China_CAAC's Merged Threads

[munzil]

No one is arguing against helping out. We all have and all do. The issue is the company forcing you to do other peoples jobs so they can either fire or not hire those roles.

We all have different lines, but the argument that can be made is that that is unethical.

At WestJet grooming by employees has never been about "stealing other people's jobs", The most important reason for employee grooming is to be able to start boarding the aircraft as soon as the last guest has left, employees spread throughout the aircraft can groom while guests are leaving, as opposed to waiting for the cleaning crew to come on board when the aisle(s) is clear. Typically 5 minutes can be saved in turn time, allowing tighter departure scheduling and better OTP. Not all turns will be tightly scheduled, but enough are that 5 mins saved is important, leading to about 15 mins per day of increased utilisation per aircraft, or about 3 aircraft less needed across the whole fleet to fulfil the committed flying, with the associated saving of aircraft ownership costs of $20m per year, irrespective of any other labour cost savings. Any cost saving is important from a competitive position, so helps secure everyone's job. The aircraft are still groomed by professional cleaning crews on long segments where turn times are high and at the end of the day.

Sometimes individual employees can't see the big picture, or why things are done in a certain way, but there is often a much better reason than "the system is out to screw us" or other ludicrous conspiracy theories.

We all know what you have been told

I've worked plenty of 737 jobs overseas and we could always do a turn in less than 30 minutes with cleaners.

Hell SW, has cleaners. Everyone has cleaners apart from wj. Has it saved you time over other much busier cheaper airlines? Are the ticket prices all cheaper than air Canada?

Looks like a duck, walks like a duck...

[J Roc]

Man, you guys really need to improve your groom drive. Just sayin'...

On occasion, when I see that my crew lack the required motivation to groom, I play these classic hits on the PA. They really seem to enjoy it!

You're welcome...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xHjSA2YYec

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN4_i3s0nq4

[J Roc]

More appropriately though, this one...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whQQpwwvSh4

[aerobod]

No one is arguing against helping out. We all have and all do. The issue is the company forcing you to do other peoples jobs so they can either fire or not hire those roles.

We all have different lines, but the argument that can be made is that that is unethical.

At WestJet grooming by employees has never been about "stealing other people's jobs", The most important reason for employee grooming is to be able to start boarding the aircraft as soon as the last guest has left, employees spread throughout the aircraft can groom while guests are leaving, as opposed to waiting for the cleaning crew to come on board when the aisle(s) is clear. Typically 5 minutes can be saved in turn time, allowing tighter departure scheduling and better OTP. Not all turns will be tightly scheduled, but enough are that 5 mins saved is important, leading to about 15 mins per day of increased utilisation per aircraft, or about 3 aircraft less needed across the whole fleet to fulfil the committed flying, with the associated saving of aircraft ownership costs of $20m per year, irrespective of any other labour cost savings. Any cost saving is important from a competitive position, so helps secure everyone's job. The aircraft are still groomed by professional cleaning crews on long segments where turn times are high and at the end of the day.

Sometimes individual employees can't see the big picture, or why things are done in a certain way, but there is often a much better reason than "the system is out to screw us" or other ludicrous conspiracy theories.

We all know what you have been told

I've worked plenty of 737 jobs overseas and we could always do a turn in less than 30 minutes with cleaners.

Hell SW, has cleaners. Everyone has cleaners apart from wj. Has it saved you time over other much busier cheaper airlines? Are the ticket prices all cheaper than air Canada?

Looks like a duck, walks like a duck...

I retired from WestJet earlier this year, so I’m not an employee now, but I have a lot of familiarity with turn management.

I’m not sure what your background is in Operations Research when applied to turn management, but I managed that team at WestJet for a couple of years. Cleaners coming on board do slow down the turn. Bearing in mind adverse weather effects, so best to compare airlines in summer months, but WestJet and Lean applied to turn management has put it in a position of being in the top few airlines in North America for both aircraft utilization and OTP. Turns can be achieved in 25 mins if necessary. Have you looked at multiple years of turn data for multiple airlines? Typically you won’t have meaningful turn data without about 20 data points for every airport served for every day of the year, or about 800,000 records for WestJet, anything less is just anecdotal and pretty meaningless.

I’ve done some work with both Delta at their Hartsfield base and their software supplier for turn management, Delta has the best turn management of the majors, but longer turn times for comparable aircraft than WestJet and quite a bit lower aircraft utilization. Air Canada struggles with consistent turns and has both poor OTP and aircraft utilization at the same time.

Head-to-head with Air Canada, WestJet still has a couple of cents lower CASM on a stage length adjusted basis of approx 1000 miles, so equivalent ticket prices allow WestJet to make a profit when Air Canada is losing money on the same route with comparable equipment. Over the past couple of years Air Canada has driven most of its profit on international routes where WestJet doesn’t currently compete.

[Dream]

Thank you J. Roc!
Those videos were hilarious!
Cheers

[Schooner69A]

Thanks for that aerobod.

