This came in an e-mail. How does AA I.T. compare in the PLI process? Anyone see anything yet?
Fellow Pilots,
Forcing major changes in corporate culture is never easy. While I remain generally hopeful about the path that American Airlines and its unions have chosen to collaboratively retool our company into a major competitive force within the industry, the hard reality is that periods of progress are inevitably interrupted with examples of regressive behavior by middle management. Holding management accountable is a very necessary element of ensuring that your interests are protected.
On January 3, the AA Information Technology (IT) Department notified APA of yet another delay in the testing and implementation of the enhanced HI-33 display for our reserve pilots. While this was troubling enough, within hours the AA Flight Department announced the addition of a new feature on the AAPilots homepage allowing individual pilots to display their “Attendance History†in an easy to view format. Your Association was not made aware of the existence of the attendance history tool until the Flight Department announced it via HI-6 message. When I first heard about this project, I was absolutely appalled by this apparent misallocation of scarce programming resources and the message of complete indifference to the needs of our pilots it sent. Association representatives have spent the past several days investigating the circumstances around this project and why seemingly simple commitments regarding our programming issues are being repeatedly delayed. Ironically, the programming tasks that were promised to APA are no more difficult to execute than the application recently completed for the Flight Department.
It appears the new attendance display function has been under development for more than two years. Even before pilot sick rates became a topic of interest, this project was undertaken to automate the previously labor intensive procedure of tracking pilot attendance with an ultimate goal of reducing administrative overhead. I will not criticize any effort to streamline and shrink management ranks. That being said, I am dismayed that the largest airline in North America – which once led the industry in technology – cannot accomplish such a straightforward automation task inside of six months, much less two years. This event really begs the question of whether there are other administrative areas that can be consolidated but for the lack of a sufficiently nimble IT department.
Beyond the obvious technical failings, I am particularly exasperated by the Flight Department’s demonstrated lack of leadership and understanding of pilot needs and their failure to function as an advocate for those needs to other departments. I am confident Flight Department administrators and managers find their new attendance monitoring tool useful. However, attempting to proudly “share†this new toy with line pilots when they know our projects are languishing in IT purgatory demonstrates an amazing lack of either awareness or concern on their part.
One of the cornerstones of the Working Together process is, “Share before announcing.†If anyone in the Flight Department had bothered to consult APA before offering this feature to line pilots, this is what we would have told them: “We have yet to hear from a single line pilot who wants an ‘enhanced sick display.’ Our pilots do not need slick graphics providing them with historical information that is both known to them and already available via an HI-10 entry.†We would have asked them, “How many Flight Department administrators and/or managers do you plan to eliminate?†We would have reiterated that what our pilots need are software tools they can use – tools that make their life easier. We need an enhanced HI-33 display. We need a more capable and user-friendly reserve preference ballot that was promised in 2003, but not yet delivered. We need reserve GTD credit for training – now! What we don’t need is to have to remind management again that these items have already been agreed to!
For many months, we have been demanding faster progress on several IT projects that will benefit pilots. We have waited patiently while various company representatives have committed that adequate resources would be devoted to these tasks. Sadly, when those commitments go unfulfilled and we rightfully bring that to the attention of the Vice President of Flight, we are met with a stream of communications that attempt to shift the blame and defend the indefensible. When presented with the opportunity to advocate for pilots, Captain Hettermann regretfully chooses instead to abandon a professed commitment to accountability to defend an inefficient and non-responsive IT department.
If management had been attending to the needs of its employees, most of us wouldn’t really care about a new software tool placed on the Flight Department’s web site. If management representatives had put half the effort into addressing our concerns as they have in defending their mistakes, we would not be wasting our time with this issue at the expense of focusing on the very serious competitive issues facing our airline. Through bureaucratic ineptitude and inertia, any goodwill that might have resulted from the timely completion of our projects has been needlessly squandered. Once management fulfills their commitments on these long-delayed projects, instead of receiving credit for a job well done, the collective response will be, “It’s about time!†This episode is just one more misstep in a recent string of stumbles that call into question whether middle management is able to adapt and evolve in the same manner that line employees are being asked to adapt and evolve.
Next week the APA National Officers will meet with AMR CEO Gerard Arpey. We will take with us a list of issues highlighting where various levels of management are failing the line employees of this airline. We will be reminding Mr. Arpey that this is his problem to solve – not ours. This is our airline, and we are committed to doing what is right to make it – and our careers – better and stronger. However, we cannot and will not continue to pull more than our share of this load while the proverbial “layers of clay†between Mr. Arpey and line employees continue to stumble and fall. Our pilots are held accountable for their conduct and decisions each and every day. We expect the same level of accountability from management. There cannot be a double standard.
