Narrative:

I relieved the dispatcher on desk at XA00. The desk was extremely busy with thunderstorms impacting phl/dca/iad/bwi. There were thunderstorms enroute which were causing routing problems with ATC using multiple reroutes per flight. I received a call from a manager advising me that I would be relieved at XB00 to be counseled on my arrival fuels. I told him that this was not a good day to pull me off the desk due to all the weather sigmets; reroutes; delays; airborne holds; etc. I asked him if we could schedule this for another day and that it was not a good idea to have me work under these conditions for 1 hour; hand the desk off for 1 hour and then take the desk back. Manager did not care. I was relieved by another dispatcher and went to the fuel counseling meeting. Before the meeting started I advised manager again my disappointment that he had ignored the recommendation of a dispatcher in regarding to begin pulled off the desk for 1 hour and that this was disruptive in respect to having a grasp of the operation and then trying to regain that perspective 1 hour later. What was advertised as a fuel counseling session was instead a meeting where I was told that I was in violation of company fuel policy based on statistical data and that if I did not improve I could face disciplinary action including termination. When I asked for specific flight and instances he could not give any. This to me is company interference with the dispatcher utilizing far 121.647 factors for computing fuel required in respect that the company is threatening termination if their statistical data is not used instead of real time analysis. I advised the manager that this was not a counseling session since I had been threatened with termination. He disagreed even though he had mentioned termination several times. The company pulling a dispatcher is disruptive and impacts the dispatchers decision making process. This was not a counseling session but an attempt by the company to coerce the dispatching process.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Dispatcher is relieved of duty for one hour during a very busy time period for counseling; including termination threats; because Company aircraft fueling guidelines were not always being followed even when the Dispatcher felt FAR 121.647 was properly utilized.

Narrative: I relieved the Dispatcher on desk at XA00. The desk was extremely busy with thunderstorms impacting PHL/DCA/IAD/BWI. There were thunderstorms enroute which were causing routing problems with ATC using multiple reroutes per flight. I received a call from a Manager advising me that I would be relieved at XB00 to be counseled on my arrival fuels. I told him that this was not a good day to pull me off the desk due to all the weather SIGMETs; reroutes; delays; airborne holds; etc. I asked him if we could schedule this for another day and that it was not a good idea to have me work under these conditions for 1 hour; hand the desk off for 1 hour and then take the desk back. Manager did not care. I was relieved by another Dispatcher and went to the fuel counseling meeting. Before the meeting started I advised Manager again my disappointment that he had ignored the recommendation of a Dispatcher in regarding to begin pulled off the desk for 1 hour and that this was disruptive in respect to having a grasp of the operation and then trying to regain that perspective 1 hour later. What was advertised as a fuel counseling session was instead a meeting where I was told that I was in violation of company fuel policy based on statistical data and that if I did not improve I could face disciplinary action including termination. When I asked for specific flight and instances he could not give any. This to me is company interference with the Dispatcher utilizing FAR 121.647 factors for computing fuel required in respect that the company is threatening termination if their statistical data is not used instead of real time analysis. I advised the Manager that this was not a counseling session since I had been threatened with termination. He disagreed even though he had mentioned termination several times. The company pulling a Dispatcher is disruptive and impacts the dispatchers decision making process. This was not a counseling session but an attempt by the company to coerce the dispatching process.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.