Sam S,
Don't think aircraft ''14'' is a spare. Having worked in operations for the last 17 years for one regional outfit or another I can tell you that a 'spare' aircraft is a luxury regardless of the size of the airline. A plane on the ground loses money! If you outsource your maintenance then the 'spare' is rotated through the fleet and normally sat in some remote/distant hangar. Not sure how RE's maintenence is set up but I imagine they would do the small stuff in-house and the heavy checks done by someone else - correct me if im wrong, but that's is the cheapest option for the bean counters.
Sometimes the quick answer would be to call Titan because as an ops controller the 'political' and 'commercial' benefits (happy pax) may outway the costs but Titan too have their own constraints. Many a time the 146 has to be home in STN by 2100z due to mail flight contracts. I remember a while ago having an argument with the GM in accounts because he wanted me to list all the passengers bookings and calculate what each one paid for their tickets before I leased in - but after reminding him that he missed the point and that hotac would be considerably more expensive - he gave in!!!! The controller at RE may have a brief not to lease because of costs.?
GW76 -Gaps in schedules???? again a luxury! Most of the props in my fleet are 8-10 sector days with minimum turnarounds - thanks to the bright sparks in commercial. Start the day late and end the day late is normally the routine! Throw crew hour restraints ontop and some other restriction about protecting this flight or that for commercial reasons and you have your hands tied.
Cyrano - yes passengers should be told but then the information you get as a controller isn't always correct - rolling delays are the worst. Engineering say the aircraft will be fit in an hour but then 3 hours later it's still in the hangar. Sometimes it's best to tell the handling agent nothing at all until you have a firm or relaible estimate. That can do more harm than good. Passengers now get compensated for anything over 2 hours with an initial £5 voucher. Once people know they're late they're normally pretty good after that. What upsets them is inaccurate info.
Im impressed that at least RE have the resources to be able to operate at that time of the morning without crew hour or airfield restrictions. Most of us haven't.
As a controller - there is some satisfaction that when you go home you know that everybody travelling with your airline that day got from A to B allbeit late. Better late than never.
Last edited by Dash-7 lover; 6th August 2006 at 05:37.