The checkerboard system has failed big time at DFW. There are 4 gates under the checkerboard plan, A18-A19-A20-A21. The staffing is 1 Chief and 4 crew on each gate. The problem is the flights are coming in too close togetger, and are way too heavy with transfer baggage and mail. You can't work a 8,000lb inbound from Seattle with 4 people, and don't expect the other crew to come over and help becasue they are still unloading and running bags off of their 7,000lb inbound from Newark, which came in about 30 minutes earlier. Right now they are using extra support and lots of day off overtime to help support these gates, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the checkerboard system.
AA Checkerboard System - merged posts
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The checkerboard system has failed big time at DFW. There are 4 gates under the checkerboard plan, A18-A19-A20-A21. The staffing is 1 Chief and 4 crew on each gate. The problem is the flights are coming in too close togetger, and are way too heavy with transfer baggage and mail. You can't work a 8,000lb inbound from Seattle with 4 people, and don't expect the other crew to come over and help becasue they are still unloading and running bags off of their 7,000lb inbound from Newark, which came in about 30 minutes earlier. Right now they are using extra support and lots of day off overtime to help support these gates, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the checkerboard system.
lol, Pull up a rgt on gates a-18,a-19,a-20,and a-21 here in DFW and watch the delays. Or view the delay reports on DFW.com. Also note how many times there are planes on the checkerboard pairings at the same time.It is failing terribly. And while we're discussing stations please tell STL clerks to quit hiding local bags under through bags.Playing with other people's livelyhoods is just wrong. Your TWA/AA beef is the old news. We bought you and an arbitrator decided it so live with it!
HEY, know who you are talking to and what you are talking about before you go off on someone. Jim is a F/A, if he was former TWA he would still be furloughed even with 35 years work with TWA since the F/A's stuck everyone on the bottom of the list. He is stuck working in STL because it is the least of the evils as far as commuting, compared to LGA. So since he is AA, and never worked for TWA, how can he have TWA/AA beef.
Hey but at least least it works on paper and allows manAAgement to pat each other on the back and pass out bonuses.
FYI..over on the maintenance side of things, they are eliminating the 4/10's on afternoon shift which will almost surely result in the late birds going to the hangar going later because now midnight shift will be driving them over and resulting delay in the morning when the work is not complete due to lack of time. :down:
But hey once again...at least least it works on paper and allows manAAgement to pat each other on the back and pass out bonuses.
Well, almost anyone can make sure that an idea doesn't work if they want to. You can find any number of excuses for something new not working. And, I notice that among certain groups around AA, if it is one whit different from "the way we used to do things back in '87," well then it is obviously unworkable, unreasonable, and a way of cheating poor innocent employees.
Maybe some of the DFW people just decided that they would make sure that the checkerboard system fails at DFW. But, then that is the station that failed to load the wheelchair for a disabled Iraq war vet when he was the first passenger brought down to the a/c and his wheelchair was taken downstairs immediately. We only had 75 passengers that night on a 757; so, don't give me the heavy bags argument.
What I know is that when we arrived at STL at 2200, his wheelchair was not on the plane; so, the vet, his wife and two small children who needed to go on to Cedar Rapids were stuck in STL because he had no way of getting out of the airport and no one around at that time of the night could assure him that his wheelchair would be delivered to him in Cedar Rapids. Thanks DFW.
Maybe some of the DFW people just decided that they would make sure that the checkerboard system fails at DFW. But, then that is the station that failed to load the wheelchair for a disabled Iraq war vet when he was the first passenger brought down to the a/c and his wheelchair was taken downstairs immediately. We only had 75 passengers that night on a 757; so, don't give me the heavy bags argument.
What I know is that when we arrived at STL at 2200, his wheelchair was not on the plane; so, the vet, his wife and two small children who needed to go on to Cedar Rapids were stuck in STL because he had no way of getting out of the airport and no one around at that time of the night could assure him that his wheelchair would be delivered to him in Cedar Rapids. Thanks DFW.
Here's another voice to say its not working at DFW. Even the gate CSMs don't like it. All the bag runners I've talk to on the CB gates say they are gettin slammed. When you have upwards of 70, 80 or 90+ xfr bags to be delivered tail to tail over 3 terms [A C & D], then you have to take junk bags to their respective terminals and wait in line at the junk belts. Hey and guess what if there is a gate change: you may be at the C-term junk belt and the CC makes you take back to another Term (bec of gte change). oh well! back in line. By the time you return to help load outbound everything is falling behind sched. Or if the crew on the gate was beefed up with extra mpwr to help get out on time your next flight is in and off you go, Non-stop. Watch!.. gaurenteed when it starts to hit 110+ on the ramp there will be big slowdowns. We work hard, very hard but we are not machines.
eolesen
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- Jul 23, 2003
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Personally, I don't see Checkerboard being the problem at DFW -- as long as you have planners who see open gates and insist on using them, rather than leaving them isolated, it is bound to go to sh** in a heartbeat.
