Originally Posted by
13901
The stand guidance bit is just the first instalment of the arrival process. Basically, the issue at hand is that there isn't a ground crew (or the full crew hasn't assembled yet) in order to handle the aircraft. How it happens, generally speaking (I'm a bit out of the game so some details might be changing, and the naming convention will undoubtedly have morphed) is as IrishNY said. The person who turns on stand guidance (used to be the IRS, Integrated Ramp Supervisors) also drives the jetty and performs a couple other key functions.
So when the pilots say that no one is there to turn on the stand guidance, the reality is that BA LHR Ops is understaffed and can't keep up with the operation. Sometimes - they were a lot more before some changes in 2018/19, more on that later - you can't win: LHR Ops will man for an operation running more or less on schedule; if a plane arrives 30' early there's slack, but if they start becoming 2, or 3, or a whole wave... then it hits the fan. And I hated when the Niges would go "Well, we've done our bit to bring you nice and early but the company's caught unaware again"... when in reality they got a powerful jetstream and them and another 10 planes arrived 1h early. Hard to deal with that.
The other - and truer cause of the short-staffing issue, in my opinion - is that, in order to save some costs (remember Alex?) two roles have largely been merged into one. Once, the jetty driving was a task done by the dispatcher, "above" the wing. The baggage crew leader took care of the below the wing activities. Now the IRS, who is technically 'below' the wing, does the guidance, FOD check, drives the jetty, get the RTAD buggies, and a few more bits and bobs. If there's issues, that causes delays.
That's correct! The FOD thing is just a LHR thing. If you go anywhere else, that's just not done, at least not before every departure. I really wonder what sort of extra layer of safety is given by Geoff eyeballing the concrete of stand 565 on a rainy Tuesday at 0500 AM, but hey ho.
A damaged, personal baggage tag, with a metal clasp that falls off a bag (and believe me I’ve seen plenty on a walk round) going into an engine as you taxy in, is going to ruin everyone’s day. It can FOD the engine, causing a potential cost running into the millions of pounds if it means an engine change is required, at the least it takes the aircraft out of service for a lot longer than the FOD plod takes to complete. Just because you are unaware that the check is being done at other airports does not invalidate its importance at LHR. Similarly because it doesnt happen very often doesn’t mean the risk is reduced, that’s just (to use a horrible NASA phrase) normalising deviance. If you toss a coin 19 times and every time you toss it, it comes down heads, the next coin toss it’s still a 50/50 chance that it will come down heads. Risk doesn’t change just because you’ve got away with it a few times.
My bugbear with stand guidance is that we often approach the gate and it’s not until we have to come to a halt on the taxiway that the ground crew get out of the hut to do the FOD plod and turn the guidance on. This means using a lot more power to get going again, all because they can’t get out of the hut 1 minute earlier. Hey ho, rant over.