Waterhorse

Yep, can't use the lounge in uniform, and we don't get silver cards.

binman

Tell that to the captain who was in galleries north on the 1st June in full uniform at 17:30! Entered directly in front of me.

Perhaps his ability to gain access is simply another symptom of the lack of interest anyone currently has at BA. Whatever the reason he was there in inform and it’s not the first time I’ve seen crew in the lounges.

corporate-wage-slave

Are you sure it was a BA captain? Virgin captains - and several other airlines - regularly use the T5 lounges.

Waterhorse

We also have several Captains who are both Gold and Silver card holders but they have earned that not been given it by BA, who largely hate their pilots and flightops in general

Techonista

Anecdotally, at least in the part of the business I work in, I feel that a lot of band 2 and higher staff have Silver or Gold cards through their own self funded travel! (She says as band 2 with a silver card)

As for lounge access otherwise it’s club lounge for duty travel with F entitlement so again basically band 2/SFO and higher.

Confus

Directors are given Gold cards, but there’s only a handful of them. Band 1 managers used to be given Silver cards, but it’s been a long time since I’ve heard whether that’s still the case and suspect it probably isn’t. BA uses ‘customer feedback’ as the excuse for not letting staff into lounges (other than the few exceptions mentioned above), i.e. ‘customers complain they’re too busy as it is so let’s not make it worse’.

TTmex

Quick question that is technical and I forgot to ask in April. Was on BA242 from MEX to LHR on Apr 2nd. All flights were heading out to the south west which is not the norm (was watching on App and from admirals club window). Most times flights go out on 5R and 5L, but the evening we flew 23L and R were being used. However, we got delayed 40 mins as the captain said due to "performance issues" we'd have to wait until the departure runway was changed. Apparently was something related to Mexico City. After 40 mins of waiting we departed on 5R which is the normal way out based on my last 10 BA flights here. 95 percent of my other flights use 5 not 23. Any ideas what the "performance issues" were?

13901

MEX is a hot & high airport, as you know, and that means that gaining sufficient lift is harder. From experience at that airport flying on standby it’s always a question of captain’s discretion to onload the non-revs, and I also remember being told that they need to use the longest runway there is at MEX.

Waterhorse

Its not just the length of the runway that matters, there are a myriad of issues to be considered in a takeoff calculation. These include air temp, wind strength and direction, altitude, air pressure, slope, tyre energy limits, obstacles in the climb out, engine power limitations, runway surface condition, etc etc

For each runway there is usually a limiting factor. sometimes it is runway length, sometimes a close in obstacle etc. There are certain airfield and runway combinations where it is better to take a 10 tailwind rather than take off towards a close in obstacle, ACE can be one of those if you cannot accept the very early Emergency Turn Procedure.

MEX is hot and high and the aircraft are going a long way so they are heavy and can be close to max permissible weight for the conditions. It can be that the weight is such that a particular runway will be out of limits for departure but the reciprocal runway is okay, even given a small tailwind.

The calculations are complex, and these days done by computer, even in the days of tables, if a temporary obstacle or only a reduced runway length was available, it could take the crew an hour just to do the calculations from the raw perf graphs.

TTmex

Awesome..thanks for all the responses. Was just curious as we were the only aircraft heading out that way. Very interesting about the standby decision. I remember now two staff members making it on last minute and talking to the CSD and being relieved to get on as it had been unsure until mins before we went.

Much appreciated

Sigwx

Waterhorse sums it up perfectly. Specifically to MEX on the 787 we have additional issues due to the emergency turn procedures we need to fly if we have a failure, this is due to the terrain. On top of this we are severely limited with regards to wind on 23 departures and so it may well have been out of limits and thus awaiting a change of runway. Plus, the runway bearing strength is also a limiting factor in MEX. It is basically all stacked against you hence last minute decisions on whether or not we can accept standbys etc. we only know once we have a loadsheet and can run a performance calculation to get the most up to date figure.

Some people would be really surprised by just how much a difference one degree of temperature, a few knots of wind or a change of a millibar or two in air pressure can have on the limiting weight we can lift at the more constrained airfields.

TTmex

Wow, that's incredible. So very interesting indeed. Appreciate the great insight

Ladyfliestheredwhiteandblues

Following on from the take off calculation discussion. Many of us will have read this morning about the off loading of 30 allegedly well behaved passengers from an AC Montreal to LHR flight.
The armchair aviation experts are saying it’s because the flight was overweight. Without second guessing the actual reason for this if it were weight related, what are the normal resolutions? Surely something comes out of the hold rather than the PR disaster of off loading innocent passengers?
Of course there is likely more to this incident than meets the eye so let’s stick to hypotheticals.
If any of the pilot community would be able to comment I’d be most interested. Thanks.

13901

Is it appropriate to say that BA also uses a rather more conservative/safer 'envelope' (i.e. fatter margins) to describe the art of the possible of what an aircraft can do in certain places/routes/conditions compared to what the OEM allows?

Back in the day I'd heard about a possible service to BOG, but then I was told by friends in network development that Flight Ops' calculations showed that there were no ways for BA to operate a direct non-stop flight with any of the aircrafts in inventory without punitive load restrictions. Ironically Avianca has since then restarted its BOG-LHR flight and in the one occasion I took that flight they were offering to be rerouted due to overbooking...

BOH

What was the aircraft type - was it an A330, 787 or 77W? That would be quite unusual because the distance of LHR to YUL is well within the range of any of these types and is (relatively speaking) a short hop compared to other routes they are used on.