WestJet MEC PIREP Podcast

Episode 46 - MEC Update & Scheduling Matters

• WestJet MEC • Season 3 • Episode 46

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0:00 | 37:35

This MEC update covers, upcoming meeting with company leadership, Health & Safety committee restart, Cuba service changes and crew expense guidance, CAAT pension and Narita hotel updates, and ongoing arbitrations. 
Following the MEC update, this episode features an interview with Scheduling Chair John Jaenicke on “Scheduling Matters” and priorities for CA3.

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Jacob Astin:

Starting today on February 11th in the Calgary office. Uh, am most weeks. I'm down with a cold, though. I'm still drinking my tea. So Barrett's half foot from me just to stay. to over there, uh, because Barrett's on vacation starting

Barret Armann:

one day he doesn't

Jacob Astin:

start vacation with the Kleenex box. Um, are gonna do a couple updates here guys. And then we're wrap into a, an I did, uh, with our scheduling chair, John Jaenicke at the of this, uh, just want to quickly bring up the survey results. we had 56% of WestJet pilots the survey. Thank you much. We had over 160 pages of comments also thank you. Um, we're talking some the comments and the survey results in a future, uh, video. Um, We're meeting with the company the first meeting that, uh, Barret and I are having, uh, next week. I'm to be kind of looking to find out from them more about, you know, aren't we making money? Why is Delta making money quarter after quarter WestJet is still, languishing in negatives. Um, little bit that. What we trying to do as an airline? we to be lie flatbeds or 28 inch seat pitch? What trying to do here? So just general high level stuff about, uh, with the company, uh, as uh, we both have questions for both groups back and forth. then get back to the pilot group on that kind of stuff. You had couple points, Barret.

Barret Armann:

We do, uh, management meeting with the company, uh, is gonna be good. We can sort of go over a couple of items that we've got that are concerning to the pilot group, see what they've got, discuss, send out some more information. Once that happens, uh, latest developments, health and safety is, uh, once again in place. So that committee is staffed and increasing its size. They met with the company the first time, uh, with the new members yesterday, which was good to see. And uh, I think we can now move forward with health and safety gets, it's been a bit quiet there for a while, but now these guys are, are ready to go. Uh, Cuba developments, obviously everybody knows what's going on there. Uh, we've stopped, uh, flying passengers into Cuba, WestJet's now just pulling passengers of Cuba, timeframe for that, I would expect within the next 14 days. Most people go down there for a seven day or 14 day vacation uh, and we'll see what develops with that. Also, uh, in terms of expenses when you're on the road, uh, there is no obligation for crew members to use their own. Credit card, the company can organize this. Uh, you shouldn't have to be put out. Uh, if you're asked for hotels, transportation, et cetera, in Cuba or Columbia, it's completely unacceptable. Uh, the company should be arranging for you. Uh, CAAT pension plan I was talking to Alfredo this week. There's been some changes there. That's ongoing. We will give you more information when we hear about that. Uh, however, our money is. Safe so we can still continue forward with the CAAT plan. Uh, quick hotel update. Uh, site visits have been completed in Narita. Uh, the committee is currently dealing with that hotel situation, whether we're changing the hotels, which hotel we're gonna go to, uh, as long as it follows the collective agreement. Uh, last thing that I wanted to bring up was the arbitrations that we're currently dealing with. And uh, in my last video with Jeff Roberts, we discussed increasing, uh. National's ability and, uh, strength when we head to the arbitrator. The past 72 hours has been very eye-opening. Uh, I would like to personally thank Jeff Roberts, uh, Thomas Paul, Matt Engelman, Kevin Collins, All of us have been working together as a team nonstop over the past 72 hours for an arbitration that is. Currently in play. Uh, we will have more on that information shortly. Uh, they are just finishing it right now, so I think the next video and next communication, uh, will be. With to that.

