Originally Posted by
cliffy97
Random One about Crew Scheduling.. If this has been covered over the years I missed it :-(
How are crew sectors scheduled? As an example I did a EDI-LHR-DUB on Saturday and whilst the aircraft was the same for both flights all of the crew swapped.
EDI-LHR Crew moved on to Malaga (Pilots) and Vienna(Cabin Crew) and the new crew(s) came from Frankfurt (Cabin Crew) and Warsaw (Pilots).
There was one hour between my flights and it would have been the second flight of the day for both. The only thing I can think of is it allows the crew a break or minimal downtime between flights, but seems like it would be easier to keep everyone in place esp as Warsaw was slightly late so we were out 30 min delayed for takeoff as the pilot said they were still getting settled.
Thanks in advance :-)
With the complexity of BAs short haul network and fleet, makes it not always possible to keep a a crew together.
Different flights have different crewing requirements, based on whether it’s an A319, A320 or A321, the Club Europe loads and the flight time.
You also have aircraft swapped around on short haul a lot more than on long haul, based on capacity requirements and other factors.
The delay you had can also occur when we do a ‘fixed link’ (where we do stay on the aircraft at LHR and go onwards) - as aside from finding a different aircraft, BA would also need to recrew it - something which they don’t always have the manpower to do.
These are issues that Ryanair and easyJet don’t have, and as such they can roster the crew to be on the same aircraft all day - as they don’t have to contend with business class loads, whilst their fleet have the same crewing requirements (barring EasyJets A321N fleet).