The SWAPA Number

Welcome back to the Contract 2029 SEP series. In today's Survey, Educate and Poll podcast, we sat down with Eric Gavin and Steven Anders from the Scheduling and Analytics Committee to discuss what responses came in during the blank sheet surveys on schedule planning and exchange. Let's dig in.

Today's SWAPA Number is 3, as in our three executive officers giving us a brief on the third board meeting of the year. You received an email from the board of directors this past Friday that hit the high points, but three days of business are tough to capture in a quick email.

So here's President Jody Reven, Vice President Kevin Hornburg, and second Vice President Hank Ketchum, to go over all the agenda items that were covered during the September board meetings.

Today's SWAPA Number is 365. That's the number of days of the year that you're probably thinking about your schedule. Whether that's for a minute or several hours, it's always on our minds. Contract 2020 was designed to operate with all of the new scheduling additions in place and working in concert. Two and a half years after ratification, implementation is almost complete. This show is also timely because we also have back-to-back SEP cycles for scheduling on our doorstep. So today I'm sitting down with scheduling and analytics chair, Eric Gavin, former SAC chair, Scott Plyler, and SAC manager, Meagan Nelan, to talk about all the scheduling tools and features on the table so that you can maximize your quality of life and pay.

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Vacation Shifting | Probie to Pro

Welcome back to the Contract 2029 Survey, Educate and Poll series. I'm Tony Mulhare with SWAPA Communications, and today I'm joined by negotiating committee chair Kurt Heidemann, as well as committee member Jacob Thomas. Today's discussion will focus on retirement and expenses, and we'll hit the highlights of the vast amount of information that we've made available on the website. So please get over to the Contract 2029 page on swapa.org or the negotiating point on the SWAPA app for the deep dive

Welcome back to the Contract 2029 Survey Education and Poll Series. Today we are relaunching the Contract 2020 TA Education podcast on Section 3: Expenses, which was originally recorded in December 2023.  

Most of that conversation between NC Chair Kurt Heideman and President Jody Reven, who was the NC Chair at the time, is still true.  

Hopefully this will provide a thorough look at what our expenses language says today, some background and context on how we arrived at this language, and how it compares to the rest of the industry. 

Today's SWAPA Number is 3, as in the 3 step technique that Professional Standards recommends using for conflict resolution out on the line. Listen in to find out what that technique is and how to use it.

Today's SWAPA Number is 10. That's the number of subject matter experts and executives that were on the town hall that took place on July 28th. So for this episode, we are providing you an opportunity to hear that town hall in case you missed the live event, during which we posed questions ranging from SWAPA's relationship with the company to where we are with implementation to the status of our move through the strategic plan. It truly had so much in it that we felt it worthy of a second listen.

Four questions did not get addressed on air as we ran out of time and can be found below:

It seems there are many more 4 day trips and 4 day reserve blocks in elitt then ever before. I know there is a cap on the percentage of 4 days but it seems to be growing each month. What is causing this?

The number of 4-day pairings in the system has increased from ~18% to 20% of the pairing mix which is due to a multitude of reasons, but the increase in ELITT is a combination of vacation shifting to drop more, training bidding + a longer training footprint this year which can lead to two pairings being dropped on each side (whereas the last contract they optimized to the lowest cost/trip pull). Each category is unique, but the upgrade schedule this year has been aggressive so some bases see a full month of pulls to send Pilots to training.  In addition, Crew Planning has increased the number of blank lines which means more 4-day pairings get pulled from blank lines for the above reasons that then fall directly into MOT and ELITT opening.   

How much does it cost to have the ELITT Red-Filter to actually work? 

“Cost" may be difficult to pin down, but there will be additional filtering available across systems in CWA between now and ongoing modernization efforts.  Some of the disconnect right now is that there is the contractual definition of "red-eye" which encompasses flights that operate across 0200 domicile time, whereas there are "enterprise red-eyes" that launch after 0200 domicile time, so the CWA system doesn't flag those as "red-eye".  We've said multiple times that this is causing confusion and hopefully we'll make progress over time with additional filtering logic that will include all variations of red-eye operations.

If a SWAPA rep were to seek and be hired for a job at HQ SWA, would one open up at SWAPA? Do we have any language in our bylaws to prohibit this or anything planned?

Short answer: yes, a position would open up, but no, we don't have anything on the books that stops someone from taking that job in the first place.

The mechanism is our Constitution that defines membership classes based on who you work for and in what capacity. If a Pilot moves into a management, executive, or supervisory role at Southwest, they're no longer classified as an Active Member — they become an Executive Member. Executive Members aren't eligible to hold elected or appointed positions in SWAPA, period. So in the event that job offer is accepted, that person is no longer eligible to serve at SWAPA in any capacity. The vacancy gets filled the same way we fill any other vacancy as outlined in the Constitution.

While we don't have an enforceable rule that says SWAPA personnel can't apply for or accept a management job at Southwest like you’re describing, Section 10, Appendix A of the Policy Manual speaks to the Code of Ethics and Conduct Policy. This 'pledge' in paragraph IV says (in part) that no individual covered by this policy may accept a supervisory position within Southwest Airlines or its subsidiaries for a period of at least twenty-four (24) months following the completion of SWAPA service.

So it’s not a fully closed loop. It's a fair thing to raise, and it's exactly the kind of item our Constitution Review Committee reviews every year before the May Board meeting. If the membership wants stronger language here, that's the process to bring it forward, and we'd encourage anyone who feels strongly about it to push it through their Domicile Rep for attention.

Regarding sick leave buyback, is this something the company really wants, the membership, or a combination of both?

We can’t speak for the Company, but from the membership side, the appetite for a sick leave buyback was seen in Leading Edge 2.0 back in March. The open ended in person interviews we conducted and the online surveys revealed the membership’s interest in such a program, characterized best as “tell me more about it.”

The Benefits and Leaves Survey sought to gain more insight from the membership. The Education was a deep dive into the pros, cons, industry comparisons, and it’s potential relationship with disability and sick accrual. The polling results will drill down exactly where the membership is sitting – including what the parameters are for having one at all.

Welcome back to The Contract 2029 Survey Education Poll series. I'm your Communications Committee Chair, Matt McCants. My guests today are Kurt Heidemann, your negotiating committee chair. And Resident Benefits Subject Matter Expert and NC Member, Damian Jennette. We are going over the recently surveyed topics of sick leave and a sick bank buyback program.

Welcome back to the Contract 2029, Survey, Educate and Poll Series. I'm Tony Mulhare with SWAPA Comm. And today, I'm sitting down with Tony Caparella, Brent Wiesner, and Damian Jeanette to talk the benefits portion of the contract. Damian is on our 401(k) committee now, but was on the negotiating committee last cycle, specializing in the benefits plan. Tony and Brent are our benefits committee pilots who work directly with members going out and returning from disability.

We just concluded the benefits and leaves blank sheet survey. So, let's dig into what we learned and fill the membership in on what you all have worked on behind the scenes so we can go into the polling phases with eyes wide open. During this discussion, we are going to compare our CBA provided benefits with other airlines. You can find the contract comparison document on the negotiating committee page on swapa.org and we will link in the show notes so you can follow along.