Jacob Astin:

Thanks that Barrett. Uh, thing actually expect. answer a questions from the pilot group, uh, this but we've had actually no darts submitted for this, so we've had no darts. If anybody has questions for us, uh, to answer here, please go dart.alpa.org and a dart the YouTube channel. Um, we have a long, uh, interview with chair talking about all sorts things think is gonna be uh, um. Useful the group, uh, that I, I did. And um, so he's, we're also attaching document, which is called Scheduling Matters to this which the part of that can at, at, uh, 30,000 feet of thing. Um, we go right to video now. Barret.

Barret Armann:

Let's do it.

Jacob Astin:

Let's do it. Thanks. We're just going to go through some of this stuff. Um. Welcome John Chair of the scheduling committee. For how long now?

John Jaenicke:

Uh, I've been the chair, well, I've been on the scheduling committee since the, we've joined ALPA and I've been the chair probably for the last four years now. So what, we're 2026 now. So that's over, uh, eight years of experience on the scheduling committee.

Jacob Astin:

That's a lot of scheduling.

John Jaenicke:

That's a lot of scheduling.

Jacob Astin:

Uh, we're gonna blast right into it here. Um, I've got a bunch of questions. Uh, you have a document that's gonna be attached to, uh, this, uh, communication. It's called Scheduling Matters, um, and detailing all of this type of stuff. And we're gonna run through a bunch of questions and just see where we can go from there and hopefully give the pilots, uh, some good information here.

John Jaenicke:

Sounds good.

Jacob Astin:

Ready to blast into it. Um, first question I have, uh, the schedule. Your document identifies five key areas that form the four Rs, as you call it, trip rigs, pairing reconciliation, reassignment rules reserve, and scheduling adjustment window. Uh, can you explain why the scheduling committee chose to focus on these specific areas and how are they interconnected in terms of pilot quality of life and compensation?

John Jaenicke:

Yeah, so. Over the last, uh, three or four years that we've been dealing with the contract, we've gotten thousands of darts. And so we've accumulated those darts and we reviewed them to identify. Five key areas. Now, there are a lot of areas in this, in the contract that need attention, but we wanted to really highlight these five key areas and they are rigs, reconciliation, reassignment, reserve, and the saw. So I call them the four Rs, and they all work a little bit. Together. Right? So trip rigs, I think most people don't understand what those, those are things like the time away from base credit, the men duty period credit, and a credit we'd like to see introduced called the average daily credit reconciliation. Well, that's how our pairings are reconciled, right? So right now we reconcile everything over a pairing versus, you know, industry standards, which is per segment or per day. Uh, the other thing is reassignment rules. Every pilot has been affected by our very company friendly reassignment rules. So that's one of the big areas we'd like to see reserve. Another area. We have a lot of pilots now on reserve for a lot longer, and we want to make those rules, uh, a lot better. Lastly, the saw, you know, the saw was. Uh, we were the first Canadian carrier to bring in this concept of this scheduling adjustment window. And when we, when we brought it in, we knew, uh, it was just the beginning of something that could be made a lot better to make a much more flexible schedule for the pilot group. So, you know, they, they all kind of come together and work together to really build, you know, a better life and help in the overall compensation, especially on things like. Rigs and, um, reassignment rules and, um, reconciliation.

Jacob Astin:

What's been the history like at WestJet? Because we used to have min daily credit.

John Jaenicke:

No, we've never had men daily credit. Okay. We had a min daily credit. When you got called out on reserve, or sorry, when you got called out for overtime, that was it. Prior. Prior to CA one, we never had rigs at all. There were no trip rigs. You only got paid what you flew. So deadhead and stuff like that, those credits. So

Jacob Astin:

those generally gotten better over CA one to CA two.

John Jaenicke:

Yeah.

Jacob Astin:

And then this is kind of like the look into can potentially some stuff for CA three.

John Jaenicke:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Jacob Astin:

Um, awesome. Um. Your document says, uh, states that WestJet's existing RIG formulas are less generous and often fail to reflect the true value of a pilot's time. How does the comparison chart showing MDPC at 4.25 that you have in the document versus industry standard of five plus illustrate the compensation gap that exists?

