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How Does AFA Inspect Hotels?

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Source: AFA

Date: May 12, 2016

Source: MEC Website

Layover hotels are an important quality of life issue for all Flight Attendants, and with that in mind, AFA has strategically designed a procedure for our Hotel and Transportation Committee Members to perform Hotel Inspections. Many Flight Attendants have asked what that process is and how the inspections are performed.  Below is an explanation of the process for placing Flight Attendants into AFA approved layover hotels.

AFA works with United’s Procurement Department, who procure rooms and transportation for Flight Attendants and Pilots around the world. Each of the Buyers is assigned specific cities/stations.  They solicit bids, set up inspections, negotiate rates with hotels, and finalize all contracts.  Their responsibilities also include reviewing all TVLLOGs and taking action on reported issues.

As an example, the Buyer solicits bids from various hotels within a particular city and interested hotels respond with a bid. The volume of rooms needed, flight arrival/departure times, and hotel location are examples of things considered when deciding which hotels end up being inspected.  This also explains why, in some cases, Pilots or Flight Attendants may go to different hotels. Next, a date is set to inspect the properties. Inspection participants usually include the Buyer, an ALPA Hotel Committee member and an AFA inspectors. Inspections are conducted using the same inspection questionnaire based on objective standards, which identifies more than 100 items related to safety, security, cleanliness, food availability, room comfort, and amenities. We tour each property, looking at several rooms (and some unplanned rooms as well), their restaurant facilities and work out rooms.  Details such as chains on doors vs. bolts, double or single pane windows, hairdryers, hard wired smoke detectors vs. battery powered, the number of fire exits per floor and where they lead; are just a sample of what goes into assessing a property. Critical for our approval is a hotel meeting the Contract requirements and agreed upon Flight Attendant Hotel Standards.  If the hotel is providing crew transportation, we inspect their vans as well.

It is not uncommon to inspect up to four hotels in one day in different areas of the same city. Time spent at each hotel averages two hours. We always spend the night at a hotel which is most likely to meet our requirements.  Unfortunately, it is impossible to overnight at each potential hotel, especially when numerous hotels are being inspected. 

After the inspection, we submit our evaluations to Procurement. They take that information and begin the negotiation process.  Ultimately, it is the decision of the company as to which hotel is selected among those inspected and AFA approved.

Contractually and in accordance with the company we have the Unimatic command TVLLOG to track hotel and transportation issues. Over the years TVLLOG has been enhanced and made easier to use. You have thirty days to input up to four issues per day regarding your transportation and lodging. For example, a Flight Attendants can write up a day room, transportation vendor, crew lounge, and a hotel, all using the same occurrence date.  Using TVLLOG directly benefits Flight Attendants in resolving our problems with transportation and hotels. You may not think your lone TVLLOG will make a difference, but the cumulative effect of documented TVLLOGs helps us identify trouble spots. It is also important to use TVLLOG, as they become part of a permanent data base which AFA has access to.  The AFA MEC Hotel Committee views the information in the data base on a regular basis.

For more information on TVLLOG please review the article Writing an Effective TVLLOG on the United MEC Website.

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