Union Update August 10, 2025
Dear Crew,
This newsletter will cover the following topics:
- Union Zoom Meeting on August 15
- Purser Seniority
- Riga Update
- New Process for Swaps
- Current Crew Stats
- Newsletter IT Issues
- Hotel and Transportation Reports
- Vacation Requests
1. Union Zoom Meeting
It has been a while since we have had a Zoom Meeting and so we will be holding one at 11am ET on August 15, 2025
This will be a space for crew to discuss what is happening in the Union and with the Company.
You can join the meeting using the link in your email.
The link will also be available on our Facebook page.
2. SCCM Seniority
There seem to have been some issues with the Purser Seniority and who is assigned to work what flight as a Purser.
The most "senior" Purser (the person who became qualified for the Purser position first) is the active Purser on the flight when the roster is awarded.
If later on you are assigned low rank to a flight that has a less "senior" Purser above you, the original Purser will remain as such and you will be low rank unless it is changed for operational reasons, or you mutually decide to switch.
Please do not reach out to the Mission Control team asking to be put as the Purser on a flight if you were not originally rostered as such.
3. Riga Update
Jhenelle and Ayana's visit to Riga was very productive. They started working with Crew Planning immediately when they arrived in the office on August 6, and worked diligently with him throughout their time there.
Hanna-Liisa, the head of crew resources, was not in office at this time. However, the crew were briefly joined by Valentin and got to speak with Kjetil Risan, our Nominated Person Flight Operation - NO, about the upcoming crew app.
The reason that we have sent Ayana and Jhenelle to Riga to work on this trial bidding process with crew planning, is we have an outstanding MEC Grievance about scheduling which is on the verge of heading to arbitration. Arbitration is a costly endeavour for both the union and the company, and so we would like to resolve our issues by working on this process and sign a new scheduling agreement.
There is a new scheduling agreement currently being negotiated between the union and the company and includes this trial bidding process. We hope to have it signed and shared with the crew as soon as negotiations are completed.
While we understand that some crew are unhappy with the outcome of the August roster bidding process, we are unable to submit any additional grievances about scheduling while we have this one in arbitration.
We understand that there is some confusion about the September rosters. There were several changes that had to be made to the pairings. We were erroneously given a pairing that was meant for OSL crew, and other pairings had to be adjusted by one or several days due to the changes in the patterns.
Those crew members who had vacation, FMLA/LOA, and other leaves during the month of September, had rosters built around their time off.
This is an ongoing collaborative process between the company and the union. If you would like to offer feedback about the bidding process within the past 2 months, you can do so using this form HERE
4. Process for Swaps during Bidding Trial
During this trial bidding period, as explained in the bidding document, and in our Roster Dispute email, partial swaps will not be allowed to be sent in to the replanning email. The ONLY swaps that will be allowed via email, will be full month roster swaps. If you want to swap individual trip! it must be done in the Crew Connex app, and legal.
To learn more about legalities, we urge you to familiarize yourself with the FTL in OMA.
Many crew bided for September trips starting in the beginning of the month, having August rosters active till the end of August or beginning of September. FTL doesn’t allow to start new trip without legal rest.
To send an email to replanning, you must follow the template below:
Email Title:
FULL MONTH SWAP - Employee # - MONTH (eg. FULL MONTH SWAP - 12345 - SEPTEMBER)
Email Contents:
Your Employee # and Last Name (eg. 12345 - VIXON)
Colleague Employee # and Last Name (eg. 98765 - BLOOM)
Swap Request: We would like to swap our rosters for (insert month here)
Additional swaps will exclusively be processed in the app. If you are not able to swap automatically in the app, the swap will not be granted.
If you require a last minute swap (less than 5 days) before your trip due to an emergent issue, this will be processed on a case by case basis by crew control but this is not a priority for them as they may have other urgent issues to deal with.
If you have ANY issues with your roster and not receiving your requested bid line, the only time to address this is during the dispute period and emails should exclusively be sent to [email protected] using the template in the Roster Dispute email.
5. Crew Status
Currently we have 195 crew members in JFK. 43 of them are pursers, 150 are cabin crew members, and 2 pilots.
We are aware that the company is sending 6 planes to Indigo by early next year, and that our CEO has told us that there will be cuts from all bases.
As it stands right now, the company has not formally announced how many crew will need to be temporarily furloughed across the company.
What has been formally announced is that all crew on temporary contracts will be leaving at the end of their contract period. This affects LGW crew, CDG crew, and OSL crew.
The company has also stated that they will need US crew to temporarily switched to UK AOC starting in October. Biding started few hours ago for the duration of 2 weeks.
We were able to negotiate the process to be conducted in US seniority order.
We have been successful in negotiating a Voluntary Leave in Lieu of Furlough (VLLF) agreement with management that will allow crew members to take anywhere up to 6months off during the winter period, however Norse management didn’t specify if and when they will be offered.
Our crew seniority list has also been updated in this time period. You can view that link HERE.
If you notice any errors in the seniority list, please contact [email protected]
6. Newsletter IT Issues
Several crew with hotmail/msn email addresses have had difficulties receiving newsletters. I have spoken to the IT department at AFA and they have let me know this is a technical issues affecting multiple companies/providers at this time.
They are working on a solution to ensure this issue is resolved. If you have one of these emails, we kindly ask you to refer to the Norse AFA Facebook page and our website, norseafa.org, for all union updates or send an updated email address from another provider to [email protected]
7. Hotel and Transportation Reports
During the busy summer season, we have noticed an increase in crews have issues with hotel bookings and transportation, including long wait periods.
Please ensure you are filing your reports about these issues on Centrik and sending a copy of them to our hotel committee representative, Odette. You can download the report directly from Centrik once submitted in PDF format. Please send them to her at [email protected]
It is very important that our hotel committee collect these reports so that they can assist in liaising with the company and the relevant vendors to address these issues.
8. Vacation Requests
As a reminder, all requests for Vacation must be made using the CrewConnex app.
Please make these requests by going to the Vacation section and choose "2025 JFK VAC Bidding - Open Bid"
All vacation requests made under the general Requests tab have a high likelihood of not being honored during the trial bidding period.
While we have been in India training the Indigo crew, our union committee members have had to step up and fill in gaps due to our busy schedules and time zone differences.
We understand your frustration with delayed email and text responses while we have been away. We are working on being more communicative and responsive to crew.
We also communicate regularly with several members of the team and provide information, insight and feedback through them when required.
Thank you so much for all the work you have done during this busy summer period.
The union is not just the MEC and other committee members, it is all of you. We would not be able to do the work that we do without your support and we will continue to fight for our crew.
We look forward to seeing you on the Zoom call.
In Solidarity,
Kat & Ted
