Cargolux

Vacation together with our off-days have a high priority especially for us as pilots and are an important building block for a healthy work-life balance. With a stronger focus of the company on more efficient planning and the endeavour to achieve a higher level of automation in the planning process, we already noticed last year problems with the allocation of vacation days.

To better evaluate the success rate of the vacation allocation for 2022 we need your support!

With a survey after each bidding round (first, second and VOFF) we plan to collect important information to improve the allocation process in the future. What is particularly important in this context is whether the bids were placed as “fixed” or “flexible” dates to evaluate the intention behind them and the results.

Therefore, we would like to ask for your individual vacation bidding and allocation results and to answer a few questions. This survey is now the first of three surveys, which covers the recent publication of the vacation days of the first bidding round.

Please note, this survey will be held in strict confidentiality – only the overall results will be communicated.

To view the contained table in full size, we recommend filling out the survey on a computer, notebook or tablet. 

The survey closes on 17 October 2021.

Your ALPL Vacation Committee

Thank you very much for participating in the vote in which 88,3 % of our members stated their individual preference.
 
The vote consisted of the following question:
 
Do you accept the proposal for a deviation for scheduled operations and agree to operate with a crew compliment of 1 Captain and 3 First Officers under the presented conditions? 
 
YES: 31,7%                 (BC: 32,1%; FO: 31,4%)
 
NO: 68,3%                  (BC: 67,9%; FO: 68,6%)
  
With 68,3% voting “NO”, the deviation request has been rejected by our members. The Pilot Representatives will not agree to the proposed deviation as requested by management. This  has been communicated to senior management.

Recently we have been approached by Flight Operations Management with the request to apply CWA article 36.6.4.3.1 “Deviations for scheduled Operations” on certain flights and to schedule these flights with 1 Captain and 3 First Officers instead of 2 Captains and 2 First Officers.

The reasons brought forward for this request are the present and increasing constraints that are put on Cargolux´ operations due to COVID restrictions, especially in China where ground times have been significantly increased and due to many no crew layover stations. This resulted in numerous flights being operated with an augmented or even double crew, requiring a lot of manpower. Due to the current rotation pattern to accommodate serving destinations in China, Cargolux finds itself in a position of being short of Captains in order to maintain its schedule.

In subsequent meetings with the CEO, we explained Management the current difficulties for Cargolux pilots and that the ongoing restrictive conditions have led to a high level of frustration.

Ultimately and after careful consideration of all principles, the following was agreed upon, subject to ratification by our members. 

• Only the BKK-PVG-BKK flights would be affected.
• For every BKK-PVG-BKK shuttle, a premium of 1000€ will be paid to the operating Captain and 650€ to every operating First Officer. This premium is a gross amount and subject to taxes and social security contributions.
• This agreement will be of temporary nature and expires on 31 March 2022, at which point it will be reviewed by both parties. If the company wishes to stop the application of CWA Art. 36.6.4.3.1 and operate these flights again as per CWA Art. 36.6.4.2. at an earlier stage, this agreement can be terminated in writing by sending a letter to the Pilot Representatives.
• Estimated bio-mathematical fatigue values for the complete rotation the Flight Duty Period belongs to have to be within limits.

Please note:
Your vote will be held in strict confidentiality – only the global results will be relayed to Cargolux Management. A simple majority vote will determine an acceptance or rejection of the proposal.

To cast your vote you must follow the link provided in an email sent to your email account registered with the ALPL Office! Should you not have received this email, kindly contact the ALPL Office at office@alpl.lu.u.

The voting deadline is 22:00 UTC on Sunday, 26 September 2021!

Please note that vacation bidding for the 1st Step for the 2022 calendar year closes on Sunday, 19 September 2021.

You can also download the ALPL  Vacation Calendar 2022 and Vacation Calendar 2023 from the ALPL website for your perusal.

For questions regarding the vacation don’t hesitate to send an email to cvboard@alpl.lu.

Some of our members informed us that they have been approached and asked by crew control to deviate from the CWA requirement of a Double Crew (2 Captains and 2 First Officers) and to accept a crew composition of 1 Captain and 3 First Officers on various flights instead. In all known cases, our members insisted that the CWA is followed.
 
We kindly ask you to get in touch with us should you experience the same so that we can verify whether these have been isolated cases or if this is a systematic approach by the company. 
 
Please remember that the last CWA negotiations were very intense and all of us should not deviate from these achievements light-heartedly.   

