Short F/a's On Carribean Flights

[jimstras]

Glad someone else finally figured this out before being all jolly about getting understaffing pay. It also does not take an Einstien to figure out that the Company saves a HUGH amount of money by paying understaffing instead of paying for a full compliment of crew members. It is called being taken advantage of. If this union any credibility at all understaffing pay would be the maxed out FA hourly rate divided by the working crew. Even at that the company would be saving lots.

 

[FA Mikey]

Glad someone else finally figured this out before being all jolly about getting understaffing pay. It also does not take an Einstien to figure out that the Company saves a HUGH amount of money by paying understaffing instead of paying for a full compliment of crew members. It is called being taken advantage of. If this union any credibility at all understaffing pay would be the maxed out FA hourly rate divided by the working crew. Even at that the company would be saving lots.

[post="242992"][/post]​

Please explain how AA saves HUGE amouts of money paying understaffing. Why are there so few flights understaffed? If it is such a great savings, why not understaff all of them?

Also did you just think up this great idea of dividing a maxed out A scale employees pay among the working crew as being better for us?

Do you think APFA would have more credibility basing pay in this manner? So understaffed 737 f/a's get 15.43 an hour and 777 f/as get 4.63 an hour. Funny, I am not seeing it as being some how better, more fair or would make our union more credible.

Based on your formula All 777 awards would have been 1/2 of what they were. I will stick to what APFA negotiated. Which was 10 dollars an hour till the so called yes votes 1/2 that to 5 an hour.

 

[Garfield1966]

I think there may be a few misconceptions about how flights are crewed from our end.


I have not worked Intl for a while so Ops can correct any mistakes but as far as I know all of us staff our flights based on the same criteria.

If I have a flight going out and I have enough reserves at home to staff it with out risking a below min crew (where I would have to reassign one of you) then I will pull out a reserve. My understanding is that the staffing on the international side is pretty thin so they are keeping people at home and only crewing flights that are below minimum or critical flights like NRT.

AA cannot short staff all the flights (like the LCC’s do) because we would have to justify the short staffing with actual staffing numbers (which at current levels do not support it). It seems to me that short staffing is more profitable if an additional head can be kept off pay roll. If we have a reserve at home that would not other wise be utilized and we keep that FA home, then no, it would be a waste of money to fly short staffed. In other words, if you are working a short staffed flight, it is because we do not feel that we have enough FA’s on hand to cover critical flights.

I am not talking about AA being understaffed as a whole. That will depend on your point of view. You guys obviously would like every flight staffed full. The company does not want that because of the additional cost. From their perspective it is more cost effective to pay under staffing on a percentage of flights than bring back some additional heads. Their vision of being understaffed is when we do not have enough crews to get minimum staffing on a flight.

 

[MiAAmi]

I think this is another form of thinking that we just are not used to yet. Its just hard to justify having people on furlough when some people have over 40hrs of understaffing in one month.

 

[jimntx]

We all need to remember that the costs involved in having someone on the payroll go well beyond just the hourly salary. For many years the "rule of thumb" for major companies was that an employee cost the company and additional 40% over and above the pay of that employee. These costs were in benefits--health care, pension, etc. It's may not be quite that high today as employees are expected to bear more of the cost of health care and some companies have totally eliminated DB pensions, but I would guess that it is still a substantial amount.

In other words, understaffing is probably cheaper. Unfortunately.

 

[fliboi78]

It also sucks that I maxed out on availability on the 17th. I went away for a few days and when I was ready to work Option II, which is open, they aren't giving any VMC's for the rest of the month! I thought I could pick up a few hours but I don't even get a call because I am so far down on the list. This sucks. You guys have people out there that want to work. I hardly think my not even 5 years pay will bankrupt the company. In fact the people that are awarded the Opt. II flying are the ones that are 20 years and plus and already have about 100 hrs for the month. I know I will get my chance when I am senior but don't blame all flight attendants when flights are going out understaffed. Blame our greedy company trying to save 30-70 dollars per flight.

 

[Garfield1966]

It also sucks that I maxed out on availability on the 17th. I went away for a few days and when I was ready to work Option II, which is open, they aren't giving any VMC's for the rest of the month! I thought I could pick up a few hours but I don't even get a call because I am so far down on the list. This sucks. You guys have people out there that want to work. I hardly think my not even 5 years pay will bankrupt the company. In fact the people that are awarded the Opt. II flying are the ones that are 20 years and plus and already have about 100 hrs for the month. I know I will get my chance when I am senior but don't blame all flight attendants when flights are going out understaffed. Blame our greedy company trying to save 30-70 dollars per flight.

[post="243400"][/post]​

I’m not following you. Are bid positions not making it down to Opt II? Makeup is proffered first in seniority order and then Opt II is proffered. The company would love to be able to give Opt II / MU to the junior FA (cost savings) but with the contract in place that is no possible.

If you save $50 a flight that will start to add up to a nice chunk of change after a while. $5000 for every 100 flights. $50,000 for every 10000 flights … etc.

 

[fliboi78]

Bid positions are making it to opt II but by the time it gets to my seniority there is nothing left. If there were more VMC positions then I would be able to fly. But I finally got a call today. But of course the only thing I was offered was some caribbean mess that you do 3 legs a day with 8 hrs of rest each night...I don't think so.