New rostering rules at EK
 

New restriction inserted in the bidding system limiting the amount of days off in the top bid groups.

To balance off days between top and bottom bids?

Or, to prevent commuting?

Or, so it doesn't offend high management when they see pilots with more than 3 off days in a row?

Comments? Good? Bad?

I think Bad.

It is beyond bad. And to not have the balls to tell the truth is even worse. Blaming it on GCAA safety regulations is a wimp out for Mr. Ed. He should have the guts to tell the truth: AAR ,AS and the rest of Sr. Management just can not stand the thought of top bid groups working only 12 days a month. We all know that is the reason. We have been hearing the rumors for years about "manual insertions" in the rosters to avoid too many days off in a row.

I will not be answering my phone!

Regards,

330 Man

Loved the positive spin he put on the letter, saying how it would be more fair to the lower bid groups.
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But wait a minute... isn't today's lower bid group next month's top bid group?

Nice try, Ed, (or the PR weenie who wrote it for you), but it didn't wash with me.

I bet the 'duty of care' bit goes out of the window the next time DXB is fogged in!

GCAA directive my round, peachy a**e

Hoorah...turnrounds for all!

Ed is basically saying instead of having a nice roster every 2 months out of 5. you will now have 0. thanks ed:D

emirates is not getting enough guys as it is.. NOW they've made it worse.

What really gets me is the claim that this is being done as a safety measure. What a load of crap. If they really cared about safety wrt fatigue, many of our flights and layovers would not be happening at all. And also, underlining ''Manual Insertions'' in an attempt to mislead those not knowing..... into believing that this is something the company tries to avoid. NOT !

I just don't buy any of this propaganda. Who was complaining about the disparity in days off anyhow??? Everyone has always complained that the bidding system does not work and if the company would only stop manually inserting trips and altering schedules, then it probably would work !

I suspect this is just one more method to increase our workload. I have no doubt that they ran scenarios and reran past months to see if they could scrape out some more work from us and obviously it worked.


The only thing the company sees is the string of days off in a row that we sometimes can achieve. They view this as wrong but they do not look at the preceding months of horrendous schedules and have no concept of how difficult this can be. Over time multiple time zones, and round the clock flying sucks the life out of anyone. The odd string of days off had in the past alleviated these effects, but now that is gone.

Will they stop at nothing now?

Top or Bottom bid..end result noone is happy..except the people that thought this up as a good idea....:ugh:

(And is EKM about to gloat??)

Interesting n'est pas:=

Where was the interest when factoring was around?

Where was the safety when Bush and the bad weather arrived and CC were called at 2am to come to the crew center, but told not to sign on until their normal 6am start?

More crisis management I feel :mad::ugh:

one of Ed's points from his letter.....

"The number of ULR flight segments will increase to 7 by the end of this financial year versus 1 last year"

Last year wasn't the 340 doing JFK x 2 as well as a SYD and MEL.

At this point it was very easy to manage the rosters...most of the pilots were at 900 hrs and it was fairly easy to get decent rosters so that most people were happy...albeit a bit tired.

So not really a very valid reason.

OWW That hurts,
Sorry got to nip down to the 7/11 to get some more KY!
Why don't we all ring up these people (AAR,TCAS,ED,ETC) on their home numbers (from public phones) at 0200- 0500 and just say " Good morning this is your lazy pilot".
After about two weeks of this we will see if they change their attitude
Can someone please provide a list of home phone numbers?

If the Max Days Off are capped at 14 (16-2=14)

Does it mean that the Min Days Off will be capped at 11 (9+2=11)?


All 'tweaking' of the Bid Optimiser should not be done on a live roster affecting 1900 people.

I don't like the sound of "Let's give it a try for a few months, and see what happens"!!! :=

Average days off increased to 11 in bottom bid? Not a chance.

So much for lifestyle and the odd string of days off. I smell trouble coming down the pipe.... unbelievable. Just when ya think it couldn't worse.... :ugh:

Inflation, poor schedules, increased flying, decreased take home pay..... when will it stop!!! I thought things were supposed to get better with time... not worse.

