An airline has taken away the ability for its cabin crew to call the airline. That’s not going to be good for the operation – you want pilots and flight attendants in good contact. You need to know where they are. When flights aren’t covered, you need to be in touch quickly to fill open positions – in order to run your flights. Breeze Airways says nah.
we’re no longer allowed to call them, and can now only text them to request a call back. they have no callback timeframe either, so we could be stranded in the middle of nowhere and possibly not hear back for hours.
Five year old Breeze is founded and run by David Neeleman, who previously co-founded Morris Air, WestJet, JetBlue, and Azul. They currently operate 63 aircraft.
Now, why would Breeze possibly do this?
- Stop inbound calls from consuming scheduler time in first-come-first-served order, making it easier to prioritize by departure time, legality, reserve coverage, hotel or transportation issue, etc.
- One scheduler can manage several text threads or outbound reserve contacts, while a phone call ties up the scheduler. This also saves money by reducing the number of employees needed.
- Discourages crews from calling repeatedly for low-priority issues.
It can’t possibly save very much money, though. A Breeze scheduler makes $22 per hour. It seems like the change could save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, not tens of millions, so if the policy causes even a few incremental cancellations this could cost money on net.
- Crew schedules are responsible for placing available legal crew on flights in compliance with regulations.
- That means duty hour and rest monitoring, hotels and ground transportation.
- Without minimum flight attendant staffing that meets rest and maximum duty hour requirements flights cannot be dispatched.
Usually airlines have both electronic and phone communications, with electronic designed for crew ease and so flight attendants aren’t woken when they’re the ones being called by crew scheduling. There are usually chat, apps and self service workflow tools, not merely chat if they need to get in touch with someone.
Delta’s operational challenges that have been leading to more frequent meltdowns are the result of inefficient crew communications with pilots. When Southwest had its famous Chrismas 2022 meltdown, one of the biggest failures was an inability to keep track of and communicate with crew.
And I’d point out that text isn’t a very good tool for complex issues, such as multi-leg reassignments, and calculating legality. That is going to need callbacks. And callbacks can eat into rest on a layover.
Enshitification is a choice. A bad one.
Management is failing workers and consumers, not only at Breeze or Delta, but nearly everywhere, all industries.
We all deserve better. Don’t just ‘take it.’ Hold those who fail us accountable.
“Breeze Says To Text And Hope For A Callback”
What’s the big deal? My girlfriend said that 6 months ago.
Unfortunate for the collateral damage that will result (disruptions to passengers) but this is where you let natural consequences do their thing.
Pilots/Flight Attendants: *(Text crew scheduling. Call back isn’t timely. Flights get delayed or cancelled as a result.)
Also Pilots/Flight Attendants: *(not my problem)
It’s a small airline, are they even profitable? On demand headcount for highly volatile demand is expensive, it’s hard to predict issues, especially for a smaller operation, and to ramp up/down hc when they do happen, so you’re paying people to sit around most of the time. But some retards here just want companies to pay more for everything (and by extension all of us pay more), lest they be deemed greedy or anti worker by online retards.
I think it’s reasonable for a small airline to try to cut overhead costs. It’s really not asking much, stop turning every single airline decision a company makes into a tragedy. This is most certainly not.
It’s AI slop and there’s a lot of it around. Well beyond the airline industry. Since AI will never need recruiters, to be hired, paid, need time off and rest breaks it will take over many human functions. There’s a reason Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are so quite on AI. They’re in on the payday that will come to the few.
And what won’t go to AI will go to offshoring or HB1 Visas. Ditto the silence by Sanders and Warren on offshoring and HB1 Visas. My brother can’t get re-employed in tech and like most Boomers living in their 1985 world he doesn’t seem to understand that a $25 an hour HB1 Visa worker will rule over his “experience and education” any day of the week.
@George Nathan Romey — How ignorant, even for you, George. Senator Sanders is literally shouting, nonstop about AI. He’s proposing legislation to remedy the potential harms for workers and consumers. You are the only promoting slop and bad ideas on here, shilling for greedy corporations, harming yourself and others. Wake up, man.
@Mantis — Holy shilling-for-corporations, Batman… Is this really how you spend your time? You stay up late in Asia, cucking for Big-Airline? Sheesh…