ADF strongly opposes Home Dispatching

Are there people that actually want to dispatch from home?

Putting aside the health concerns with COVID, the ADF isn't wrong. You lose almost all DRM when you're at home.

Think about how often you or someone else in the office is having an issue. In almost all scenarios, people come to their desk and help them thru the problem. If you're aircraft is in an emergency, you won't have time to call people and get assistance. Sometimes that ability to yell across the room and have everyone surround you and support you immediately is paramount to our job. Anyone who has ever been on a conference call knows just how useless people can be over the phone and how difficult it can be to explain a situation over the phone. Add to that the fact that being at home adds more distractions, especially people with kids! Imagine if you will you're on the SAT Phone with an aircraft that has declared and emergency and needs your assistance with finding a safe place to land... then suddenly your kids comes in the room yelling about how His brother hit him and yada yada yada.... This is what kids do. It doesn't matter if Mommy or Daddy said they can't go in there, they are kids. They will still go in that room. These are distractions that you just can't have as someone with operational control.

I'm not a fan of long term dispatching from home. I believe an argument can be made for a temporary solution if your office is suffering from COVID, but otherwise I don't personally think it would be a wise choice for the industry. With our jobs come a lot of responsibility. Unlike most jobs, we can't always step away from it when we are needed elsewhere.
 
RaimOutage said:

ADF Position Opposing Dispatching from Home | Airline Dispatchers Federation

ADF,The Airline Dispatchers Federation is the only national organization representing the professional interests of the dispatch profession, watchful eye of ADF members, The ADF is an all volunteer organization (all working dispatchers) and in accordance with our bylaws is an advocacy...
dispatcher.org dispatcher.org
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I shared this in the "Home Dispatching" thread last night. Doesn't hurt to get the word out twice I suppose.
 
Can not disagree with TWU at all, I am very much against this. My airline has two totally separate control centers for redundancy. If a carrier doesn't have 2 centers and gets hit with the bug and has to close their sole control center to clean it, well, sucks to be them; FUPM.

Failure to prepare for the worst on the part of management does not constitute an emergency on my part.
 
dispatchguy said:
Can not disagree with TWU at all, I am very much against this. My airline has two totally separate control centers for redundancy. If a carrier doesn't have 2 centers and gets hit with the bug and has to close their sole control center to clean it, well, sucks to be them; FUPM.

Failure to prepare for the worst on the part of management does not constitute an emergency on my part.
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They’re all required to have a back up.


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paincorp said:
They’re all required to have a back up.


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I think what he is saying is that a lot of carriers (mine included) are actively using the back up facilities right now. Our dispatch group is separated for the foreseeable future. This way if there are any active infections at one facility, the people in that facility are separate from those at the other. So if we need to close a facility for cleaning, there is still another facility that can maintain operational control of the airline because they haven't been in contact with anyone at the infected facility.
 
Dart_8992 said:
I think what he is saying is that a lot of carriers (mine included) are actively using the back up facilities right now. Our dispatch group is separated for the foreseeable future. This way if there are any active infections at one facility, the people in that facility are separate from those at the other. So if we need to close a facility for cleaning, there is still another facility that can maintain operational control of the airline because they haven't been in contact with anyone at the infected facility.
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Yeah I kind of see that, but if someone at one of the SOC/NOC/IOC/OCCs gets COVID, CDC says for all exposed to quarantine. Throwing half an ops center into quarantine is going to cripple any airline (at least temporarily), even with the reduced flight schedule.


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paincorp said:
Yeah I kind of see that, but if someone at one of the SOC/NOC/IOC/OCCs gets COVID, CDC says for all exposed to quarantine. Throwing half an ops center into quarantine is going to cripple any airline (at least temporarily), even with the reduced flight schedule.


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Better to be temporarily crippled than completely shut down.

Also, I can say for certain that this isn't being treated the way you think it is. All exposed doesn't mean everyone in the office. It only applies to those directly around the individual (within 6ft) or those who sat at the same desk after that person left. I'm not going to disclose where I work, but we have had multiple confirmed cases in my office and the office has not been shut down. All they did was clean the area and common spaces then tell those few people in "close" contact to quarantine for 2 weeks. That is how the State Health Department has instructed them to handle the situation.
 
Dart_8992 said:
Better to be temporarily crippled than completely shut down.

Also, I can say for certain that this isn't being treated the way you think it is. All exposed doesn't mean everyone in the office. It only applies to those directly around the individual (within 6ft) or those who sat at the same desk after that person left. I'm not going to disclose where I work, but we have had multiple confirmed cases in my office and the office has not been shut down. All they did was clean the area and common spaces then tell those few people in "close" contact to quarantine for 2 weeks. That is how the State Health Department has instructed them to handle the situation.
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Every office is different. I’m glad if hasn’t lead to a full meltdown for your operation.


