lucycan

New one for me this morning. I'm on DL 484 today SAN to JFK. Flight arrived on time last night. This morning I got a notice that it was delayed 3 hours. I assumed mechanical. Got to the airport and asked and they said one of the crew members (a FA) needed rest so the flight is delayed. Does that sound odd? One crew member? Any compensation thoughts? Flight has not even left yet so not sure how late it will actually be. They did send us $15 meal vouchers.

JAXPax

Doesn't sound odd at all it would be one crew member. And nothing means the same crew from the inbound last night is operating the return today. Frequently if a crew has a trip that involves multiple aircraft types, they may be joined by one or two other members for a single segment if aircraft calls for it. Or the staffing for the segment was rebuilt after the originally scheduled crew got disrupted somewhere along their way.

ND76

DL is probably staffing the flight with the minimum number of FAs they can get away with, so that if one FA can't fly and there isn't a substitute available, the plane can't fly with pax.

I ran into a similar delay at DTW on Saturday morning 6/10; the crew's "time out" didn't end until 45 minutes after scheduled departure. Sadly this happens every so often.

jrl767

this has pretty much always been the case on pretty much every airline; operators have little to no interest in paying any more cabin crew than they have to, and they've generally been very willing to take the occasional delay to staff the flight rather than cancel if one of the FAs calls in sick or is on an inbound flight that's experienced serious IROPS

these are also longstanding operational paradigms

indufan

There is no "probably" about it. Just like they (and other airlines) have always done.

PES_B1

This is lesser of an issue on widebody though, as those large premium cabins are often staffed at 1 to 7-10 as opposed to 1 to 50.

ND76

That's actually not true. When I started flying Delta, the 727s between DCA and ATL always had 5 FAs, when the minimum required was 3 (which is what Eastern did). It seemed like the L1011's had at least 10 FAs, when something like 7 or 8 was the FAA minimum.

Cledaybuck

Maybe "what they have always done" is an exaggeration, but when were are talking 727's, L1011's, and Eastern Airlines, we are talking about a long time ago.

formeraa

Basically, the flying public wanting cheap fares means minimum FA staffing. This is nothing new -- has been happening since the 90's.

paul21

It's not unusual. What probably happened is a re-route due to t-storms in ATL causing a minimum rest violation for at least one crew member. Routing can be complicated to optimize profits but not necessarily robust against delays. My guess is that they would tie the delay to an "act of god" and only give some small token due to a complaint.

HDQDD

And the reality is, even if they did have more crew members per flight...all things being equal, that would just mean more crew members timing out. So you end up with the same problem on a larger scale. If they really wanted to reduce crew delays, they'd expand the number of *reserve* crews/locations. However, at the end of the day, there are limits for that as well. For DL to do that right now, it would probably mean a reduction in scheduled flying which ain't bloody likely.

JAXPax

From my past days in the airlines, I would agree with your logic. You just add an additional element of complexity or opportunity for failure (addt crew) to each flight and downline impacts. A good finger in the wind number is that for every new aircraft, you need roughly 3 crews. So take Delta's fleet multiplied by 3, and add some extra for reserve/non-productive/etc. That's a pretty good ask on top of what they need to maintain the current schedule, as you said. Plus on reserves, you have to pay them if you use them or not. So having a ton of reserves may protect on time/completion but they're getting 70-75 hours a month even if they just sit idle so it's expensive insurance. Plus, Delta being an exception, most union contracts limit the amount of reserve lines to a percentage of available lines, since being on reserve is typically a lesser quality of life (unless you're like my college roommate who is a Captain for a major who now owns a golf course in Florida and with his seniority purposely bids reserve and sometimes, since he is last to be called, barely flies enough to stay current while collecting a full paycheck). Locations for reserves can be contentious... sometimes airlines will place them in key locations that are not bases on a TDY basis during holiday periods but at that point it comes with providing them food/lodging/transportation to/from base.

Jeff767

Most major airlines are staffed at 7 to 8 crews for each donestic airframe. International airframes are generally 10 plus crews per airframe. As to the OP’s original post there are a variety of reasons 9ne flight attendant could time out but not the entire crew. The flight attendant in question could have been an airport standby with an earlier duty time start. They could have been rerouted off a different trip due to a sick or no show flight attendant ect…