What next???????????????????????????????????????

On the Subject of Safety...
 

Screwing with roster is cheaper than fixing the airplanes....

Before we talk about changing rosters for safety, How about getting the curtains for cabin crew on a PER trip installed..

How about proper Cockpit crew rest facilities, ie a chair for sitting in as opposed to lying in a bunk unable to sleep for 6-8 hours on a ULR.. No seats for us no rest facitlites for F?A's.
GCAA regs, me arse.

Anybody had the interview with KE or JET lately?

I haven't but I guess that's the proverbial straw!

That was never their intention, since they knew that it would revert to a 345 with the 2009 operating plan. So it was being "investigated" until the schedule change.

Does limiting days of to 14 guarantee more days of for the bottom group?

Wow, Ed. You can't possibly have written that crap, can you? But nevertheless you signed it!! Did you really evoke S.A.F.E.T.Y as a concern of yours?????
It's like Animal House's Napolean walking, but with walking sticks ..... Congratulations, you just signed good bye your final remaining tiny little bit of credibilty.

Just spoke with a colleague coming for an interview at the end of the month. He has long wanted to work at EK and to see him go from elation at getting the invite, to anxiety at the rostering changes AND THE WAY IT WAS DONE!, to now deciding not to accept the position should it be offered...has been interesting, to say the least. This is the advantage of the internet...no longer can the truth about what is going on at a company be hidden easily.

He will however, be accepting the flight to Dubai and hotel room for the visit. Way to go Emirates! Not exactly an effective recruitment tool, this running roughshod over the roster! I literally don't know what goes through their heads...if they thought they would have a hard time recruiting before, just wait. The roster is peoples lives, mess with it, and it really is over. Makes my own decision easier.

NO ONE is buying the GCAA bs, it only insults people's intelligence. Play your employees for fools and you will pay the price in attrition. Two down, how many more to go?
:yuk:

Nothing to do with safety.
 

And so the terms and conditions continue their steady decline.
Just how much is enough? Do we need to make 5000 billion dollars a year before someone says "well guess what? I suppose they're doing a good job out there, how about this for a radical idea? What do you say we leave the terms and conditions just as they are? Seems like those boys & gals are doing mighty fine despite the price of oil."

Of all the things they could have "tweaked", why oh why does it have to be the bidding system. Without doubt this is the holy grail of terms and conditions.

The top two months of the rotating bid system are chance for a pilot to pick his days off, get a couple of ULR flights and still be working hard in comparison to other operators. It is analogous to an office worker who waits for his weekend. Something to look forward to, and if you've had a hard time in between well that was just a hard day at the office.

Bring your own food to work, and how about buying your own uniform? Maybe we can do away with the excessive annual leave allowance? Remember you're only "entitled" to 30 days, despite what it says in your contract. Cycle to work. Buy your own charts. Simulator on days off, after all, it's your licence, not the companies problem really.

Seen it all before. I think they call it "low cost".

Now where did I put my CV?

I am scheduled to interview in Dubai next month. Please keep everyone informed as to what is going on at EK and the rostering. If what I read is true then the recruiting people from EK are wasting their time and money coming to N America. Can anyone explain the fatigue policy (short version)? Can you call in fatigued away from Dubai? Thanks for the information.

I was pretty excited to interview at Emirates. But now, I think I might just take the free trip out there, interview and check out Dubai. This is a huge deal breaker for me. Hopefully this will change.