Now, if all of Terminal A were Checkerboarded, I think we'd see a much different result.
Now, if all of Terminal A were Checkerboarded, I think we'd see a much different result.
And, isn't always easier to be negative about something than to try and find a way to make it work!
But if you always do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. And, we all know that the current system at DFW is not working.
At the time Texaco bought Getty Oil, the total headcount for the combined companies was 67,000 people. They started laying off in duplicate jobs--i.e., if you have 10 payroll clerks in 2 companies, you probably only need 6 or 7 (at most) if you merge those two companies, and if you computerize that function, you might end up with only 4. At the time Texaco was bought by Chevron, the oil production was higher than it had ever been, the exploration department was finding more oil than ever before, and revenues were substantially higher than the combined total of the 2 companies, and they were doing it all with about 30,000 employees. It's what made Texaco an attractive takeover target. Adding more employees will not solve AA's problems either.
Throwing bodies at the problem (a phrase we always used at Texaco when someone thought the solution was to add more staff to a project) is rarely anything more than a temporary fix. Work expands in direct proportion to the amount of time and people given to the problem. And there is a corollary regarding output that says if one programmer can write and debug a program in 10 days, it does not follow that 10 programmers can write and debug the same program in one day.
Lord knows, I would gladly welcome some additional f/a recalls--and don't think that I don't believe that they have cut too many gate agents and rampers because I do--but adding more employees is just not going to happen until the company has no other choice. Right now, we have fewer active f/as than we had in June, 2004 before the two recalls that year. Yet, we keep the planes in the air (well, except for the 54 they've grounded this year
). The scheduling is different. You don't see any more f/a schedules that have 2 legs/day for 3 days with long AUS and NYC layovers. It's 3-4 legs/day every day with layovers in TUL and XNA, or all turns with no overnight layovers. But, look at SWA (you know, that airline that makes money), their f/as have done 4-6 legs/day for years. Granted, the stage lengths are generally shorter than at AA, but remember that they also clean the plane EVERY leg. We only clean on through flights through a hub.
If you allow 45 minutes to unload a 757, you will not find any crew that can or will unload it in 35 minutes. If you decide that it takes 10 rampers to do that job, you will have a crew of 8 saying that the reason the flight was out late was because they needed 2 more people on the job. They will never say that they needed one more person or 3 more people, they will say they were short 2 because they were told that it takes 10 people to do the job.
By the same token, if it takes two rampers 5 minutes to load one full cart of bags onto the belt loader and into the belly of the a/c, it does not follow that 4 rampers can do it in 2.5 minutes. First off, the two guys at the top of the loader are probably going to get in each other's way, and the good old belt loader only runs at one speed AFAIK.
I know that when the checkerboard experiment started at STL, we all said it wouldn't work. There was no possible way we could turn a S80 in 35 minutes or a 75 in 45 minutes. Couldn't happen, wouldn't happen. No point talking about it.
I decided that I was going to jail because I was going to physically harm a certain gate supervisor because she was coming down to the plane, grabbing the pa phone and making nagging announcements to the passengers to put up their luggage and get seated. We stopped her from doing that, but then I found that if I repeated luggage storage instructions more than once during boarding and repeated the strictures against bags in the floor on bulkhead rows and "please step into your row as quickly as possible," we didn't have delays at the end because carry-ons needed to be checked, the lines kept moving, and we had everyone boarded and seated with time to spare.
This morning on my commuter flight to DAL, we had all but about 3 stragglers boarded and seated in 15 minutes (over 100 passengers!). It can be done. All everyone has to do is decide that they can do it.
And, try to remember that adding bodies increases payroll and benefit costs. If you want us to end up in bankruptcy like all the other majors, then just keep pushing for higher payrolls. And, if you think that the previous cuts were painful, just let a bk judge get "aholt" of our contracts.
But if you always do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. And, we all know that the current system at DFW is not working.
At the time Texaco bought Getty Oil, the total headcount for the combined companies was 67,000 people. They started laying off in duplicate jobs--i.e., if you have 10 payroll clerks in 2 companies, you probably only need 6 or 7 (at most) if you merge those two companies, and if you computerize that function, you might end up with only 4. At the time Texaco was bought by Chevron, the oil production was higher than it had ever been, the exploration department was finding more oil than ever before, and revenues were substantially higher than the combined total of the 2 companies, and they were doing it all with about 30,000 employees. It's what made Texaco an attractive takeover target. Adding more employees will not solve AA's problems either.
