Tx ,
Your spot on but another thing worth a mention is the fact that overtime is no longer laid on exclusively for those critical jobs and/or high man hour jobs that could not be contained within the allotted downtime.
Many of the major inputs in the hangars now have o/t planned into the check ( although when asked its not the official line )so it has almost become the norm & there are some engineers who appear to be living in the hangar.
At present there is also a contingency of guys from the Concorde hangar who have helped to top up the numbers but if and when the Rocket does fly again what happens when they go back? Interestingly I did hear that when the Concorde operation was stopped several months ago & the offer of spare labour was announced there was a stampede from the management of other areas/fleets to see who could get them first.
There are also some guys on temporary secondment from FSU and ironically because they're so short staffed guys from majors hangars are then asked to help them out on ad-hoc basis during normal shift & on o/t.
'Robbing Peter to pay Paul' springs to mind!
It would appear that most if not all areas are short of labour & the use of o/t is becoming a neccessity which now only just fills over the cracks.