John Jaenicke:

Yeah, I mean, just the value itself, right? So MDPC sends for the min duty period credit, so that's the credit that you receive while you're on duty and, uh. So the, the larger the value, it's gonna cover those days where you really don't do very much, right? So you could imagine you, especially outta Calgary, you're gonna do that Kelowna turn or something like that. The mid duty period credit, uh, will capture more value for those kind of low credit days. When we look at rigs, you have to think of them all working sort of together, right? So you've got a, a min duty period credit. You've got a duty period credit and a time away from base credit, right? And they all can, they all have their place within, you know, the rig system, right? So you might get a pairing where. You know, you got 48 hours somewhere, well you're, you're not getting the min duty period credit for the, that layover length. What you are doing is getting the time away from base credit. So that's where that rig comes.

Jacob Astin:

So that's a good point.'cause January 1st of this year, we switched to a 3.75 time away from base credit.

John Jaenicke:

Right.

Jacob Astin:

And how has that affected the pairing so far in 2026?

John Jaenicke:

Well, you starting to see more value, um, like so more credit for those pairings, um, that have those longer layovers, right? So the, the real reason you have rigs is to compensate you for your time for the inherent network inefficiencies, right? You take an airline like WestJet and what do we do? We, we fly to places like once a day. Um, maybe like three times a week. A lot of, you know, north south flying that doesn't just interconnect well very well. So that's why rigs are so important to us because, you know, we don't build the network. We have no say in where the airplanes go. So having these trip rigs help us, you know, make sure that the, the unproductive flying we get. Proper, you know, reconci, we get the proper credit for that, right? And, uh, and it also will help drive the computer that builds our pairings. So the, what we call the solver to try to make the pairings more efficient, right? Because the solver doesn't want to pay you trip rigs. It wants to make you the most efficient pilot possible. So, we'll, we'll try to build more efficient pairings, but we're a slave to our network, right? If we only have one flight to one place, there's not much that you can do. So that's where the rigs come into and, and provide you that credit. And overall, like if you start to work down rates and stuff like that, what they can do is instead of maybe working 16 days in a month, maybe they drop it down to 15, right? Because they're gonna provide more credit for what you're doing in that month.

Jacob Astin:

So, kind of like segueing into my question, um, your document kind of explains that the average daily credit guarantee a pilot can spend multiple days away from home yet earn significantly less credit. So given that WestJet currently has an a ADC zero ADC, while carriers, carriers like Southwest Airlines have a 6.5 and Alaska provides 5.15, what would like, like bringing this into WestJet, how would that change our compensation?

John Jaenicke:

So, first of all, we'll explain what an average daily credit is. So an average daily credit is, is almost like a, a credit, like an average credit for the pairing, right? So let's just use for simple math, five hours. So let's say every day was worth five hours. So if you had a two day, it's always gonna be worth 10 hours. A three days, always worth 15 hours or four days, always worth 20 hours. And so if you have a fairly, you know, inefficient pairing where there's not a lot of flying, let's say it's a four day. Uh, you're always gonna be guaranteed 20 hours of credit. It's not a min daily credit. And I will say min daily credits are not very common in the industry. Um, but an average daily credit will round out, uh, those kind of like inefficient, uh, pairings that you have. So at least you're always going to have. F some, you know, guarantee of, of credit for that pairing.

Jacob Astin:

Okay. No,

John Jaenicke:

that makes sense.

Jacob Astin:

Yeah, no it does. And actually the next ones I've, we've talked about, um, in the flight deck for many, many years here, um, your document identifies the current pairing, reconciliation, reconciles over the entire pairing. Yeah. So a lot of the times you might get, um, you know, deicing and extra legs and all this sort of stuff. Then they cancel one leg on day three and then you get paid the same even though you're all over the place. Yeah. And doing kind of extra flying in some days. Um. How do, like, how does this system cause like in any increases in flying throughout the trip to be effectively washed out? Like why would daily reconciliation provide more transparent and fair credit calculations?

