HIDDY

I listened to this sad tale yesterday on the radio. They blamed being caught out with new regulations that were brought in regarding pilot hours along with staff summer holiday holidays and and the awful summer weather in Europe. Not sure which story to believe but the passengers they interviewed weren't best pleased about their cancelled flights.

My first thought was they were doing it to avoid having to pay compensation somewhere down the line.

TPJ

But what I always hear on this forum is that BA passengers never fly with FR


I fly with FR from time to time and - normally - they are an extremely reliable carrier. I guess they will hire more pilots, have a few promos and the traveling public will soon forget about these issues.

HIDDY

Oh but they do....usually when they're forced to by their employer or when taking their three bairns and the missus on holiday.

madfish

Can somebody explain the difference between duty hours and block hours? I know we don't want tired pilots but 900 block hours per year and 100 per 28 days does not seem a lot.

madfish

They do when they get stranded in TLL,

rapidex

Duty hours start from sign on at the start of the day,until sign off,and include time spent on the ground during turnarounds and other duties such as simulator time etc.Block hours are from blocks off to blocks on.

rapidex

golfmad

I'm not sure that 'Refreshing Change' is a very helpful thread title. How about something like

"Will the current problems affecting Ryanair be good news for BA?"

subject2load

It's quite possible.

Some airlines have been known to use dubious tactics or highly questionable explanations as a conscious attempt to wriggle out of compensation claims or legal obligations.

But of course that's not the sort of thing BA passengers ever have to worry about ......

12939

Ryanair are cancelling flights because they have no other choice. They simply do not have crews to fly them - mostly that means flight crew, but sometimes they are short cabin crew also. The PR stuff is flannel trying to hide the real reason for the problem.

There has been a shortage of Captains for a while, but this has reached crisis point recently. Even fast-tracking FO's into command courses isn't solving the problem, partly because a good number of TRE's/TRI's (Type-Rating Examiners/Instructors) have been leaving the company and going to rivals.

To a large extent, Ryanair management has been taking advantage of the strong position of the airline and a weak job-market for pilots. The job market is not weak now and better T's & C's are being offered by a lot of UK/EU airlines. Pilots don't have to go to the Middle East or Far East to improve their lot. Ryanair still does stupid things which annoys people, like deliberately sending new Captains to bases that are far from home - unsurprisingly, they don't want that, so they vote with their feet.

hsmall

What is the justification for sending new pilots away from home like that, do you know?

madfish

Thanks for explaining. I suppose for LH duty time is less of an issue than for SH who are doing more turn around etc but would reach their block time more easily. What about when LH have inflight rest time?

ahmetdouas

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12939

ahmetdouas has it exactly. Some bases are more popular than others, often due to crew demographics. Well, that and the "Always Getting Better" concept wasn't applied internally.

For instance, Ryanair has a lot of British and Irish pilots. Naturally, people tend to want to live close to home and as a result the UK and Irish bases tend to be extremely popular (and not only with native pilots). And of course, some bases are downright unpopular... "Any volunteers for Timisoara?" (I've never been, it might be lovely - I picked it semi-randomly)

It is virtually unheard of for a new FO or freshly-upgraded Captain to be allocated a base in his/her home country. Why? Because they can. New FOs are probably in debt up to their eyeballs and will be desperate to get their foot in the door. They know the new guys/girls will go anywhere if they want the job or if a command upgrade is being offered, so they will send them to under-crewed or less popular bases. I fully understand the logic of this, but I think it could be handled better.

Your-base-of-choice is generally used as an eventual reward for loyalty/performance. Even for existing FOs who have been there long enough to have already been assigned their base-of-choice but who do then go on to do command upgrade, it will come with a foreign-base assignment.

Even for Direct Entry Captains (i.e. experienced 737 Captains joining Ryanair from other airlines) the situation is not any better; Ryanair are currently only offering bases in Poland - even though they are clearly desperate for pilots in most bases.

And as an addendum to my earlier post, Ryanair Crew Control (i.e. roster management) have suffered from a dramatic haemorrhage of staff recently, which certainly won't help with the current situation. Did they see this coming?

stuart_f

Isn't this part of the problem?

"Beware of making the important measurable at the expense of making the measurable important"

Punctuality is only one possible stat you could measure and is it really so important you risk cancelling hundreds of flights to artificially raise it?

More likely Ryanair have serious aircrew retention problems and are using punctuality as an excuse.