With reference to VA crew resourcing and commuting it has to said that at this time the Company has descended into an utter abyss of dysfunction and chaos with regards to Flight (and Cabin) Crew resourcing. Starting with rostering and the so-called 'bidding' system, this has ceased to function in any meaningful way for many crew. Commuters bid for 2/3/4 day trips and get single day trips, base residents bid for day trips and get the nights away they don't really want. Some crew are flogged with 80+ hour rosters, whilst others sit around on 45 hours. The Sabre rostering component is so ancient it is no longer supported and when problems arise, unassigned duties are manually dropped into rosters with no reference to bids. Some of the resulting rosters produced are what could charitably referred to as 'fantasy' rosters with duties that run to 15 minutes under the legal limit. On top of that crew now have to contend with the rostering of Dark (Ghost) flights that are rostered but only flown if schedule recovery dictates, so it turns into a kind of Airport Reserve. As a result the vast majority of crew are now 'self managing' their rosters with 'personal roster adjustments' compounding the problems that crewing have to deal with on the day. This results in continual flight cancellations thus making commuting problematic. Of course if a commuter can't get to his / her base for duty guess what action they take
. On top of all that there are still significant numbers of crew with Atlas / Qantas etc. start dates and, boy oh boy will they sure burn every minute of personal leave they have before leaving. It has come to this because of the epic failure of management to adequately manage crew resources and deliver the Crew Management software - a project that has been bumbling along for years now with no end in sight. The current EA was agreed to on the assumption this system would be implemented shortly thereafter. Well it is nowhere to be seen and currently there is a mishmash of previous EA / current EA rules. This is the second catastrophic attempt at replacing the current string, glue and paperclips system after a 2+ year project with Jeppesen disappeared up its own arsehole in 2019. The company has reached the end of its inactive pilot list, as many on that list just have better places to be. Despite an email from the Dear Leader along the lines of
'you are all very naughty boys' almost no one has any f_cks left to give. Some are making Jetstar applications, a few have even resigned to go to Bonza!!!!!
I won't even get started on the vacuous social-engineering sheltered workshop crap that rains down down daily but so far the only mitigating factor in all this is that Q / J have been slightly worse in public perception.
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