John Jaenicke:

Yeah, so when you look at the industry standard, it's per segment, which means every leg you do is pay, is reconciled the original, uh, credit or greater what you fly, or at least. Over the day. And so the problem with ours is that we reconcile everything over the pairing. So if you have one day where you fly a little bit more one day where you fly a little less, something gets canceled, it all gets washed out because it's being reconciled over the pairing. Versus the day. And so by having, you know, daily, uh, or per segment reconciliation, it's gonna capture those times where you spent more time in de ice or you due to headwinds, took a little longer. Where it really helps out though, is once you start to get into real complicated reassignments and um, overtime, because then you can imagine it just becomes really simple. So. You get paid. It's just, you know, today I was scheduled for this. Well, that's the credit you got.

Jacob Astin:

Mm-hmm.

John Jaenicke:

You got reassigned, you would get the greater of the reassignment credit or what you flew and it's just per day. And it makes it really simple to figure out what you should get paid versus now where it's where it's reconciled over the pairing. Right. Versus like just so

Jacob Astin:

talking about rigs and the FARs, then like. Where generally are Canadian carriers at in comparison to American Cares now?

John Jaenicke:

So Canada really lags when we look at trip rigs and reconciliation rules, right? So, you know, we're at an MDPC of 4.25. Um, air Canada is very similar, but you know, the industry standard is above five time away from base credit. Air Canada's still one to four and uh, we are now one to 3.75. Uh, most carriers are one to three, one to 3.5. Uh, and then we have an ADC, we don't even have that. Air Canada did get it, and they're a four and a half. But, uh, you know, obviously the industry standards around well above five. So, you know, in general, when it comes to scheduling rules, we're way behind our American carriers. Right? And we'll, we'll really explore that as we get into the, some of the reassignment language.

Jacob Astin:

Your document states, uh, that the company has, quote, repeatedly abused the definition of necessity when it comes to reassignments as we're talking about rea assignments. Yeah. Um, how would implementing the proposed bucket system that you talk about in the document, like basically, uh, categorizing reassignments into defined groups like uncontrollable events versus complete substitution limit management's ability to reassign pilots for inadequate manpower planning.

John Jaenicke:

I think, you know, it's really interesting when you talk to a lot of American carriers and you said, Hey, how do you guys manage your reassignments? And they're like, oh, we get time and a half. And that's always the standard. When you dive into their contract, what you see is they kind of break up reassignments into, I would call like kind of two buckets. And Alaska's got a grade. It's very easy to read. So basically they have reassignments and then they have. They would call like things like a cancellation, a, a cars violation, a misconnection, and they would kind of group that into a different bucket. So these are sort of things that are not at the control of, I guess, crew scheduling, right? They cancel flight. I've done network planning. You miss a connection, you have a cards violation, and those reassignment rules would follow along. It's kind of our assignment rules. So, hey, your pairing got canceled, we're gonna give you something else. Or the first part of your pairing got canceled, we're gonna deadhead you to your, uh, original pairing.

Jacob Astin:

What if you like, like with our bidding system, what if you spend all your points on trying to get, you know, whatever it is, Cancun, layovers.

John Jaenicke:

Yeah.

Jacob Astin:

And then you're showing up to the airport or whatever, and you get reassigned for your. You know, winter overnights.

John Jaenicke:

Yeah.

Jacob Astin:

Is it just money? Is reassignments just money in the industry or is, could it be other things that, that are triggered? Or is it just basically money?

