6.06.24 – APFA CLT Base Brief – July 2024 Staffing and Allocations

July 2024 CLT Staffing and Allocations

Thursday, June 6, 2024

We had our monthly call with the company to discuss the trips for July. The July 4th holiday triggers a critical period, and we will see an uptick in flying on the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 7th. July 4 and 5 will see a reduction in flying, much like Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. The rest of July looks much like the June and May schedules. The CLT airport is operating at the maximum flights it can with 9 banks of flights and the usual ebb and flow between the peak banks in the morning and the peak banks in the evening. July 7th will add a flex bank (A late night 10th bank), and the 8th will have additional early morning arrivals, creating an additional flex bank. This will be the peak of summer flying.

There were no significant improvements to the trip construction model. The company feels the need to continue the current model in order to meet the needs of the heavy summer schedule. We will have 179,099 flying hours in CLT for the month of July.

As expected, they have increased the reserve numbers to 947 or 29.7%. This will include 82 new hires who will be joining us. The LRD reflects 865 reserves, or 27%. No matter how you crunch it, this number is way too high and shows the reliance on the need for large amounts of reserves to cover a fragile system. The weather events of May decimated our reserve numbers, and the system suffered as a result. Keep this in mind next May as they will use the numbers from the weather events this year to drive up the numbers next year. The year-over-year strategy has been one of the staples of setting reserve numbers for quite some time. The high numbers this year reflect usage in past years, even though the company has the contractual ability to enact the holiday pay incentive if they anticipate being understaffed for any reason. The cut-off seniority for reserve will be November of 2014.

In many respects, July is a carbon copy of April, May, and June. We anticipate August to look like the rest of the summer and we traditionally see high reserves in August as well.

This past week the company finally shared their reserve usage statistics with us. We have been collecting our own numbers for almost 2 years now, so it came as no surprise that the numbers provided by the company were consistent with the numbers we gathered. While they don’t explain their numbers, the percentages they did provide show lower usage in Sept, Oct, Nov and December of last year. While the other bases were getting a break and having their reserve numbers lowered, Charlotte continued with the high numbers despite objections from the union. The new data supports our position that the reserve numbers in Charlotte need to be reexamined and a more accurate formula needs to be used to determine the reserve numbers needed.

Our trips break down as:

• 1-days will make up 25% of our trips.
• 2-days will make up 16% of our trips.
• 2/3-days will make up 9% of our trips.
• 3-days will make up 30% of our trips.
• 3/4-days will make up 2% of our trips.
• 4-days will make up 5% of our trips.
• ODANs are up at 5% of our trips.
• Red eyes are up at 2.5% of our trips.
• Bullets and pink eyes saw a few added but still make up less than 1% of the trips.

The one days are up but almost 30% of them are 4 leggers. We did see less 4 leg days being built into multiple days trips. Be careful when bidding, there are 1 days that get in after midnight and will fall in the 2-day category. If you are looking for them, use the filter of 1 duty period, number of days-2. This will especially affect the extra late-night flex bank on the 7th. Many of these trips will also populate the ODAN criteria as well. It may be beneficial to bid more specific trips to ensure these types of trips are not included in your layers if you do not want them.

The 2 days saw an increase in actual number of trips but remain at about 16%. The types of aircraft used for a trip can vary the number of positions. A 321 will have 4 positions, a 319 on the same trip will only have 3 positions. We sometimes see an increase in actual trips, but a reduction due to the smaller aircraft being used.

The 3 days are slightly down but make up the largest percentage of our trips. The optimizer program is inclined to build multiple days to accommodate for an increase in time. This is offset by building in penalties and limits on the number of trips in any category. We did not see an increase in multiple-day trips over the critical period, but we have seen this happening in general due to the increased summer schedule. The multiple day trips are also where we see the largest sit times. 20% of our trips have 2:30 or more sit time built in.

The 2/3 days continue to be strong and they remain popular. With the IROPs we saw last month, many of these trips used the sit day to help catch up to the original trip. May be good for the company, but not for us.

The 4 days are about the same, but 45% of them are not commutable. We even saw a trickle of 3/4 days that were not commutable, and this confused us as these types of trips have always been a reliable 4 day when it comes to commuting.

The Red Eyes grew slightly, but we saw the same problems of double legs to get out to the west coast and a few more double legs to get home. The additional legs are the less desirable in the red eye category and end up in open time. We have submitted ideas to help curb the undesirable trips but our suggestions were disregarded. Red Eyes, Bullets, ODANs, Pink Eyes help to provide flexibility to the system. Nobody likes to fly them, but they work when creating your schedule.

The bottom line seems to be that we will continue to see this construction model, the long days, and multiple legs until our schedule changes. Charlotte is a juggernaut for short-haul flying on the East Coast, and we continue to fly express routes as they try to find staffing. This level of flying does not look like it will have a break for some time.

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July 2024 Bidding Timelines

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On May 7, the company sent out a message saying, “We are ready for summer!”. The weather events that happened around the system and the IROPs that we had to endure might convey another message. Just to throw out some stats we saw in May:

• CLT had 21 days of Red Flag Trips. 68% of the month was red flagged.
• CLT had 5,512 trips awarded through the UBL and ROTD. 3,210 of these trips were systems trips. That’s 58.2%.
• Our reserve numbers keep climbing and they still remain in critical coverage.

Summer started in CLT in April and is kicking off in the rest of the system this month. If our operation in May is any indicator of how the summer will go, maybe we weren’t exactly ready for summer.

If you have experienced any contractual violations due to the IROPs, such as, illegal rescheduling, lineholder tagging, failure to notify within the contractual time frames, long hold times to get to scheduling, no hotels, etc., please fill out APFA’s IROPs Reporting Form. We will collect the data and move forward with grievances as needed.

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Deadline Extended for Quarterly WBT

At APFA’s request, the company has agreed to extend the deadline for Flight Attendants to complete the 2nd Quarter Inflight Web-Based Training.

The deadline to complete the WBT is now Monday, June 10th, at 2359 (CT) to avoid a Missed Assignment.

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Take care of yourselves and each other.

The Charlotte APFA Team

In Solidarity,

Scott Hazlewood
APFA CLT Base President
[email protected]