Fraternally,
XXXXX XXXXXX
Fellow Pilots,
Forcing major changes in corporate culture is never easy. While I remain generally hopeful about the path that American Airlines and its unions have chosen to collaboratively retool our company into a major competitive force within the industry, the hard reality is that periods of progress are inevitably interrupted with examples of regressive behavior by middle management. Holding management accountable is a very necessary element of ensuring that your interests are protected.
On January 3, the AA Information Technology (IT) Department notified APA of yet another delay in the testing and implementation of the enhanced HI-33 display for our reserve pilots. While this was troubling enough, within hours the AA Flight Department announced the addition of a new feature on the AAPilots homepage allowing individual pilots to display their “Attendance History†in an easy to view format. Your Association was not made aware of the existence of the attendance history tool until the Flight Department announced it via HI-6 message. When I first heard about this project, I was absolutely appalled by this apparent misallocation of scarce programming resources and the message of complete indifference to the needs of our pilots it sent. Association representatives have spent the past several days investigating the circumstances around this project and why seemingly simple commitments regarding our programming issues are being repeatedly delayed. Ironically, the programming tasks that were promised to APA are no more difficult to execute than the application recently completed for the Flight Department.
It appears the new attendance display function has been under development for more than two years. Even before pilot sick rates became a topic of interest, this project was undertaken to automate the previously labor intensive procedure of tracking pilot attendance with an ultimate goal of reducing administrative overhead. I will not criticize any effort to streamline and shrink management ranks. That being said, I am dismayed that the largest airline in North America – which once led the industry in technology – cannot accomplish such a straightforward automation task inside of six months, much less two years. This event really begs the question of whether there are other administrative areas that can be consolidated but for the lack of a sufficiently nimble IT department.
Beyond the obvious technical failings, I am particularly exasperated by the Flight Department’s demonstrated lack of leadership and understanding of pilot needs and their failure to function as an advocate for those needs to other departments. I am confident Flight Department administrators and managers find their new attendance monitoring tool useful. However, attempting to proudly “share†this new toy with line pilots when they know our projects are languishing in IT purgatory demonstrates an amazing lack of either awareness or concern on their part.
One of the cornerstones of the Working Together process is, “Share before announcing.†If anyone in the Flight Department had bothered to consult APA before offering this feature to line pilots, this is what we would have told them: “We have yet to hear from a single line pilot who wants an ‘enhanced sick display.’ Our pilots do not need slick graphics providing them with historical information that is both known to them and already available via an HI-10 entry.†We would have asked them, “How many Flight Department administrators and/or managers do you plan to eliminate?†We would have reiterated that what our pilots need are software tools they can use – tools that make their life easier. We need an enhanced HI-33 display. We need a more capable and user-friendly reserve preference ballot that was promised in 2003, but not yet delivered. We need reserve GTD credit for training – now! What we don’t need is to have to remind management again that these items have already been agreed to!
For many months, we have been demanding faster progress on several IT projects that will benefit pilots. We have waited patiently while various company representatives have committed that adequate resources would be devoted to these tasks. Sadly, when those commitments go unfulfilled and we rightfully bring that to the attention of the Vice President of Flight, we are met with a stream of communications that attempt to shift the blame and defend the indefensible. When presented with the opportunity to advocate for pilots, Captain Hettermann regretfully chooses instead to abandon a professed commitment to accountability to defend an inefficient and non-responsive IT department.
If management had been attending to the needs of its employees, most of us wouldn’t really care about a new software tool placed on the Flight Department’s web site. If management representatives had put half the effort into addressing our concerns as they have in defending their mistakes, we would not be wasting our time with this issue at the expense of focusing on the very serious competitive issues facing our airline. Through bureaucratic ineptitude and inertia, any goodwill that might have resulted from the timely completion of our projects has been needlessly squandered. Once management fulfills their commitments on these long-delayed projects, instead of receiving credit for a job well done, the collective response will be, “It’s about time!†This episode is just one more misstep in a recent string of stumbles that call into question whether middle management is able to adapt and evolve in the same manner that line employees are being asked to adapt and evolve.
Next week the APA National Officers will meet with AMR CEO Gerard Arpey. We will take with us a list of issues highlighting where various levels of management are failing the line employees of this airline. We will be reminding Mr. Arpey that this is his problem to solve – not ours. This is our airline, and we are committed to doing what is right to make it – and our careers – better and stronger. However, we cannot and will not continue to pull more than our share of this load while the proverbial “layers of clay†between Mr. Arpey and line employees continue to stumble and fall. Our pilots are held accountable for their conduct and decisions each and every day. We expect the same level of accountability from management. There cannot be a double standard.
Fraternally,
XXXXX XXXXXX