John Jaenicke:

So, so different carriers will handle this differently. So like I said, there's the one bucket with, uh, kind of the, we call it the, you know, the cancellation. Reassignment rules, and then there's what I've, you know, we'll call like a substitution or a swap. It's where like you bid for that, um, Cancun overnight, you spent your points and whatnot, and they're just gonna take that pairing, put it out to open time, and then they're gonna give you something less desirable. So now you're overnighting. You may be two domestic par, you know, overnights or something like that. They know they can get rid of that pairing, um, into open time.'cause somebody would pick it up, but they couldn't get rid of that. And so some carriers will sort of limit that a little bit. But what a lot of carriers do is they introduce a concept of what's called a trip override. And you'll find this in most carriers, that they say, okay, you, you can swap my pairing out. But now you're gonna pay me for that. You're gonna pay me for the flexibility of, uh, of, of giving the company that flexibility that they want, right? And so you might say there's a three day pairing and now I'm doing this other three day pairing. It's still flying, it wasn't canceled. Now I'm getting a trip override of time and a half or whatever it happens to be that you've negotiated. And you could even imagine that. So Air Canada, they have, um, something called draft on the go. Let's say you pick up a pairing. Now you've purposely went out and picked up a 48 hour layover in Liberia. That's what you really wanted to do. You get to the airport, boom. Now you're going to, you know, a totally different place that you didn't bid for. So what they do then is they say, okay, we're gonna, uh, this can happen, but we're gonna pay you now double time. So what you see is the American carriers have started to introduce this concept of a trip override to really. Allow the company to have that flexibility, but pay you for that. Pay you for the privilege of removing or taking away the flying that you either bid for or, you know, picked up in open time.

Jacob Astin:

And that's something that's relatively standard south of the border.

John Jaenicke:

It's very relatively standard south of the border. Um, ultimately the best carrier is Southwest, where any reassignment is, you know, paid at some sort of a ride. But, uh, most carriers like Alaska is this concept of what they would call a reassignment. We would call like maybe a swap or substitution where it's, I'm taking your flying, I'm giving it to somebody else, and you're gonna be doing this just to, to keep the operation flying and they pay an override. And the big thing with the overrides too is that you can use 'em for all sorts of thing, different things. So to, to understand the concept of an override, we already ha have. Okay, an override, um, already in our schedule. So if you go work an extra day, like you, you know, when you land at two 15, you get a four hour override, right? And so you can either do it by hours or percentages, the standards percentages. Um, so you can imagine the overrides being applied. You work an extra day, you get an override, or two extra days, maybe it's. A double override. And then the beauty of the overrides, and I think what's really important to them is they multiply. So we talked to an Alaska, the chair there, and they had, uh, somebody who picked up a pairing. So, and then it was swapped out on them, so that was a 200% override. Then they ended up flying an extra day. At the end of the day, they did the little pickup and they worked one extra day, but they had a 400% override on that pairing.

Jacob Astin:

Which is great for money, but also obviously great for the company to have that operational flexibility, right? So it goes both ways.

John Jaenicke:

It goes both ways. And what the American carriers have really found out is they will pay to have that flexibility because it is so expensive to not cover a flight, to have a flight get canceled in, you know, a foreign city and stuff like that. So by paying extra money, it's great. And from a pilot perspective, what the Americans have really figured out is. Getting these additional overrides without doing a lot of extra work. Right. So I think that's ideally what we always want is getting paid more to do the same amount of work or very little,

Jacob Astin:

a little extra. Makes sense. Yeah. Um, we just finished, I was just going over the, the survey results for the flight first flight deck feedback survey and, and reserve came up a lot, as you know. Yeah. A lot of people saying reserve is an issue, reserve is an issue. Um, in your document, uh, reserve pilots may be quote, you know, continually reassigned throughout their RAP. Mm-hmm. Um, meaning they must kind of, kind of pack their bags kind of for six days Yeah. And be ready for anything. Um, how would applying the same reassignment protections to reserve pilots as line holder, line holders provide the structure and balance the document advocates for?

John Jaenicke:

Yeah, so what you see in a lot of contracts is, uh, let's say you're in a five day reserve block and you get assigned three days. Uh, once you're assigned a three day pairing, all the same reassignment rules of a line holder, then apply to a reserve holder. That means that the company has to get you back at the, at the end of day three. They could assign you something at the end of day three for the next day, but you get to go home. So it gives you some stability. Now remember I was talking about those overrides? You could imagine those overrides being applied. To a situation like this, well, maybe they want to extend you to an extra day. Well, maybe there's an override there. So this is how these overrides can be used for multiple things in the contract to give, uh, the company flexibility, but then to reward the pilots or to give the pilots extra compensation for that flexibility, right? That's what you really want.