Throwing bodies at the problem (a phrase we always used at Texaco when someone thought the solution was to add more staff to a project) is rarely anything more than a temporary fix. Work expands in direct proportion to the amount of time and people given to the problem. And there is a corollary regarding output that says if one programmer can write and debug a program in 10 days, it does not follow that 10 programmers can write and debug the same program in one day.
Lord knows, I would gladly welcome some additional f/a recalls--and don't think that I don't believe that they have cut too many gate agents and rampers because I do--but adding more employees is just not going to happen until the company has no other choice. Right now, we have fewer active f/as than we had in June, 2004 before the two recalls that year. Yet, we keep the planes in the air (well, except for the 54 they've grounded this year
). The scheduling is different. You don't see any more f/a schedules that have 2 legs/day for 3 days with long AUS and NYC layovers. It's 3-4 legs/day every day with layovers in TUL and XNA, or all turns with no overnight layovers. But, look at SWA (you know, that airline that makes money), their f/as have done 4-6 legs/day for years. Granted, the stage lengths are generally shorter than at AA, but remember that they also clean the plane EVERY leg. We only clean on through flights through a hub.If you allow 45 minutes to unload a 757, you will not find any crew that can or will unload it in 35 minutes. If you decide that it takes 10 rampers to do that job, you will have a crew of 8 saying that the reason the flight was out late was because they needed 2 more people on the job. They will never say that they needed one more person or 3 more people, they will say they were short 2 because they were told that it takes 10 people to do the job.
By the same token, if it takes two rampers 5 minutes to load one full cart of bags onto the belt loader and into the belly of the a/c, it does not follow that 4 rampers can do it in 2.5 minutes. First off, the two guys at the top of the loader are probably going to get in each other's way, and the good old belt loader only runs at one speed AFAIK.
I know that when the checkerboard experiment started at STL, we all said it wouldn't work. There was no possible way we could turn a S80 in 35 minutes or a 75 in 45 minutes. Couldn't happen, wouldn't happen. No point talking about it.
I decided that I was going to jail because I was going to physically harm a certain gate supervisor because she was coming down to the plane, grabbing the pa phone and making nagging announcements to the passengers to put up their luggage and get seated. We stopped her from doing that, but then I found that if I repeated luggage storage instructions more than once during boarding and repeated the strictures against bags in the floor on bulkhead rows and "please step into your row as quickly as possible," we didn't have delays at the end because carry-ons needed to be checked, the lines kept moving, and we had everyone boarded and seated with time to spare.
This morning on my commuter flight to DAL, we had all but about 3 stragglers boarded and seated in 15 minutes (over 100 passengers!). It can be done. All everyone has to do is decide that they can do it.
And, try to remember that adding bodies increases payroll and benefit costs. If you want us to end up in bankruptcy like all the other majors, then just keep pushing for higher payrolls. And, if you think that the previous cuts were painful, just let a bk judge get "aholt" of our contracts.
Right now, we have fewer active f/as than we had in June, 2004 before the two recalls that year. Yet, we keep the planes in the air (well, except for the 54 they've grounded this year
Excellent post; agree with just about everything - but with just one clarification: Of the 54, 24 of those MD-80s were temporarily grounded in 2003 and were announced as permanently retired as of the last week of December, 2005. Three more were grounded that week, plus this year's additional 27. So only 30 so far this year.
LGA Fleet Service
Veteran
We've got passenger service chasing us off the plane five minutes after we get up there,talk to someone about that.
Everyone is so terrified of taking a delay, we aren't being allowed to do our jobs properly,talk to someone about that.
LGA Fleet Service
Veteran
Great theories Jim, you forget to mention who sets the turn times for the aircraft.
Who does that? The company.
Who sets the staffing levels? The company.
Have a problem with it? Address it with the company.
Who does that? The company.
Who sets the staffing levels? The company.
Have a problem with it? Address it with the company.
==========================================================
LGA(JFK),
Good post !
Those gate agents are Cabin service's BEST friends, for the reasons you mentioned.
Every once in a while(for giggles) we'd grab the captain, and tell him, it would be a SIN, to have our passengers "sit in this FILTH", after all "We're AA".
Well sure enough, he'd order the Agent to NOT board, before we were finished.
By the time we'd walk off, there would be 150 passengers IN THE JETWAY. The f/a's would play along, while the "cattle charge **cked EVERYTHING up"
Bottom line, "We were just doing our job, the way it was SUPPOSED to be done"
NH/BB's
Kev3188
Veteran
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