Originally Posted by
Raffles
Lots more going on too, yes. For example, cabin crew will now be checking passports at the aircraft door, allowing BA to remove one person from the gate.
I see it more as a boutade as a real plan. Or a plan that somebody with little, if any, experience in the airline operation has actually taken up. I've worked in the terminals and I've seen situations such as people with the wrong passports arriving at the gate, people without green cards, people without ESTA/ETA/correct Visas. Offloading them at the A/C door will cost a lot more in punctuality, and EC261 compensation, than doing it earlier at the gate. Plus the cost (in fines) for letting people on with the wrong documentation. Countries fine Airlines tens of thousands of dollars per passengers (also, on US flights G4S must be present to carry out passport checks unless it's a biometric).
What I was referring to is different: I understand that the whole Flight Management Unit (aka closeout), allocation of ground staff/GSE drivers and even Centralised Load Control might be outsourced. We often speak about cabin crew but I'd like to pause a little bit on these guys: these are teams that had to go through a re-org, with partial outsourcing and the reapply-for-your-job charade, last year. At the end of a process that lasted more than a year. To throw them back into the meat grinder again is not only heartless, it's savage. For what? Those remaining from FMU and CLC number in less than 100 if I'm not mistaken. And what they do is highly technical. Cock it up and the consequences on the day-to-day operation are dire.