Originally Posted by
richardwft
It’s not that difficult to have standby crew at an airport in a major city such as Berlin.
It might not be technically difficult as such, but very expensive.
When you start putting crew members on standby at outstations to cover for all eventuality, the crew cost (+ accommodation) do increase rather drastically. We might think BA have lots of flights to TXL but LCY ones don't operate the same aircraft as LHR ones so you need separate crew to cover LCY and LHR flights, and depending on the first and last flight of the day, you might need to have up to 4 captains who are cleared for right hand seat duty every day (1 captain for the A320 family and 1 captain for the EMB for up to flight time limitations so it might need two shifts to cover all the flights) so that they can operate as a captain or first officer as required) and up to 4 cabin crew members (again 1 for the A320 family and 1 for the EMB).
Then you need to arrange for up to 8 hotel rooms. You can probably see how the costs may end up becoming rather silly. It's theoretically doable, but if airlines are required to do that, the fares will need to go up to cover them. I'm quite happy to do that, but I suspect most people are a little more price-sensitive.
I'd also like BA to locate a spare airframe at the outpost to cover it too
Of course, we can sign up to the likes of VistaJet that guarantees availability pretty much anywhere, any time, if the cost is no object.