CO F/A : I have a question for UA F/A's

[nycbasedfa]

Hi United Flight Attendants,

I am a CO EWR based F/A. In anticipation of our potential merger, I am trying to educate myself and get as much info as I can about your work group to be better informed. That said, if anyone could take the time to answer my questions, I would very much appreciate it.

1) What is current reserve time in your different bases? I understand you do one on / one off, but how many years to you need to hold a consistent line year round at your different bases? I know you have many more bases than we do, but at least the big ones - ORD, IAD, DEN, SFO, LAX? Thanks. FYI - for CO, its about 4 years reserve EWR domestic & EWR Intl, 4 years reserve CLE, 11 years reserve IAH domestic & 17 - 20 years reserve IAH intl

2) How does your "speaker" program work? Are speakers in a different base, and how do they bid vs. regular crewmembers? How many speakers are on a flight?

3) Is it true you guys can only fly 300 hours a quarter?

4) Is it true you guys do trip trades based on seniority as opposed to first-come-first served, and trip trades are announced twice a day at noon and midnight?

Thanks so much for answering my questions, and please let me know if you have any questions about CO. Best of luck in the merger roller-coaster,

NYCBASEDFA

 

[Borescope]

Your contract will be completely renegotiated if we merge. You will probably try and get what is best from each of the contracts and build on that. Good Luck.

 

[mmahpeel]

1) What is current reserve time in your different bases? I understand you do one on / one off, but how many years to you need to hold a consistent line year round at your different bases? I know you have many more bases than we do, but at least the big ones - ORD, IAD, DEN, SFO, LAX? Thanks. FYI - for CO, its about 4 years reserve EWR domestic & EWR Intl, 4 years reserve CLE, 11 years reserve IAH domestic & 17 - 20 years reserve IAH intl

.....For the first 5 years, a Flight Attendant is designated an 'R' - meaning that you will serve straight reserve every month unless you are at a domicile where there are plenty of 'R' Flight Attendants junior to you to get you off of straight reserve. After 5 years, you become a part of reserve rotation (every other month reserve unless you are senior enough to avoid reserve, and the other month you are guaranteed a line if you choose to bid a line). The top 25% of every domicile is designated 'L' or lineholder, so again unless you bid reserve you are guaranteed a line every month. Whether you are designated an 'R', and 'L' or a rotating reserve (we call them A's or B's) is determined annually.

Here are the breakdowns of the 'senior designated reserves' for each domicile for May 2009:

BOS - 4/20/98 (domestic only location)
DCA (IAD/BWI) - 3/7/98 (both domestic and international at IAD, domestic only at BWI/DCA)
DEN - 4/4/98 (both domestic and international)
FRA - 7/6/96 (international)
HKG - 10/29/95 (international)
HNL - 10/24/79 (international)
JFK (LGA) - 2/20/99 (domestic only location)
LAS - 10/14/00 (domestic only location)
LAX - 2/97/98 (both domestic and international)
LHR - 10/15/95 (international)
ORD - 3/14/98 (both domestic and international)
SEA - 9/28/96 (both domestic and international)
SFO - 4/9/95 (both domestic and international)

In other words, if you are at or senior to the dates above, you can hold a line every month, based on how the May 2010 schedules worked out. If you are junior to the dates above, you would be on reserve if May was your reserve month. If you are a rotating reserve and May was your line month, unless you chose to fly reserve you are guaranteed a line.

2) How does your "speaker" program work? Are speakers in a different base, and how do they bid vs. regular crewmembers? How many speakers are on a flight?

...there is 1 LQ Flight Attendant (Language Qualified) on narrow-bodied international flights, and 2 LQ's on widebodies. If you are at a location such as DCA where Arabic or Russian speakers are in demand, for example, you can be forced to fly ARA or RUS flights based on your qualifications and position on the seniority list (in other words, we don't have a surplus of ARA or RUS speakers so they tend to get forced, but we have plenty of French and Spanish so you only get forced if no one senior to you doesn't want to fly any of the language liens). Additionally, if you are awarded an LQ line, you can only trade with flights in open time with other language-qualified trips.

3) Is it true you guys can only fly 300 hours a quarter?

....We max out at 300 a quarter, but if you have soft time (such as vacation) you can exceed 300 in the quarter. I believe we have different duty and time-away rigs, as well as full credit for deadhead time than CO, but I'm not completely sure....

4) Is it true you guys do trip trades based on seniority as opposed to first-come-first served, and trip trades are announced twice a day at noon and midnight?

...Trades with open time are run at 1000 and midnight local, and are based on seniority - however, if you are number 1 at a domicile, you get awarded 1 open flying trade and then the computer program moves down the list until everyone is either awarded a trade or there are no more trips to award. If there are plenty of trips to be considered, the program loops until it the list is exhausted.

We do have unlimited instant trades with other Flight Attendants unless it projects you over your quarterly maximum hours, as well as unlimited instant RDO trades (you can drop or pick-up trips from other Flight Atttndants, again as long as you are legal and it doesn't exceed your quarterly maximums).

Thanks so much for answering my questions, and please let me know if you have any questions about CO. Best of luck in the merger roller-coaster,

...indeed - if the merger comes to fruition, let's hope we come together to get the best of both contracts....