New rostering rules at EK

[Vorsicht]

For those not in EK who want an insight into how your rostering will be managed, find attached a copy of the letter sent to all pilots at EK


Colleagues –
Fleet and Flight Operations management have been closely monitoring the data regarding the trends of the airline’s operating parameters and are seeing some fairly remarkable changes to the character of our flying at Emirates:

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  • Average stage length will be 6.1 hours by the end of the next financial year – up 15.1% from 5.3 hours only 3 years ago.
  • Average aircraft utilisation will be 14.0 hours per day at the end of the 2008/09 operating year – up from 13.6 hours per day last year. A 3% increase in one year.
  • The number of ULR flight segments will increase to 7 by the end of this financial year versus 1 last year.
  • The average days off (not including leave) in the lower bid group in January 2008 was 9 whilst the upper bid group had a 16 day off average – a 77% disparity.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the character of the average Emirates pilot’s line flying is rapidly moving away from the regional, mid-range flights with few time zone crossings to more ultra long-haul, intercontinental flying across multiple time zones today and in the future. With this fundamental shift comes both opportunity and challenge. There is a clear opportunity for First Officers to gain access to command upgrades quicker than their contemporaries in other airlines whilst the challenge is to maintain a flying workload that is shared across the pilot group in a safe, fair and balanced manner whilst retaining the popular rotating bid group system. It is obvious to us in management that this challenge is not being successfully met with the current automated bid system operating parameters.
We also realise that one of the major attractions of Emirates pilot employment has been and continues to be the unique “rotating” bid group system that attempts to balance the pilot’s opportunity for obtaining the preferred trips, days off and popular destinations across the operating roster year in as fair a manner as possible. That system’s perception of fairness is closely aligned to an automated output free from manual intervention. However, concern has been expressed at the vast difference of work between the top and bottom two bid groups that the present system is generating. The principal manifestation of this disparity is seen in the widening gap in days off as indicated above. One can argue that in using a Preferential Bidding System the difference in the subjective quality of top bid and bottom bid group rosters is the natural outcome of such a system. Flight Operations management, however, has a duty of care to all pilots and feels that this marked difference cannot continue to be ignored or worse, allowed to increase.
Accordingly, some steps will be put in place for rosters beginning in March 08 and onward to reduce the growing disparity in the number of days off in a month without instituting manual intervention in the top two bid groups – a method which has been shown in the February rosters to have been a labour-intensive and unstructured means of achieving the desired result that carries the strong perception of inequality.
Testing in Crew Planning using actual February bid data has shown that the automated CRS System, when programmed with a target of 14 days off maximum per month, can produce rosters that are more balanced from a workload perspective. Crew Planning will apply this target beginning with the March Bid period and therefore, we are sending this email to alert you to this change which will allow you to more accurately bid. As a result of this target implementation, the output of the CRS Bid System will be the subject of continual monitoring over the next several bid periods. If any further revisions are necessary we will inform the pilot group.
I am fully aware that these changes will not be advantageous to all pilots. However, my management team and I cannot shy away from our GCAA-mandated obligation to operational safety in an attempt to sustain the bid satisfaction of a particular segment of the pilot population. I and my team believe this is a reasonable compromise between our dual obligations to safety and pilot morale.
As always, should you have questions or concerns, please contact your respective Fleet Managers.

Regards,

Senior Vice President - Fleet