PAIRING AND LINE CONSTRUCTION

The nature of the beast

No doubt you’ve wondered why CLE’s pairings sometimes have long sit times or why CLE’s lines differ in quality of selection from other bases. It is not possible to discuss all the reasons for these and other pairing and line construction characteristics on one page, but I will give a synopsis of this complicated subject.

Each month a flight attendant and pilot (committee) representing each base works with ExpressJet’s Crew Resources department in order to produce pairings and lines for their respective base. CLE’s flight attendant representatives are Donna Daniels and Dave Engel. Feel free to ask us questions when you see either of us or drop a note in our v-file. Or, to stay informed up through the present bid period, attend the local IAM union meeting held the second Thursday of every month (see union board for meeting details).

Pairing and line construction is intricate business. First, Continental decides where and when ExpressJet flies. Then ExpressJet’s Crew Resources department organizes these flights into pairings using AdOpt’s (Advanced Optimization’s) computer pairing construction program.  Next, Crew Resources emails a statistical summary of these  pairings to each aforementioned base representative, who then accept it as is or suggest changes in attempt to improve a characteristic of the pairings that is displeasing (such as the number of 1-day versus 2-day trips, or “trip mix”). Upon pairing approval Crew Resources informs each base’s flight attendant and pilot representative how many lines and to what hourly average the lines will be constructed. Then each base’s flight attendant and pilot representative builds their respective base’s lines using AdOpt’s line construction program utilizing Crew Resources parameters. The number and hourly averages of each base’s lines differ every month, depending on many factors such as light hours given to us by Continental and our own staffing levels. Finally, we each seek approval of the built lines from ExpressJet management.

CLE specific problems

The pairing construction program builds pairings taking into account flights from all three hubs at the same time, allowing us to fly through each other’s bases. This actually aids CLE’s pairing productivity since CLE has the lowest average flight times of the three hubs (referring to April 2006 Crew News, average flight times are as follows: CLE - 1:30; EWR - 1:51; IAH - 1:58). However, since CLE lines still contain the majority of CLE flying, our pairings are still the least productive of any base. For this reason, CLE has proportionally more 5-leg days than either EWR or IAH. Since our average flight time is substantially lower than the other hubs, we simply have to fly more legs in order to increase productivity. In other words, using April’s average flight times for CLE and IAH, a CLE 4-day would need 13 legs to get close to 20 hours whereas an IAH 4-day would need 10 legs. I’m often asked if we can limit our number of legs parameter to 4 or even 3 per day. We could do this, but the result would be very detrimental to CLE’s productivity. We already know CLE has a significantly lower average flight time per leg so that parameter may still produce 20 hour 4-day pairings for IAH and 18 hour 4-day pairings for CLE. Obviously this hurts CLE in line construction, since a 20-hour 4-day trip can be used 4 times in a month to be an 80 hour line whereas CLE’s18 hour pairings fall 8 hours short, forcing us to add more to the line in order to reach 80 hours. This in turn reduces CLE lines’ average days off. Given a 30-day month, 4 4-day trips at 20 hours each would equate to 80 hours and 14 days off. However, 4 4-day trips at 18 hours each would equate to 72 hours, requiring us to add 8 hours to the line value. The 8 hours equates to 2 work days (perhaps 2 CI days), reducing this line’s days off to 12. Therefore, daily productivity is highly valued.  More than any other base, CLE schedules rely on the bank system, where flights depart or arrive during a specific time window. Flights to and from CLE are hitting one of these banks throughout the day. CLE has trouble with outstation sits because on short flights we get there so fast that we have to wait for the next inbound bank time to CLE. Same logic applies for long sits in CLE; you have to wait for the next outbound bank time from CLE to the outstations. Therefore, the longest average sit-times system-wide are contained in CLE pairings.  Another problem that plagues CLE’s productivity far more than EWR or IAH is our Tuesday/Wednesday schedule reduction. Since CLE doesn’t produce the passenger volume or revenue of either EWR or IAH, Continental has severely reduced CLE ExpressJet’s mid-day Tuesday/Wednesday flights, leaving a large gap in CLE’s flight availability for those days. These banks do occasionally reappear, but only during peak periods such as holidays.

Conclusion

I hope I have addressed some of your questions/concerns regarding this complicated process. As previously mentioned feel free to ask myself or Donna regarding pairing/line construction issues. Also feel free to attend the monthly IAM local union meeting where this and many other topics are discussed.