After all It's all about productivity
 

After all this is call increased productivity. Once the CRS system has completed it's first round too many flights are uncovered every months. Since the optimizer of CRS works from the bottom bid to the top bid it becomes the 3-4 and bottom bids that get their roisters overly optimized. Then it makes no more sense for the lower bid groups compared to the 2 top bids. So the roistering team ;) has to equalize the results of the automatic optimization by manually taking flights from the automatically optimized groups and manually insert those flights into the top groups since the optimizer did not reach the top bids. Since we are 1900 pilots minus trainers about 200 ( i guess i really don't know ) then this becomes a big task to insert manually all these flights every months. By changing the rules of CRS there will be more flights assigned in the top bids and then less flights ending not being initially assigned by CRS on the first round. The uncovered flights at the end of the first round of CRS will still be automatically optimized to a lesser disparity between top and bottom bids. This is just a sign of what is about to come in the future. More planes coming not enough people to fly them. Cut the vacation credits=productivity. Still not enough people=cut actual vacations ( 30 days is contractual )=productivity. Still not enough people then introduce factoring=productivity. Still not enough people change CRS rules to fit more flights throughout the groups=productivity. Still not enough people then suspend the bidding system and use optimizer only to crew the aircrafts=productivity.

The idea is they have many airplanes coming and they will do what they do to have the airplanes flying. The trend is definitely going towards more work for less money=productivity. This is just the beginning. Since they cannot have the number of pilots to fly the future fleet at the productivity level that we are today and they cannot change that fact... The only solution is to increase productivity. Can't wait for the 1000+ a years. The hotel in the sky of long haul... Keep discovering :ok:

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

Safety my ars.....

This means same low number of days off in low bid group but less in top bid groups = more work, less time off and more bitching pilots.

People who are thinking of joining..... Think hard.

8 days off in a roster with a mix of shorthaul, longhaul, ultra longhaul, night, day, timezones and min. rest in between. Now that is hard work if you dont have a few months to settle down with a good roster and many days off.

Is the max 14 days off incl. restdays?

Adios Mr Ed

Horror, to my eyes
 

After thinking I have another 7 or so years in me, things like this make me realize in the realm of money vs happiness, I'll be out of here sooner.

In my many years here, this is the final nail in the coffin. They WILL not have enough crews for the flights by year end 08 and they'll tighten up to squeeze all they can to keep the operation going. What's next, max 12 days off? 10?

It all feels like sitting at home with the lights out watching some horror flick. You're sitting in the dark full of anticipation wondering what horrible act is about to take place......again.

Yep, that's working for EK in a nutshell.

Ultimately this change in policy has been put in place because they don't have enough crew. When they sat at the big table with Timmy and he asked if they could crew the expansion, they obediently nodded. Couldn't do otherwise in the culture of fear.
Now there isn't enough people staffing their machinery and they are reacting the only way they can, by asking the people to do more.
If I was thinking of coming here it would probably be a good time to sit and go slow on your application. Until these kinds of issues a meaningfully resolved this place will lurch from drama to drama. It doesn't have the mechanisms to do otherwise. As this will create problems for all in terms of rosters, fatigue and time off it will reach a crunch point at summer time when they allow the most people to go on leave. Those stranded in the desert oasis will work hard and will have short/night turn arounds mixed with long haul, east and west. Large groups of fellows will get to the 900 hour mark and be asked to do more.
Unless the system really breaks it will never be fixed. Better to watch and wait.

What a F:mad:ing joke, the majority of pilots are HAPPY with the bid system to claim they want to make the rosters fair is a lie. Its great to know in your top two bids you can get a nice roster while still flying the required number of hours.
It is just so so sad that a great job has been ruined by pathetic weak jealous managment.:ugh:

There is no real point to a rotating bidding system with this new development. Top bid versus bottom will be basically insignificant, with the exception of specific pairing requests. Good luck trying to commute...

This will force a mix of some long, medium haul and short turns. A balance from a management point of view, but it's really regulating the whole premise of the rotating seniority, which, by in large most people were very content. It's just a way to increase productivity and control; period. Planning is way behind the power curve, again....

Isn't the disparity and difference of work and days off all part of the rotating bidding system? Work more during low bid months and work less during high bids months. This is acknowledged but increased productivity is the name of the management game. The heck with morale...

And finally, what's the problem of working 85-95 hours a month regardless of the amount of days off ? So we'll only intervene in 3 of the 5 bid months....gee thanks. :ouch:

With less off days in the top bids, that leaves space for interesting possibilities.