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Dart_8992 said:
Are there people that actually want to dispatch from home?

Putting aside the health concerns with COVID, the ADF isn't wrong. You lose almost all DRM when you're at home.

Think about how often you or someone else in the office is having an issue. In almost all scenarios, people come to their desk and help them thru the problem. If you're aircraft is in an emergency, you won't have time to call people and get assistance. Sometimes that ability to yell across the room and have everyone surround you and support you immediately is paramount to our job. Anyone who has ever been on a conference call knows just how useless people can be over the phone and how difficult it can be to explain a situation over the phone. Add to that the fact that being at home adds more distractions, especially people with kids! Imagine if you will you're on the SAT Phone with an aircraft that has declared and emergency and needs your assistance with finding a safe place to land... then suddenly your kids comes in the room yelling about how His brother hit him and yada yada yada.... This is what kids do. It doesn't matter if Mommy or Daddy said they can't go in there, they are kids. They will still go in that room. These are distractions that you just can't have as someone with operational control.

I'm not a fan of long term dispatching from home. I believe an argument can be made for a temporary solution if your office is suffering from COVID, but otherwise I don't personally think it would be a wise choice for the industry. With our jobs come a lot of responsibility. Unlike most jobs, we can't always step away from it when we are needed elsewhere.
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QFT!
 
The only legitimate concern ADF listed there is internet connection, which I feel has been seriously overlooked. Everything else is answered for, including DRM, but I don't feel they have a complete understanding of how dispatch from home works. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely, but there is room for improvement in many in-office procedures as well and we aren't calling that unsafe.

This is very new so I don't think there is a real standard to this and everybody is doing it a bit differently, perhaps there are some odd things going on or being proposed out there. I think the FAA could look at everybody who is doing it and form some standards, because I feel as if my shop has a solution for these concerns (except internet connection) where others may not.

I can understand people not wanting to dispatch from home, that's a personal decision, but what I can't understand is people being so vehemently against a perfectly safe option that may be desired or required by others for whatever reason. It's reasonable to have questions, but it's unreasonable to make the assumption there is no solution for a problem and therefore it's bad. Research, think outside the box, technology has come a long way and whether or not anybody in this forum, ADF, or any of the unions like it, tech is going to dominate how dispatch works going forward.
 
flynryan692 said:
The only legitimate concern ADF listed there is internet connection, which I feel has been seriously overlooked. Everything else is answered for, including DRM, but I don't feel they have a complete understanding of how dispatch from home works. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely, but there is room for improvement in many in-office procedures as well and we aren't calling that unsafe.
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Did you read the TWU letter also? I thought it brought up a number of valid points. I quoted questions it raised below:

- What oversight will the FAA excise to ensure that at-home workstations are meeting the requirements of 14 CFR 121.99, including access to an uninterrupted power supply? If an at-home workstation does not or cannot meet these minimums due to the location of a dispatcher’s home or their local infrastructure, will the FAA bar the air carrier from assigning that dispatcher to work from home? Does the FAA expect each air carrier to provide at-home workstations capable of meeting federal minimums to each dispatcher?

- What steps are necessary to secure dispatchers’ homes to a level consistent with FAA and TSA requirements for safety-sensitive personnel and equipment? What steps are necessary to secure dispatchers’ workstations and internet infrastructure from cyber threats? Is the airline or the dispatcher responsible for maintaining these levels? If it is a shared responsibility, which party is responsible for which aspects?

- How will FAA inspectors, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials, and Aircraft Operator Security Coordinators perform their duties with regard to at-home dispatchers?

- What distraction mitigation procedures does the FAA believe need to be in place for at-home dispatchers? Will the airlines be responsible for establishing and enforcing these practices? What role does the FAA see itself playing to ensure distraction does not become a safety concern for at-home dispatchers?

- Will the FAA identify dispatchers’ homes as mobile unit under an aeronautical enroute station? Will dispatchers be required to maintain commercial RTO certificates to perform their duties at home?

- How will drug and alcohol testing be conducted for at-home dispatchers? What standard will be used to establish “reasonable suspicion” before testing individuals?

- Has the FAA approved changes to these air carriers’ safety management systems to account for operational changes necessitated by moving dispatchers to a remote location? What other steps has the FAA taken to ensure that this change will not have a domino effect to other safety-related regulations?

I'll be very interested to see the FAA response to these questions, because a lot of them don't seem to have been considered at all. It feels like at Skywest the PDI said, "The airline wants to do this, so let's approve it ASAP" before looking at all of the potential safety and legal issues.
 
I didn’t think about the secure location aspect of it until now. Yes people can lock their houses,but SOC/NOC/IOCs are access controlled to only allow authorized personnel in. What’s to stop Dispatcher Matt from having a couple buddies over on an off day and allowing them into the “SOC” unsupervised.


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