Q: Is load protection included in the Registered Air Commuter policy? If not, why?
No, we did not achieve flight load protection for Registered Air Commuters. We found this incredibly frustrating and did not settle on it lightly. It came down to a philosophical difference between us and management – all the way to the top on their side.
The vast majority of commuter policies include load protection. It is a win/win for the airlines because they keep the utilization of the Flight Attendant. If they don’t make their flight(s), the Flight Attendant can still be used in different ways. Otherwise, the Company just loses access to the Flight Attendant – generally due to a no-show.
We argued this in so many ways, from the very start of negotiations nearly 2 years ago. Management either truly didn’t understand, or chose to continue to disagree despite their opposition being illogical. It was nonsensical to us, and we were unable to make them see sense.
One of their arguments was that we were the only company with the D8Y status – and we pointed out that doesn’t help at all with full flights. They briefly mentioned a possibility of trading D8Y status for flight load protection. We didn’t explore further, but they would only have removed D8Y status for Flight Attendants and not for commuters in any other workgroup. That would have been unacceptable.
We look forward to future improvements, either through the next agreement or the JCBA with Hawaiian AIrlines Flight Attendants (who have load protection 7 days in advance in their contract).