The SWAPA Number

By SWAPABusiness

The SWAPA Number episodes

October 11, 2021 12-8 (Casey Murray, Mike Santoro, Vaccine Mandate)
Today’s SWAPA Number is 12/8. That’s the date that the federal government expects all Southwest employees to be vaccinated. SWAPA has been engaged with Southwest on this issue for months now, but the pace of things has picked up dramatically in the last week.
So today on the show, we’re going to talk to SWAPA President Casey Murray and Vice President Mike Santoro who will help us catch up on all of the news on COVID and vaccine mandates while giving us their perspective on SWAPA’s relationship with SWA.
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37 min
September 27, 2021 25.5 Million (Tom Nekouei, Brian Hickman, Budget)
Today’s SWAPA Number is $25.5 million. That’s the total expenses of the 2022 budget which will be
voted on by the membership in October’s Fall General Election. Today we’re going to talk to SWAPA 2nd
Vice President, Tom Nekouei and Director of Finance Brian Hickman. They are going to talk us through
how the final number was achieved, what changes have been enacted this year, and what the
membership can expect to see going forward as far as financial reporting.

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37 min
September 10, 2021 231 (Open Enrollment, Brent Weisner, Damian Jennette)
Today’s SWAPA number is $28 million. That’s the amount of money Pilots pay into the SWAPA offered STD and LTD plans per year. With SWAPA Benefits Open Enrollment quickly approaching, we are going to talk to Benefits Chair Brent Weisner and the NC’s benefits expert Damian Jennette about all of the SWAPA-provided Benefits plans, how to pick the option that’s best for you, and what the expectation is as far as benefits in Contract 2020.
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27 min
August 30, 2021 1,000 (Chad Korb, Daren Black, SPC)
Today’s SWAPA number is 1,000. That’s the number of Pilots who stood shoulder to shoulder at the Dallas picket on August 24, 2016, what ended up being the largest single-site Pilot picket in history. On today’s show we talk to SPC Chair Chad Korb and SPC member (and current BWI rep) Daren Black about that time in history, what the SPC has been doing over the last few years, and what they are doing since they have been funded earlier this month at the special BOD meeting.

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28 min
August 19, 2021 44.8 (BOD Takes Action, Casey Murray, Mike Santoro)
In this episode, President Casey Murray and Vice President Mike Santoro talk about SWAPA’s efforts to engage the Company on supporting our Pilots during the most disruptive summer in our airline’s history.
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34 min
August 16, 2021 161 (JA Panel, Scott Plyler, Meagan Nelan, Seth Kornblum, Scott Hutchinson)
Today’s SWAPA Number is 161. That's the average number of pilots per day, that were JA’d to work on a day off in the month of August, so far. We've seen JA records shattered this year. The most open time JA’s, the most unscheduled overnights, or what we call RON JA’s, the highest fatigue rates, the highest sustained reassignment rates and the most food and hotel availability problems ever recorded.

So on today's show, we're going to talk with several SWAPA SMEs, including SRC chair, Scott Plyler, Meagan Nelan, SRC analyst, Contract Admin Chairman, Seth Kornblum, and our fatigue specialist, Scott Hutchinson. They will put some numbers to what our crews are seeing out on the line, talk about some contractual tools our pilots have at their disposal, and tell us about some issues our members have been facing this summer.

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40 min
August 02, 2021 40 (Communications Team)
Today’s SWAPA number is 40 That’s about the average number of comm pieces SWAPA distributes to our members, the media, and other outside audiences on a monthly basis.

SWAPA SMEs produce a huge amount of information and it’s our Communications Team’s job to turn it from a rough draft into a polished product, usually with very short deadlines.

On our 50th episode a while back, Kurt Heidemann and Amy Robinson talked about their role in Comm. Today on the show, we’re going to talk with the rest of the members of the Comm Team about their SWAPA Comm products and how they work to keep our Pilot group educated and unified.

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33 min
July 19, 2021 23.7% (Seth Kornblum and Lexi Taylor, Training)
Today’s SWAPA number is 23.7%. That’s the number of Pilots who got their preferred training week in 2018, our baseline year for Contract 2020. You don’t need a math degree to realize that it’s worse than if the schedule were picked randomly out of a hat. Lack of adherence to training preferences are just one problem we hear about from our pilots every month.
When I’m talking to guys outside of SWAPA, they are generally surprised by how much of SWAPA’s time and resources are spent handling training issues. While each of us go usually go to training once a year, as a whole, our group is exposed to thousands of CQT events combined. Add to that ETOPS training and ExTO requals and training has had an oversized impact on our Contract Admin Committee for a while now.
Even Labor Relations is on record saying the training section of our current CBA needs to be redone. It was written for training we no longer even do with the transition to AQP. This week, the NC will present our Section 10 language to the Company which will cover training and upgrade procedures so we’re going to talk to CAC Chair Seth Kornblum and Tier 1 Coordinator Lexi Taylor who worked in Training Scheduling, before joining SWAPA in 2015. They will help us understand the problems we need to address and exactly how we’re going to do that in C2020.
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23 min
July 05, 2021 4 (Scott Plyler, Meagan Nelan, SRC)
Today’s SWAPA Number is 4. That’s the number of sections of Contract 2020 that SWAPA has dedicated to scheduling and work rules. That tells you how important scheduling is to our pilots because it directly impacts our productivity, pay, and quality of life.
Since Section 6 negotiations resumed in the spring, SWAPA has painstakingly walked through our scheduling proposals line by line with Labor Relations. With those sections completed in June, we thought we’d bring back frequent guest Scott and Meagan to review with us the many improvements SWAPA is seeking in Contract 2020.
If you have any feedback for us at all, please drop us a line at [email protected] or tap here to send us a text.
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28 min
June 21, 2021 50 (Kurt Heidemann and Amy Robinson, Communications)
Today’s SWAPA number is 50. That’s the amount of SWAPA Number podcasts we’ve produced for our pilots since we started in August of 2019. We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback about them because they let us talk directly with our SMEs about subjects in an easy-to-follow format. So today on the show we’re going to celebrate that milestone by turning our mics around and interviewing our long-time hosts Kurt and Amy so they can give a look into the inner workings of SWAPA Communications.
If you have any feedback for us at all, please drop us a line at [email protected] or tap here to send us a text.
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28 min

About The SWAPA Number

From the publisher's feed

In each podcast we explore a number that will help us explain an issue that matters to our Pilots. This might be a scheduling metric, a Company financial number that impacts us, or anything else that…