Please find below an update regarding:

• Salary increase in August 2021
• Reply letters from Management
• PVG Rotations
• Vacation Bidding 2022

Salary increase in August 2021
We would like to inform you that as per the CWA 2020-2022 Art. 38.1., the salaries for all pilots will be increased by 2% as of 1 August 2021. The new salary should be displayed on your monthly pay slip for August 2021 and can be crosschecked with the tables in the CWA.  

Reply letters from Management
A few months ago, we sent some letters to Management concerning certain developments that have been observed by our members and were mentioned in our June 2021 Members Update. We have recently received two reply letters concerning the following:

• Recurrent Extended Rest Recovery Period (RERRP) in BKK
  Some members informed us, that their RERRP was scheduled in BKK, a destination with in-room confinement requirement. It is our position that RERRPs at destinations with in-room confinement are not suitable to recover from a series of duties. Please click on below links to read again the letter that was sent from our side and the reply from Management. In the reply letter numerous attempts of crew control to schedule crews for a RERRP in BKK were not acknowledged. Some were successfully avoided due to the individual crew members intervention, therefore we encourage you to challenge the allocation of RERRP in BKK particularly in regards to the below written subject and letter about the PVG rotations.
  Letter sent to management
  Reply letter concerning RERRP in BKK

• Triplist in PBS
  For obvious reasons the triplist in PBS was removed last year when the COVID pandemic started and the option to bid for trips was suspended. In the meantime, however, the network seems to be more stable, and we see an increased number of repetitive trips. Therefore, a letter to the VP Flight Operations was sent by the Delegation with the request to reintroduce the option to bid for trips in the PBS. Please click on below links to read again the letter that was sent from our side and the reply from Management.
  Letter sent to management
  Reply letter concerning triplist in PBS

PVG Rotations
After the announcement by CPO that the PVG flights will be conducted via BKK, the Pilot Representatives met with ExCom and CPO in order to discuss the current situation.

The CEO informed us, that due to the current Covid procedures in China, a lot of manpower is lost at the airports, so that the ground times increase considerably due to the fact there is much more time required to on- and off-load the aircraft. In fact, ground times of 11 hours and more have been observed recently and it was stated that currently it is impossible to predict turnaround times at PVG.

As PVG is affected the most by the Covid restrictions in China, it was decided by management to fly to PVG from BKK as announced by the CPO in order to be able to finish the FDPs within the limits. Unfortunately, all other airports outside China and relatively in the vicinity of PVG have either no capacity to deal with extra Cargolux flights, are too far away to stay within the max FDP due to extended ground time in PVG or have too stringent layover restrictions. Some rotations into PVG have been cancelled altogether so that  Cargolux is able to continue operations efficiently into PVG.

We communicated our concerns regarding additional layovers in in-room confinement and sent a letter to CPO, where we stipulated strict, transparent scheduling rules regarding the layovers in BKK and the shuttle flights. You can read the letter here.

It was reiterated by management that it is not the intention of the company to have such rotations appear in our operation. Unfortunately, such restrictions are completely outside the control of Cargolux.

Vacation bidding 2022
On 19th August 2021, the two-step vacation bidding process for the year 2022 has started.

To optimize the result of the vacation bidding we would like to remind you of a few points which are important in this context. 

• Vacation planning is an automatic process, and the result is heavily influenced by the input of the individual pilot.
• Especially during popular holiday periods, the rush after limited vacation slots is the greatest, which may affect even pilots with a relatively high seniority.

To increase your individual success rate, we recommend considering the following when placing your bids. 

• Be aware of your relative seniority and request your vacation days accordingly.
• Rather than only requesting the minimum number of blocks for vacation, also place alternative bids. 
• Rather than requesting a vacation block to start on a specific day, indicate a time window when the vacation should start. The system then can shift and trim your request to fit it in the available slots in that period.
• When placing your bids for vacation, do not count on getting your A or B Days allocated attached to a block of vacation days during the year when doing the regular monthly preferential bidding. There is no privilege and guarantee to get this request awarded just because of your vacation days. If there are no slots for off days available in respect to your seniority, the risk is high that you will not get them. It could even happen that a short block of vacation days could be used to cover rest requirements.

As many of you have noticed, the success rate for the bidding via the Preferential Bidding System (PBS) has gone down and quite often the rosters hardly reflect the bidding requests at the moment. 
 
The main reason for this is that the process to produce the monthly rosters has changed and that the Company uses a different rostering software, which sets different priorities in regard to the planning of trips, off days, training, etc. to make the planning of crews more efficient.
 
