That is why it has not been rolled out yet. AA dispatchers do about 45-50 releases on an 8 hour AM shift, roughly 30-35 on 8 hour midnights concentrated in a 3 hours period, and 25-30 on 8 hour PM shift. Native Sabre has a very quick response time to flight plan inputs. Moving to a slow jepp product would mean having to reduce the amount of releases and increase staffing by quite a bit.
The issue is native Sabre is getting too old. The technology is so out of date that they have not taught programmers the language in several decades. The programmers that know it are disappearing due to age. They need to move away from Sabre DECS but the new one to do the same functions as the old one.
With new management in dispatch and Flight Ops having a strong NWA element, we have no clue how they will deal with the issue of an ageing platform and the current available products to replace it. AA put a ton of money into the jepp system and many will want to see the investment show results.
EastCoast said:80-90 a shift? Sounds good to me. When will SWA hire again?
Sounds like you work at SWA which system do you work withSoon.
And I mean, very soon. As in keep a close eye on the website.
Wolfman14 said:Sounds like you work at SWA which system do you work with
haDo you mean what dispatch software, or are you mean which "side", Southwest or Airtran?
Answer to question one is we use a home brew system called SWIFT.
Answer to two is WN.
I did find out today that the company appears to be leaning toward building a new facility, but where that will be is yet to be decided. It does also appear that the company is leaning toward adopting the US Planning Unit philosophy as well.
How does the 9hr 37min shift at US work?Excellent, on both accounts. But it begs the question, why are we moving to DFW again? Don't get me wrong, I'd move to Guantanamo Bay if it meant getting out of PIT, but here sits a nice new building with room to knock out a wall and add a bunch more people.
The Planning Unit thing is nice. All of our aircraft are separated into 4 units. 321s are in this unit, 757s in that unit.....it doesn't matter for the point of this discussion, and they are all changing soon anyway. Each unit has within it a Dispatch Coordinator, crew scheduling person, customer service person, aircraft router, and maintenance planner. From an operational standpoint it's nice because you have everyone you would want on your team working on whatever problem comes up. It's also nice because with things split up by aircraft type instead of city pairs or hubs the load is spread around when things go to hell. When PHL is getting hammered with a winter storm, you don't have one unit that becomes over loaded to the point it can't function effectively. It allows us to recover from a bad day very quickly.
As a dispatcher it's nice because you have that same team working on your side. If planes need swapped or flights need cancelled, the dispatch coordinator in the unit coordinates that with everyone else in the unit then informs the dispatcher.
What's the rotation at 'Merican?
6 on 3 off 6 on 3 off 6 on 6 off with rotating am/pm/night 8 hour shifts.
We have the same rotation but don't have the day-night-mid rotation. That sounds miserable. That 6th day is rough to get used to, but getting 6 days off every 3 weeks is outstanding.
You'd be amazed how senior the mids go.