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HOTLINE – JUNE 25, 2004 Back to Hotline Homepage
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CREW CANCELS
Good afternoon. This is Captain Steve Forte on Friday, June 25.
As you know, we’ve taken more cancellations than normal over the past week or so due to limited flight crew availability, particularly in the B737 fleet. Clearly, some of our flight crew planning assumptions were off, specifically those dealing with narrowbody trip trading. While extremely difficult weather conditions this month made the situation more complicated, we simply can’t experience these types of pilot shortages. It’s not fair to our customers and it’s not fair to you.
As a result, we’ve made a number of significant changes to help mitigate this issue now and in the busy summer months ahead.
We’ve substituted A320s for B737s on certain routes, moving about 400 hours to the Airbus in July and 600 hours in August.
We’ve canceled all non-required B737 pilot training for next month.
We’re reviewing all open time before secondary line assignments are finalized for July.
And we’re reviewing the trip trading assumptions we’ll be using to make certain manpower calculations going forward.
While operational results have now returned to more normal levels, we’re still going to be tight in several fleets this summer. We’ve got sufficient pilots in absolute terms, particularly given the fact that we expect to be parking a significant number of B737s this fall. Our challenge is to ensure that our pilot manpower is always allocated to the proper seats and fleets.
I appreciate everything you are doing to keep things running as smoothly as possible – and I especially want to thank all the pilots, crew schedulers and others who have changed their personal plans to put in extra time. I know it’s not easy out there – and it’s going to continue to be tough – but I’m committed to doing everything in my power to make sure you can stay focused on the mission at hand – running an exceptional, safe operation and providing great service to our customers.
Have a good weekend, fly safe and let’s keep running a great airline
HOTLINE – JUNE 25, 2004 Back to Hotline Homepage
<< Previous | Next >>
CREW CANCELS
Good afternoon. This is Captain Steve Forte on Friday, June 25.
As you know, we’ve taken more cancellations than normal over the past week or so due to limited flight crew availability, particularly in the B737 fleet. Clearly, some of our flight crew planning assumptions were off, specifically those dealing with narrowbody trip trading. While extremely difficult weather conditions this month made the situation more complicated, we simply can’t experience these types of pilot shortages. It’s not fair to our customers and it’s not fair to you.
As a result, we’ve made a number of significant changes to help mitigate this issue now and in the busy summer months ahead.
We’ve substituted A320s for B737s on certain routes, moving about 400 hours to the Airbus in July and 600 hours in August.
We’ve canceled all non-required B737 pilot training for next month.
We’re reviewing all open time before secondary line assignments are finalized for July.
And we’re reviewing the trip trading assumptions we’ll be using to make certain manpower calculations going forward.
While operational results have now returned to more normal levels, we’re still going to be tight in several fleets this summer. We’ve got sufficient pilots in absolute terms, particularly given the fact that we expect to be parking a significant number of B737s this fall. Our challenge is to ensure that our pilot manpower is always allocated to the proper seats and fleets.
I appreciate everything you are doing to keep things running as smoothly as possible – and I especially want to thank all the pilots, crew schedulers and others who have changed their personal plans to put in extra time. I know it’s not easy out there – and it’s going to continue to be tough – but I’m committed to doing everything in my power to make sure you can stay focused on the mission at hand – running an exceptional, safe operation and providing great service to our customers.
Have a good weekend, fly safe and let’s keep running a great airline
