ADF strongly opposes Home Dispatching

I think ADF is not being forthright about their motivations. Their reasons for opposing Dispatch-from-home, while valid, are not showstoppers. They can be mitigated. Business has spent the last year learning how a dispersed workforce can collaborate. Those lessons can be applies to airline SOC personnel. Business continuity issues (i.e. power and connectivity) are easily resolved. A UPS or laptop battery will mitigate the power problem long enough to either fix the problem, or disperse the workload among the unaffected Dispatchers. Is a work force centralized at a known location any more or less secure than a decentralized work force whose locations are unknown?

It's good that ADF is seeing the downside to this, but they should be proposing solutions, not just raising problems.
 
I think ADF is not being forthright about their motivations. Their reasons for opposing Dispatch-from-home, while valid, are not showstoppers. They can be mitigated. Business has spent the last year learning how a dispersed workforce can collaborate. Those lessons can be applies to airline SOC personnel. Business continuity issues (i.e. power and connectivity) are easily resolved. A UPS or laptop battery will mitigate the power problem long enough to either fix the problem, or disperse the workload among the unaffected Dispatchers. Is a work force centralized at a known location any more or less secure than a decentralized work force whose locations are unknown?

It's good that ADF is seeing the downside to this, but they should be proposing solutions, not just raising problems.
The ONLY reason ADF opposes it is because of the (very valid) fear of airlines being able to sell the FAA on outsourcing dispatch to third party vendors. When the entire dispatch group works from their couch wearing nothing but their underwear and has Netflix on in the background it becomes hard to argue that outsourcing the job presents a safety hazard or somehow diminishes quality.

ADF tried to spin it into a safety issue but none of their arguments make any sense at all. It’s a job security issue.
 
Last edited:
When the entire dispatch group works from their couch wearing nothing but their underwear and has Netflix on in the background it becomes hard to argue that outsourcing the job presents a safety hazard or somehow diminishes quality.

To me this seems like a good argument AGAINST allowing dispatch from home...to prevent the scenario you just described from happening! At any rate, based on my experience over the past 25+ years working for airlines...I have observed that the FAA doesn’t normally make any rule changes in a hurry. I doubt that WFH dispatch will ever become a widespread "thing" for US carriers for this reason - and I also doubt that having a widespread, default WFH option is something they will ever allow. They might allow it on a case by case basis (such as with SKW) for emergency situations (such as COVID) but I really can't see them ever letting the entirety of every airline's NOC work from wherever they feel like. Time will tell!
 
Last edited:
Atlas/Polar/Southern but only for flight planning. All flight watch must be done from the office.

Are Atlas/Polar/Southern all 121 Supplemental? If so then it would have always been legal to do that, is my understanding.
 
Back
Top