Jacob Astin:

Yeah, uh, that makes sense. Um, your document discusses how a daily reserve credit or reserve day value ensures that time spent available to the company is still time committed to work. How would the system help reserve pilots reach their MMG more consistently and allow them to trade reserve blocks with line holders?

John Jaenicke:

Yeah, so right now there's no, um, credit for reserve. The, the pilot on reserve works up to their MMG, and if they manage to get to 77 and a half, 77 and a half hours, they. They ended up blocking out for the month. But what if you provide a credit per each day? Maybe you only get called 10 days outta the month, and then the other, whatever, eight days, would then have a credit applied. So that pilot would probably reach their MMG prior to the 18 days and essentially block out by adding a reserve credit. It also allows that reserve holder to trade that. Uh, reserve block to a line holder, right? So there may be line holders that would, Hey, I would do that reserve block, but there's no mechanism right now because there's no credit attached to a reserve block. So, um, Transat actually is a great example of this. They just introduced this in their contract and, you know, it's something that I think we should really, uh, aim for in ca three.

Jacob Astin:

No, that makes sense. Um, speaking of another hot, hot button issue in CA two, I guess saw came out. Yeah. You know, the scheduling adjustment window, um. I've had a lot of experience trying to use it, trying 'cause I just, about everything I click on gets denied'cause someone else picks it up. But while this feature is popular amongst many of our pilots, it currently only only allows pilots to swap or pick up pairings but not drop them. How would adding drop functionality and multiple saw windows with different selection methods improve pilot flexibility and quality of life?

John Jaenicke:

Yeah, so when we introduced the saw, um. It was a hard concept to get across to the company. We were the first in Canada to introduce this idea and um, you know, we had proposed the idea originally of drops, but the whole concept itself, uh, was so new that we, we came with a limited window and I always knew that this was just a start. Right. Um, I'm all about. I, I think we should, you know, always be looking at ways to maximize scheduling flexibility to allow you to have the schedule that you want. So that's what the saw was intended for. So, you know, I think adding the ability to drop a pairing. So, um, air Canada's copied our idea and they're gonna add drops down to, I think 60 hours or something like that. And so you could imagine. The ability to, uh, swap, pick up and or drop into the saw to give you a tremendous amount of flexibility. Now, there's obviously limits on drops because you can't have everybody dropping on the same day. So what most companies do is they have either a blackout dates or they use minimum reserve coverage. So they said, Hey, we need, you know, five guys on reserve. We have eight. So. If we allow three people to drop, then we still have enough minimum reserve coverage.

Jacob Astin:

The pilots like if they have a medical appointment or something going on, they're able to create flexibility themselves. So why would the company do something like previously over Christmas they put a saw restriction over Christmas, wouldn't. Getting, not having restriction, having the pilots, the ability to change their schedule just with other pilots. Have pilots getting more flexibility and more operational certainty for the company?

John Jaenicke:

The, the pairings that, uh, are in the saw come out of, um, the pairing package. So we, we, we take some pairings out of the final pairing package. We drop them into the saw and then, uh, you can. Uh, switch. What they don't want happening is, you know, I'll use the Christmas example. You know, everybody trying to swap their pairing at the beginning of the month and to open up Christmas, and then they would have a bunch of flying over Christmas that they couldn't cover 'cause it wouldn't have enough reserve coverage. Now what the industry usually does is they either black out those dates, so that's why we do those. Mm-hmm. Or they provide a minimum reserve coverage over those days. So, um, you could see that you needed 10 reserve pilots on one day, and if you had 12, then there could be two pairings that would, that come into the saw that would cover those days. So, you know, the way that a Southwest might do this is they would say, you know, over Christmas we need 10 guys on reserve. We have 10 guys. And so there's no. Drops or there's no saw drops into the saw during those days. So there's always limits on that, unfortunately. Um, I think that would be really hard to get to, but I think, you know, just opening it up to drops would allow there to be much more pairings in there and allow it to almost be like a snowball effect. So if I drop a pairing, you might go in there, swap a pairing or that then your pairing is available and it just creates a bigger pool to, uh, to use. And then one of the things we think with the saw that could be really good is that, um, is multiple windows, right? And what you see in a lot of carriers is different solving methods. And what do I mean by that? Well, I mean that maybe you have a saw window that is run by seniority, and I know that gets touchy, but, uh, maybe tenure should matter a bit. And maybe the first saw window, the most senior pilots should have the first kick at the can per se. That window would close, another window would open up and maybe it's first come, first serve. Another window would open up another close, and maybe that's for the reserve pilots, right? So you could build up your schedule for whatever was left over. So these are all options. A lot of it's gonna depend on the new software we're getting. So we're moving away, um, from Flica. Flica is a real old legacy software. We're moving to a new product made by Jeppesen. Uh, we, I haven't seen, um, all of the details on it yet. I know Alaska uses it. I've spoken with their, uh, scheduling committee and we've seen the interface. It's way better, much more moderate, and we'll automate most of the functions in the saw. So that was one of the problems that we had, is when we designed this, uh, we actually kind of copied JetBlue a little bit. They use Flicka and we went to Flicka and said, okay, hey, we've copied this JetBlue model, can you implement it? And by that time, CAE said, we're no longer implementing any changes in Flicka 'cause. We're already moving on to our next product, and so we're moving away from, um, CAE and that product, we're moving to this new jet product.

Jacob Astin:

Okay. Well, I'm not gonna take the bait on talking about seniority. I'm gonna just keep talking about the Jeppesen software here. Um, what kind of timelines are we looking at for potentially rolling out new software within the bidding packages and getting schedules and doing drops and these types of things?

John Jaenicke:

Yeah, so the new Jeppesen product, um, is being worked out. It started already. And should go live in 2027. So that sets us up really nicely for ca three. Um, we'll sit down with the company in Jep over the next, uh, six months to determine what's its functionality, right? What can it do, what can it do? Maybe some of the ideas that we've suggested here, they're not possible, but maybe there's some other things that it can do. So, um, uh, we're really excited to go to this product. Jep makes. Great products, um, and, uh, I'm, I'm really interested to see what it could do.

Jacob Astin:

Awesome. Um, your document concludes stating that, uh, when a pilot completes flying or duty time, they should receive the credit for that work clearly fairly and without losing value to a reconciliation formula that benefits only the company. How do the five priorities of the four Rs work together to achieve this fundamental principle of fair compensation?

John Jaenicke:

So I think they work together, you know, some of them work together. Um. When you look at it, so trip rigs are gonna provide you that credit for the inefficiency in our pairings. Reconciliation is gonna ensure that you get reconciled, uh, so that the, you don't get the credit washed out per day and it makes it, it's gonna make it a lot simpler when we, you know, reconciling overtime and, and straight time reassignment rules by providing value. For, uh, you know, these override the concept of an override into a reassignment for that, those times when they just take away your flying means that you're gonna get fair value for, you know, uh, for the flying you did and obviously providing, uh, uh. Reserve better Reserve rules and stuff like that will make sure that while you're on reserve, that you're not just being continually abused. And the saw really gets down to just that flexibility to giving you the pilot group the best way to. You know, massage your schedule after the, you know, the schedule release and stuff like that.

Jacob Astin:

No, that makes sense. Um, you often like to talk about the scheduling committee and darts you guys get Yeah. I know you guys are the, by far, uh, get the most darts out of any committee, uh, in, at WestJet.

John Jaenicke:

Yeah.

Jacob Astin:

Um. When you go into the DART system, which is dart.alpa.org, and you see a lot of q and as. That answers a lot of questions. Yeah. What are you seeing mostly now that's not maybe answered in the questions? Like, what are you getting right now from a lot of people, especially new PE pilots coming over to our system and learning our contract and what are, what are you seeing the most of?