Obviously, any changes in this respect have a tremendous effect on the outcome of our preferential bidding and it goes without saying that during the complex process of producing the rosters the Company`s requirement for efficiency must not have a negative impact on the best possible lifestyle for the majority of the pilots.
 
It is very important to understand that currently our CWA only states that we have a PBS in place and that pilots can bid for their off days. The PBS only consists of the interface we use to place our bids and submit our preferences. Which actual rostering system is being used by the Company, how it is defined and which parameters are being used for the production of the rosters are entirely outside the scope of the CWA. 
 
We realize that there is an urgent desire for a quick solution since roster issues can have a huge negative influence on our private lives, but please understand that it will take time to possibly find an agreement. In the meantime, when it comes to Off-Day bidding, we recommend considering what we mentioned in our Members Update for July 2021.
 
Work is in progress, and we are in a dialogue with Crew Planning Management and the Chief Pilot, where certainly your concerns and feedback are brought forward.
 
We will keep you informed of the progress.

Please find below an update regarding:

• Fatigue Reports
• OFF-Day Requests
• Guichet.lu Website

Fatigue Reports
Despite the improvement of the new Flight Time Limitations in the CWA, our flight operation still poses a risk that pilots feel insufficiently rested and unfit to safely perform the next duty or series of duties. In such situations it is of utmost importance not just only to comply with the maximum flight time limitations as per the CWA, but also respect OM-A, Chapter 6, Section 1.

One reason why we emphasize the personal responsibility is the possibility of cumulative fatigue while operating several days in a row. This has not been addressed adequately in the regulations, especially when operating and resting against the body clock.

Please apply a very high and professional standard in determining your capability to safely operate any subsequent flight and remember that you might possibly face a situation where you have to justify your decisions. Therefore, please do not hesitate to ask for more rest should you need it!

As we have indicated in the past, maintaining a sleep log from the beginning of a rotation will assist you in making a professional and informed decision. Also, do not forget to file a proactive Fatigue Report when asking for additional rest, or a reactive Fatigue Report, if you experienced high levels of fatigue during a flight.

We cannot emphasize enough, that Fatigue Reports by pilots are the most valuable and necessary means to feed the Fatigue Risk Management System with realistic data and to justify changes in rotation planning.

Guidance on how to report fatigue can be found on the ALPL website.

OFF-Day Requests
We have received numerous reports from members who experienced that their off-day requests are not granted as often anymore as in previous years. We are aware of the fact that particularly the number 1 priority off-day request is important to our members, and we are in a constructive dialogue with the Management of Crew Planning Department and the Chief Pilot. 

For clarification and a better understanding, we would like to mention the following. 

• In the past, the allocation of almost all off-day requests contributed to numerous changes concerning the Floating Off Days (FOD) in the actual rosters.
• The new CWA includes more fixed off-days (A and B Days) and much stricter rules in regard to how C Days (formerly known as FOD) can be changed once a roster is published. The improved off-day stability hence has an impact on how rosters are produced by crew planning.
• Per calendar day only a certain number of slots for off-days are available. The allocation of owed off-days as per the CWA could further limit the number of available slots.
• Scheduling of training, especially training flights but also ground training is prioritized.
• Off-day requests are processed according to seniority, but if an off-day request results in a significant inefficiency like additional rest or blank days, not only on the individual roster but also for the overall roster solution, this request may be rejected by the system.
• As now a higher level of automation is used, please consider giving the system more flexibility by requesting your off-days with a variable starting date and placing more strategic bids. This could increase the chances for a satisfactory result. Instead of trips you can also bid for specific destinations. 
• If you see that any training is planned in a period where you would like to request your off-days, please contact crew planning well in advance to give them time to reschedule the training.

Over the last couple of months, it became evident that changes in the PBS are urgently required to improve transparency and to increase the individual bid award success rate. As mentioned earlier, we are in a constructive dialogue with the CPO and Crew Planning Department and hope to achieve a significant improvement as quickly as possible.

Guichet.lu Website
We would like to take the opportunity and point to the website guichet.lu. Should you think about taking parental leave for example or if you have questions about retirement, this is a good platform to get first-hand information about the requirements, the application processes, etc. Generally, on this website, you can find detailed information about almost every aspect of the Luxemburgish social system explained in French, German and English.

Nevertheless, please don`t hesitate to contact us on cvboard@alpl.lu anytime, if you have any questions.