If someone thinks it beneath their station to police the stockade, just say so; don't be blowin' smoke in my face and telling me that it's because you think you're doing someone else out of a job...


Colonel Potter said it best...

[RVR6000]

How many turns will management or any other employee groups do in year compare to what the flight/cabin crews does. ‘Employees grooming’ is a great cover up for the reality of pilots and FAs grooming.

We’re usually held by up unloading/loading, 30 min turns quite possible.

[aerobod]

How many turns will management or any other employee groups do in year compare to what the flight/cabin crews does. ‘Employees grooming’ is a great cover up for the reality of pilots and FAs grooming.

We’re usually held by up unloading/loading, 30 min turns quite possible.

From an employee and retiree standby perspective, the average seems to be about 5 people per flight, but with a lot of variability, so on a -700 it should be about 50/50 split between crew and non-crew grooming. If non-crew employees or retirees on a given flight are not grooming, I would write them up.

[JohnnyHotRocks]

You make WJ retirees groom the plane? You have got to be joking....please tell me you are joking

[aerobod]

You make WJ retirees groom the plane? You have got to be joking....please tell me you are joking

Not joking, a condition of standby or discounted confirmed travel that retirees receive is to groom the aircraft. I’m one, I have no problem doing this, 5 rows in 5 mins at my slowest and waiting to move rows as guests deplane. One advantage of grooming on a flight for all non-operating people is that it can be used as an argument to the CRA that the discounted travel shouldn’t be treated as a taxable benefit, as some work was done as a condition of travel.

[RVR6000]

How many turns will management or any other employee groups do in year compare to what the flight/cabin crews does. ‘Employees grooming’ is a great cover up for the reality of pilots and FAs grooming.

We’re usually held by up unloading/loading, 30 min turns quite possible.

From an employee and retiree standby perspective, the average seems to be about 5 people per flight, but with a lot of variability, so on a -700 it should be about 50/50 split between crew and non-crew grooming. If non-crew employees or retirees on a given flight are not grooming, I would write them up.

Grooming the odd time you’re traveling standby and having to do it 30-40 times on a regular monthly block are two different things.

[flyzam]

I retired from WestJet earlier this year, so I’m not an employee now, but I have a lot of familiarity with turn management.

I’m not sure what your background is in Operations Research when applied to turn management, but I managed that team at WestJet for a couple of years. Cleaners coming on board do slow down the turn. Bearing in mind adverse weather effects, so best to compare airlines in summer months, but WestJet and Lean applied to turn management has put it in a position of being in the top few airlines in North America for both aircraft utilization and OTP. Turns can be achieved in 25 mins if necessary. Have you looked at multiple years of turn data for multiple airlines? Typically you won’t have meaningful turn data without about 20 data points for every airport served for every day of the year, or about 800,000 records for WestJet, anything less is just anecdotal and pretty meaningless.

I’ve done some work with both Delta at their Hartsfield base and their software supplier for turn management, Delta has the best turn management of the majors, but longer turn times for comparable aircraft than WestJet and quite a bit lower aircraft utilization. Air Canada struggles with consistent turns and has both poor OTP and aircraft utilization at the same time.

Head-to-head with Air Canada, WestJet still has a couple of cents lower CASM on a stage length adjusted basis of approx 1000 miles, so equivalent ticket prices allow WestJet to make a profit when Air Canada is losing money on the same route with comparable equipment. Over the past couple of years Air Canada has driven most of its profit on international routes where WestJet doesn’t currently compete.

Respectfully, I have not worked in any 'turn management' capacity, however I have flown wide and narrow bodies in Asia, Europe and Australia.

A sub 30 minute turn is standard in most low cost airlines with most < 737-700 and < A320 in most airports. Nothing special there, and even though we all helped occasionally to speed things up I have never seen it as a pilots duty before.

One doesn't have to wonder out loud why salaries and benefits here are the worst in the first world when Canada have pilots boasting about writing up retirees for not cleaning out garbage.

For the person that said it has helped reduce costs it certainly hasn't helped reduce fares even compared to large mass countries with small populations like oz.

That must be some tasty coolaid y'all drinking

[GRK2]

From an employee and retiree standby perspective, the average seems to be about 5 people per flight, but with a lot of variability, so on a -700 it should be about 50/50 split between crew and non-crew grooming. If non-crew employees or retirees on a given flight are not grooming,I would write them up.

How old are you? 5? Your kindergarten teacher called, she said to tell you she misses you! Keep hiding behind that Koolaid Jug.

[aerobod]

I retired from WestJet earlier this year, so I’m not an employee now, but I have a lot of familiarity with turn management.

I’m not sure what your background is in Operations Research when applied to turn management, but I managed that team at WestJet for a couple of years. Cleaners coming on board do slow down the turn. Bearing in mind adverse weather effects, so best to compare airlines in summer months, but WestJet and Lean applied to turn management has put it in a position of being in the top few airlines in North America for both aircraft utilization and OTP. Turns can be achieved in 25 mins if necessary. Have you looked at multiple years of turn data for multiple airlines? Typically you won’t have meaningful turn data without about 20 data points for every airport served for every day of the year, or about 800,000 records for WestJet, anything less is just anecdotal and pretty meaningless.

