Logged Pay (push vs block)

whiskeypilot

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Nov 26, 2010
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I've had the new iPad APDL for a few hours now. One thing I'm having trouble figuring out is how to accurately show my pay.


I work for Air Wisconsin. We log our block time from "out to in", however we are paid from "push to in."


Example I push at 1200, I'm out at 1205, off 1225, on 1300, in 1305. In this example my legal block time was 1 hour. However my pay was 1 hour 5 minutes. This push time can vary a lot. I imported my 1st trip and the APDL pay was about an hour off. That could mean I'll have 4+ hours difference each month; each day not tracking around 20-40 minutes of extra time. As far as I can tell, there is no setting to log "credit" which I'm defining as block + push.


On your logbook pro app, I can track all my times. Is there a way for me to add a push column in my APDL log?
 
I'm a former ZW pilot and current APDL Beta tester. I've expressed this same thing to Neal and company and they have been receptive to my request to add a PUSH column. However, the priority prior to release has been the legality issues that really make APDL standout. That said, payroll will be one of the next big items that is tweaked in the months to come. In the meantime, I wish I had a way to force APDL to help you accurately track your pay. My only suggestion is to add the PUSH time to the notes of every leg and then add the excess segment time to the credit within APDL. That should get you close to your final credit. I'd also continue to use your own form of tracking pay - like an Excel or Numbers Paysheet - until the payroll functions within the app are really nailed down.
 
Ok, I'll be looking forward to the next release. It would be handy to just have an "overage" selection that you could manually edit each leg.
 
This isn't an ideal solution for long term but temporarily you could do this to improve your pay calculations in APDL. When you enter your actual times, you could adjust the scheduled out time to your push time and scheduled in to your actual block in time. Because of block or better, this would always cause APDL to credit you with at minimum, push time to block in while still tracking block times as well.
 
This isn't an ideal solution for long term but temporarily you could do this to improve your pay calculations in APDL. When you enter your actual times, you could adjust the scheduled out time to your push time and scheduled in to your actual block in time. Because of block or better, this would always cause APDL to credit you with at minimum, push time to block in while still tracking block times as well.

That will work, however, keep in mind it would screw up the on time departure statistics. Just something to realize until a permanent fix is in.
 
So this is what I did. I attached a picture. Basically I added a push leg for payroll on each leg. I did this because I want to keep track of my pay more accurately. by doing this, it matched my credit for the day. The issue is, our on time performance is based off our push time, so I showed late for all my times. If possible on a future update, it would be nice to have the option to enable a push feature. (Push, Out, Off, On, In) the push feature would not log block or duty, but would affect overall credit, thus pay (daily rigs and trip rigs are affected by this time) please let me know if you need additional information. Tomorrow I'll take a picture of our ACARS unit and attach it so you can see how it's logged.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ouun16gc2v7rzcq/Photo Jan 09, 21 41 56.png?dl=0

my ipad wont upload pictures to this forum, the link is a dropbox picture todays log.
 
So this is what I did. I attached a picture. Basically I added a push leg for payroll on each leg. I did this because I want to keep track of my pay more accurately. by doing this, it matched my credit for the day. The issue is, our on time performance is based off our push time, so I showed late for all my times. If possible on a future update, it would be nice to have the option to enable a push feature. (Push, Out, Off, On, In) the push feature would not log block or duty, but would affect overall credit, thus pay (daily rigs and trip rigs are affected by this time) please let me know if you need additional information. Tomorrow I'll take a picture of our ACARS unit and attach it so you can see how it's logged.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ouun16gc2v7rzcq/Photo Jan 09, 21 41 56.png?dl=0

my ipad wont upload pictures to this forum, the link is a dropbox picture todays log.

Aric, I'll save you the time. Neal and his crew have over a year's worth of documentation from me regarding this very subject. I'm confident once we get a little further from last week's release date, they will start digging more into payroll functions.

In the meantime, check out TapaTalk. It's an app that works very well with this forum and will allow you upload screenshots. Best of all, it's free.

Cheers
 
Just out of curiosity, can you explain how push and out are determined? What are the ACARS triggers? Is Push based on doors closed/brake off, or is it movement backwards? Normally that would be OUT, but it sounds like your Out occurs after push. Is OUT the same as Taxi start (aircraft movement under its own power)? I'd like to see a Taxi start column, because in the future the Airlines may start using that for determining Max Flight time limIts, since that's how the Regs actually define Flight time.
 
At Air Wisconsin, once the parking brake is released and the doors are shut and the beacon is on a "push time" is triggered. This starts our "pay" but not our block.

Once the push back is complete, we start the engines. Basically as soon as one generator is on and the nose wheel steering is turned on, and parking brake is released an OUT time is triggered.

Sometimes it's the same time if your not getting pushed back. Some times they take 10 minutes from brake release to finish the push. (Ramp congestion etc) The company does this because they can get more use out of the crews because push time does not count towards FAR block. However, our union contract allows us to get paid once the brake is released. That's why they track both.

Overall, each day can be off at least 30 minutes to 1 hour or more for credit (pay) than overall block time.

Here is an example of my schedule. You will see how BLK (block) and SEG (segment / credit) rarely match. The difference is push time (which isn't displayed on this schedule overview). The first leg, we spent 15 minutes "pushing" a lot of that was door closed waiting for ramp crew. The end of my trip, my FAR block was 19:27 but my paid credit was 21:21
51fc00b8bde2d41e42fd81056eb26b89.jpg


I've been using an excel sheet to keep track of my pay but I would like to move away from that and use APDL.

You all are much more skilled programmers than myself, I don't even consider myself one, but I'm able to make an excel sheet work. I'd rather use your app, it's much more clean and I'm sure will soon have an analyzer function to view historical information.

I'm patient, so far the legality functions work great.

Thank you
 
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Man that makes things so complicated. I am glad my airline hasn't started that.

It's been that way at ZW for a very long time. It's quite nice that they get paid while waiting to push. It accounts for a lot of extra money without infringing on FAR block maximum.
 
Man that makes things so complicated. I am glad my airline hasn't started that.

I agree it's complicated, but I suspect to see more often in the regional/FFD world. The FAA in recent 117 LOIs has reemphasized the definition of "FAA flight time". If an airline can get more utility at the same costs, they will do it to.
 
It's been that way at ZW for a very long time. It's quite nice that they get paid while waiting to push. It accounts for a lot of extra money without infringing on FAR block maximum.

I get paid while waiting to push also. Starting FDP at taxi would suck at my company. They already abuse us enough as it is. Lol
 
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