You can be used for:

-Available days,
-Standby duty,
-Sim support duty (convenient with all the future training),
-Dispatch crew duty (you go set up an aircraft for departure, and then go home!)
-Etc,etc

And maybe that new way of rostering will work perfectly with a potential surprise in the next pay review. (i.e. Do more, get paid less!)

Comments? Ideas? Anybody please come and defend the company on this one?

Oh! Maybe! If I don't like this, I must be unhappy and I should leave?

Perhaps, maybe!!!

Rotation...
 

I have a theory as to what lies behind this BS.
I know that some of the American DEC's have complained that there should be a rotation within the bidding groups as well as between the groups.

What our ignorant, Long range, geography Master Ed and his 'management team' have dreamt up this time could possibly achieve something that might please Captain America et al.

How about we get constructive guys?

What is the Europe based Chinese jobs like? Any ideas? What about Jet in BRU? Time to dust off CV's and finally give AAR and Ed what they've been asking us to do, and that is to leave if we do not like it. And we do not like this.

Cheese,
Pork

This is going to be very very interesting.......

If Ed had said:
"Listen up you lazy c@#$s. We screwed up the numbers so we are going to fix it by f#$king with your days off because we can. I f you don't like it p#$s off and we will hire someone who is cheaper than you anyway."
It would have been just as unpalatable but I would have had more respect for him being honest, but couching it in terms of SAFETY and a GCAA MANDATE!
F#*K OFF WALLY.

Far Kinarss...thats the sort of thing I was meaning...this is going to be very interesting...........:cool:

WTF PokeandBrew? I haven't heard any DEC, US or otherwise make a complaint of what you are refering. It will be the Yanks, Candians, and S. Americans who want to spend some time in their home country that will be really hurt by this new policy. Takes three days of travel just to get to and from. And probably all of the US pilots are used to a pure seniority based bidding system with no rotation at all. Maybe you know of someone who has made your suggestion, but believe me it would very isolated. Oh damn, I forgot, it's Bush's fault. Mesaboy?

All that aside, this will kill recruiting in the west. They might as well not even think of spending any money on roadshows in Canada or the US. The whole perspective of EK has now changed.

Tango Uniform
 

Indeed! I'm also from that part of the world! I normally bid for my leave on those months I am at the bottom bid and bid for 10 days off in a row when I get the top bid. So I can go home at least 4, maybe 5 times per year. Now this is gone. If I knew this was going to change, I would have never joined EK. New joiners: pay a close attention to this.
Mfanhttp://www.pprune.org/forums/images/icons//icon8.gif

Agree
 

I have to agree with Tango Uniform. I don't know where pork and brew got that one from, it just doesn't make any sense. The Americans (both North and South) will be sorely affected by this change. They must be rocking on their heels in dismay! In fact anyone who enjoys going to their home country on a regular basis will be finding it much harder. Europeans, Ozzies, et al.

Once the honeymoon is over, most people like to get out of here on a regular basis. And I don't mean on a layover!

That could be one reason but the other could be that the numbers are fine but they really are out to get you!

Again they're f***king around with us at the wrong time... it's worse than incompetence it's negligence.

Safety my ar*e, ED grow a spine back and pi** off.

Jet Airways: 'We have the screenings scheduled for B777 on 13th, 14th and 15th of Feb 08'.

Aerologic (777) start 2009, Easyjet (Airbus) pool eta 2009, Virgin Oz (777) 2008/9, Korean (777) now, Vietnam (777) now, Air India (777) now, Etihad (SOS). ALL recruiting.

A major change in attitude is needed NOW.

Now, I'm usually a pretty positive person when it comes to Emirates, but this is crap! There is no intelligent way to put a positive spin on this. It's clearly due to one of two reasons:

1. A total misunderstanding of the concept of productivity, or

2. Total jelousy on the part of upper management who have to work 9 to 5.

I'm positive it's the latter. It will be interesting to see how many potential new hires think this is a good idea versus being a deal breaker. In a year when EK needs 50 pilots a month it's hard to understand their thinking.

Way to go guys:ok: NOT!!!