I’ve done some work with both Delta at their Hartsfield base and their software supplier for turn management, Delta has the best turn management of the majors, but longer turn times for comparable aircraft than WestJet and quite a bit lower aircraft utilization. Air Canada struggles with consistent turns and has both poor OTP and aircraft utilization at the same time.

Head-to-head with Air Canada, WestJet still has a couple of cents lower CASM on a stage length adjusted basis of approx 1000 miles, so equivalent ticket prices allow WestJet to make a profit when Air Canada is losing money on the same route with comparable equipment. Over the past couple of years Air Canada has driven most of its profit on international routes where WestJet doesn’t currently compete.

Respectfully, I have not worked in any 'turn management' capacity, however I have flown wide and narrow bodies in Asia, Europe and Australia.

A sub 30 minute turn is standard in most low cost airlines with most < 737-700 and < A320 in most airports. Nothing special there, and even though we all helped occasionally to speed things up I have never seen it as a pilots duty before.

One doesn't have to wonder out loud why salaries and benefits here are the worst in the first world when Canada have pilots boasting about writing up retirees for not cleaning out garbage.

For the person that said it has helped reduce costs it certainly hasn't helped reduce fares even compared to large mass countries with small populations like oz.

That must be some tasty coolaid y'all drinking

Base salary in Canada for pilots doesn’t seem to be that far off compared with many first world countries. Here is one major salary comparison web site that is well regarded, feel free to provide your own comparison
https://www.salaryexpert.com/salary/bro ... line-pilot:

All values are for commercial pilots base average salary converted to CAD:

Canada $121,408
Australia $163,459
France $116,557
Germany $141,350
Italy $116,778
Japan $164,927
Spain $72,281
UK $114,026
US $153,871

Fares in Canada are skewed massively by taxes, what the airline charges is not as different as you would think, here is an analysis I did a while back in another post, feel free to provide your own analysis:

“From the perspective of what people pay for a ticket (besides taxes that are not shown on the revenue side for airlines), the yield will give a direct comparison of how much an airline charges for their average stage length, i.e. what the consumer actually pays to the airline on average. It is interesting when doing a comparison between Spirit Airlines and WestJet that these values are quite similar.

Spirit Airlines is generally seen as the most cost and price concious ULCC in North America, For full year 2015 it had a yield of 11.9 US cents per mile on an average stage length of 987 miles(http://ir.spirit.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=953924. Average revenue per passenger US$117

WestJet had a yield of 14.1 US cents (18.72 Canadian) in 2015 on an average stage length of 910 miles https://www.westjet.com/assets/wj-web/d ... 2015AR.pdf. Average revenue per guest/passenger US$128

As Spirit uses a seat pitch of 28" on most of it's seats now, if WestJet increased the -800 seat count from 168 to 189 (Ryanair 30" config) and increased the average stage length to that similar to Spirit, it's yield would also be around 12 cents US with an average revenue per guest of US$114”

I don’t drink Koolaid myself, I find facts are much better for my mind.

[Diadem]

Whoa whoa whoa! Get out of here with your "facts" and "data"! They have no place in a discussion among pilots!
I think the crew grooming is a holdover from when WestJet was a true LCC, when wages lower than AC were compensated by stocks growing rapidly and good profit sharing; pilots and FAs who worked there early on were motivated to keep costs low because they stood to directly profit from the company making profits. A lot of those employees became millionaires by grooming. I don't work at WS, but rumour has it that the negotiations are moving towards ending grooming, since the stock price is pretty flat and profit sharing isn't happening anytime soon.

[Benwa]

WJA Stock 1 yr

Screenshot_20181016-150049_Chrome.jpg (529.95 KiB) Viewed 2950 times

Pretty flat yeah...

[Babar350]

I don't think we can compare and see if the stocks are flat or not over this last year. Lot of changes happened and I would say that if the stocks doesn't break the 12$ support then we're good, if we are westjetters ...

Chart has been drawn early 2016.

[Diadem]

Screenshot_20181016-150049_Chrome.jpg

Pretty flat yeah...

I didn't realize WestJet pilots planned their retirements based on six months of stock performance. A drop over the course of a year, or even a rise, means nothing for long-term investment. The pilots who got stock when it was at $1 are exceptionally wealthy because it rose agressively for the first decade or so, and they had good reason to help the company save as much money as possible. Employees who have only been contributing to the employee stock plan for the last decade or so have, on average, seen very little gain over the long-term; I get the feeling from those posting here that they no longer feel like grooming is helping save the company enough money to be reflected in the share price, and that they aren't personally getting anything out of it. My point, if you could see beyond the end of your nose, was that attitudes have changed because the airline has grown and those early gains are no longer being reflected in personal compensation.

[JohnnyHotRocks]

Spirit pays its Captains approximately $300,000cad

[FICU]

So what’s the plan for crews grooming the 87s? Pilots do first class and FAs the rest?