John Jaenicke:

Yeah, we get a lot of, obviously it's reassignment questions. Um, hey, I'm being re uh, reassigned this, is this a legal reassignment? How do I get paid for this? Um, we get a lot of questions on, uh, voluntary pairing swaps. Um, you know, we're obviously, we also do with all the pay questions, so we get a lot of that. Um, uh, those are probably the biggest ones. And then reserve, uh, is this a legal assignment? Um, is it within the cars, within the contract and stuff like that? Um, and so, I mean, we deal with a lot of darts. We probably deal with. Five to six a day. Um, we've, I think in last year we answered over 2100 darts, so that's a lot of darts. We love darts. Um, and if sometimes if we take a little longer to get back to you, it's only because we have to reach out to somebody, uh, to maybe the company and get an answer or something like that. So, yeah.

Jacob Astin:

No, that's fair. Um, what's your committee working on now?

John Jaenicke:

Well, I mean, darts 'cause we, uh. Uh, we get, like I said, five to six a day. Um, and then really prepping for ca three. So basically as soon as ca two ended, we started a document. Um, where we've highlighted sections that, you know, need improvement and we've highlighted five things in, in this document, but there's a lot more, like there's just language cleanup. Um, there's things, um, that we've identified that just need, you know, needs improvement and some really small minutia stuff that we haven't gone over there that we think will, you know, help the pilot group or something like that. We're always. Looking at ways to, you know, make our contract more clearer, better understanding and stuff like that. Um, one thing we didn't touch on, obviously when we talked about rigs and stuff like that, a hundred percent deadhead credit, you know, that's a major thing. And so what we've also done is we have access to all the backend software. So we started modeling all the costs so that when, uh, the negotiation committee goes into negotiations, they have an understanding of. What are the costs for an increase in of time away from base credit? Uh, what does a hundred percent deadhead credit look like? What to what, what does the addition of all these credits mean? And then we'll run them into pairing scenario scenario to see what does it do to their pairings? Does it make them better? Does it make them worse? What other things do we need to look at, uh, and stuff like that. So, uh,

Jacob Astin:

and things like, like a hundred percent dead credit. Deadhead credit for example, doesn't mean we would still have the same numbers of deadheads now.'cause the computer actually might reduce the deadheads considerably because of that.

John Jaenicke:

No. So a lot of our deadheads are driven by network, right? So, or, or cars, right? So we have pairings where they're just too long to operate there and back. So you operate there and you have to deadhead back, uh, or, you know, uh, it's the, it just due to the network frequency you have to deadhead in to operate somewhere else. So when we ran its system, it doesn't necessarily dramatically decrease the amount of deadheads, but what it does do is it gives you, like, it would give you fair compensation for the deadhead. Right now, I think. Flight ops, knowing flight ops, they could go then to network planning and say, Hey, can you tighten up some of these areas to so we don't have to deadhead all the time. Right.

Jacob Astin:

That makes sense. Is any anything else going on? I appreciate you coming in today before your pairing. Is there anything else, um, that you're thinking about with scheduling committee right now?

John Jaenicke:

No, we just really want, like the document is there because we really feel that, you know, scheduling matters. Right. And, uh. We want the, we hope that the pilots, when they do the surveys for the upcoming contract, and then when they talk to their LEC reps in the MEC, that they remember that, that you know that without proper scheduling rules and that you can get paid all the money in the world, but if your life is terrible on the road. It's not gonna matter much, right? You live and breathe the scheduling goals. So we really, really want people to, you know, understand that these are really important to your, to the lifestyle of the pilot group.

Jacob Astin:

Yeah, a hundred percent. Um, thank you for putting the document together, John. Um, the document's gonna be attached to, uh, the email that we send out with this video so people can do a deeper dive into the attachment. Thank you very much and thanks for coming in today.

John Jaenicke:

My pleasure.

Jacob Astin:

Awesome. Good stuff.

John Jaenicke:

Thanks.