers of Reserve and 7 layers of Lineholder in PBS.

DCA: 41,594 flying hours (+3711 month over month)
IAD: 2,606 (+172)
BWI: 2,646 (-15)
46,846 Total flying hours (DCA, IAD, BWI,) (+3868)

June will not be a flex month, the contractual targeted credit range default is 70-90
No vacation buyback
June Holiday and Events: Father’s Day: June 18
Juneteenth June 19
DCA June reserve seniority begins at system seniority 25,035 OCC date Jan 12, 2023
We will be receiving 64 new hires that will be available through the month of June.
10 new hires will be included in the LRD process for June
24 new hires including the 10 in the LRD will bid in PBS and the other new hires will be assigned a manual schedule.

Allocations notes for June

+3868 Block hours over May 2023
818 total sequences for DCA, IAD, BWI combined.
ODAN flying increased with RONs in BOS, BNA, LGA, RDU
LAX high time turns operating 30 days.
PHX Pink Eye operating 30 days.
No Charter/Honor flights
5 speaker sequences
120 MAX aircraft sequences
96 sequences with 3+ hour sit time.
NIPD RON’s out of DCA CUN, GEO, MTY, NAS, PUJ, STT, STX, UVF
NIPD RONs out of IAD, SJD
NIPD RONs out of BWI, CUR, PUJ

Scheduled Duty Days:

< 8 hours 45.8%
8-10 hours 28.1%
10-12 hours 23.5%
>12 hours 2.6%

Scheduled legs in Duty Day:

1 – 29%
2 – 50.9%
3- 17.9%
4- 1.7%

Scheduled Layover Rest:

< 11 hours 0.2%
11-12 hours 3.3%
12-14 hours 27.6%
16-18 hours 18.3%
>24 hours 10.4%

June 2023 Bidding Timelines

Initial Reserve Seniority – June 2023

Final Notes for DCA Base

May PBS results had a minimum constraint of 78 hours at system seniority #14461 this was the first month in many PBS runs that a second constraint was not used. APFA does not agree with constraints at any seniority and believe that the available line holders placed in PBS should be increased with a decrease in reserve headcount. This would eliminate the need for constraints and forcing time into our schedules.

We understand that the lack of post PBS flexibility is creating an issue with the PBS bidding practices of our flight attendants. Many flight Attendants do not want to bid high in PBS because of the lack of TTS/UBL flexibility. APFA is addressing this restriction in our current contract negotiations with the company, in hopes to see less 3 % restrictions and more trades approved.

Recently Dianne and I meet with crew schedule when they visited the base this month. We brought many of your concerns forward including the TTS/UBL flexibility issue. We had proposed to crew schedule a possible trial period where they would flex or float the 3 % limitations to a number that was less restrictive, but we were told that was not possible. The reason explained is that would have to be approved by labor and since we are in contract talks, they would not entertain that at this time.

We discussed the processing of the UBL and how it appears there is never a set time to run it, we were told this runs every hour. Crew schedule advises the Flight Attendants that if you ballot for a sequence, you can contact a crew scheduler and ask them to run the UBL processing your ballot. Some of you have reported that at times when you call crew schedule that your told that the scheduler that runs the UBL is not available, the manager of crew schedule said that any scheduler could run the UBL at any time. We firmly believe that sitting on open time sequences is a violation of our past practice and the integrity of processing open time.

We also discussed our disapproval for sending sequences out of base without red flagging them first or sending them to reserve processing.

Reschedule was another hot topic and of course we had to agree to disagree. We did ask that if you are being rescheduled to at the very least give you the reason as to the reschedule. Before a reschedule all available reserves must be used. Rescheduling Reminders

We were invited to visit the IOC and more likely will do so to continue the discussion of our scheduling issues with crew schedule/tracking!

We WELCOME our new hire classes to DCA, here are some of our April classes at their INDOC DAY.

Class 23-07