6.06.22 – APFA CLT Base Brief – July 2022 Staffing and Allocations

Monday, June 6, 2022

APFA CLT Base Brief – July 2022 Staffing and Allocations

Good Day CLT Flight Attendants,

We had our monthly call with the Company last week. Here is what you can expect for July:

• Active headcount: 2,646
• Lineholders: 2,009
• Reserves: 636 (24.1%)
• Expected Line Average: 81.9 hours

The trips for July were almost a carbon copy of June with a few slight changes. We did see a small increase in time of just about 1%. Our manhours are 161,182.

We are continuing to get new hire Flight Attendants and those that have not graduated yet but will be coming out later in June or early July are included in this Reserve count, they are not reflected in the LRD numbers. The higher Reserve percentage was anticipated for July due to the critical period on the 4th of July. There are also 5 weekends in this month which pushes more flying to those days. Our Reserve cut off seniority will be January of 2015.

The line average is set a little higher, but the company is offering vacation buy back and depending on how many people take it, and the natural PBS bidding cycle, we anticipate the line average to lower itself. Vacation buyback closes on the 8th and there will be no VLOAs offered.

The trips themselves were just like the trips in June. There were no significant changes to the trip construction model or the basic distribution of trips. We did see a slight drop in 3 days and more 1 days added. The trips will break down as.

• 1-days will make up 20% of our trips (up)
• 2-days will make up just under 29% of the trips (about the same)
• 3-days will make up 23% of the trips (down)
• 4-days will be 3% of the trips (same)
• 2/3-days will make up 11% of the trips
• 3/4-days will make up 4% of the trips
• ODANs stay at 4% of the trips
• Red eyes remain at 1% of the trips
• Bullets and pink eyes remain at less then 1% of the trips.
• IPD will stay the same with MUC, LHR-2, DUB, MAD, FCO (one YUL 2 day)

The 30-hour layovers include RIC, BWI, AUS, STL, GRR, CMH, BUF, RDU, BNA, CLE, ROC, MSY, TUL, EYW, MKE, MYR. We did not see an increase in the 30-hour layovers which is good news as this has been the fastest growing type of trip in the past few months.

The Trips still have the same problems we have been dealing with, long sit (connection) times in the hubs, lack of commutability in the 4-day trips, long duty days, and multiple leg days. With the anticipated change to a 10-hour required rest, 98% of our trips have 12 hours or more rest built in. In actual operations, the company requirement is still 8 hours behind the door. We have no word when the 10 hour FAR will change but the company has been planning for this for a few months. The impact of the new FAR will be felt in the day-to-day operations and the systems trips that are created every day. Our system remains fragile and this past week we saw once again how easily our trips break during weather events.

During a holiday period such as Christmas or July 4th, we usually see spikes in time as they add flights to the schedule. Last Christmas, we saw the spikes well before the critical period and a pull down of flights over the actual holiday. We will see the same thing during July. They will pull down some of the flying on July 3rd, but the rest of the month will have a pretty even distribution of time. Weekends generally have more trips and with 5 weekends in July, this has evened out the flying spikes.

One of the anomalies we saw for July was that many of the trips only operated once and many of these were identical to other single trips but had different sequence numbers. The company answered this by explaining the routing of the aircraft was different from day to day or week to week. This is not visible on our trips sheets, but their computer sees this and generates separate sequence numbers as a result. When you look at just the total number of trips, it appears as if we have a significant increase, but when you look at the man hours, you will not see the increase. This is because the trip only operates once where most trips will operate on multiple days.

Our ODANs, Bullets, Red eyes and pink eyes had very little change from June. We always advocate for these types of trips because they add variety from the traditional trips with multiple legs built into the duty days. The 1-days still have the 4-legs, and most of the long sits are built into the 3- and 4-day trips.

July 2022 Bidding Timelines

We are moving forward with a full schedule for the remainder of the summer. This has created huge challenges on how exactly that is going to work out with the current staffing levels. The company maintains that the sick rate is still too high even with COVID rates rising in our ranks.

Our sick rate in Charlotte has been cut in half in the last few months but we still have our staffing issues. Our bookings are at record numbers and turning a profit this summer is key to our overall turnaround. With the continued problems we are having maintaining a schedule, this is shaping up to be one crazy summer that has just gotten started.

Take care of yourselves and each other.

The Charlotte APFA Team

In Solidarity,

Scott Hazlewood
APFA CLT Base President
[email protected]