Glad to see that Aer Arann are expanding some internal flights, since you have to transfer at Portarlington for Cork from Galway some competition to the rail and in particular the roads is more than welcome!
The Aer Arran Manchester to Nantes was about five hours late Sunday 30th July,( arriving Nantes 0215 Monday !). What caused this huge delay on such a short flight? The Aer Arran web-site boasts how punctual they are. If there was a tech issue, surely there was scope to draft in a replacement ship?
The Aer Arran Manchester to Nantes was about five hours late Sunday 30th July,( arriving Nantes 0215 Monday !). What caused this huge delay on such a short flight? The Aer Arran web-site boasts how punctual they are. If there was a tech issue, surely there was scope to draft in a replacement ship?
I think it's reasonable to assume that this was a knock-on delay from earlier, i.e. the aircraft was not holding aloft for five hours as your reference to "such a short flight" might suggest.
I don't know yesterday's exact circumstances, but here are a couple of general factors:
It's quite easy for a short initial delay to snowball into a longer one. The engineers think it'll take 30 minutes to fix the tech problem - it ends up taking an hour. Then you miss your departure slot so have to wait another 30 minutes. You realise that your crew is going to be out of hours when they return and can't operate their next scheduled rotation, so you have to call in a standby crew - assuming that Sod's Law hasn't dictated that your standby crew(s) aren't already out.
if you know in advance that you're going to have a five-hour delay, you can plan for that (calling out Titan or Flightline or someone with a replacement aircraft), but "rolling delays" are the worst - for passengers and for ops.
an airline of Aer Arann's size may have some standby capacity, but as Sunday evening is a peak time for flying, there's a fair chance that all the available aircraft are already scheduled at that time so it becomes necessary to find a chartered-in alternative.
it's been a while since I was involved in this kind of thing, but at a guess if you were to call up e.g. Titan and say "I need a MAN-NTE-MAN rotation, as soon as possible" on a July Sunday evening," they'd have an RJ100 aircraft ready to launch from MAN within a couple of hours and would charge you - oh, I don't know, not far off £10k? - for the privilege. So if you're the Ops controller and you're already an hour into the delay (i.e. the engineers have just told you it'll take an hour to fix the aircraft rather than 30 minutes), you now have a choice: call out the spare aircraft (Titan etc), burn off the airline's entire profit for the day by doing so, and delay everyone by another two hours, or hope that you can recover the programme with the existing fleet. That's not a straightforward call.
You comment that the Aer Arann (it's one r and two ns, incidentally) website "boasts how punctual they are" as if this is incompatible with having any delays. Surely it's about finding a balance? They could achieve near-100% punctuality if they had a spare aircraft at every airport they serve, ready to go at a moment's notice. And they'd be bankrupt within weeks.
Being a passenger stuck in a five-hour delay is pretty horrific, especially if staff aren't doing a good job of communicating what's happening (topical example: a friend flew in from Barcelona rather late on Saturday night/Sunday morning after appalling delays there), and there's no way to defend a lack of communication and support from staff once a delay happens. However, trying to make money in a price-sensitive regional airline environment means making tough decisions like: "having a standby aircraft at peak hours will cost us £x million in annual costs but it means that our average delay of our delayed flights will go down from (e.g.) 35 minutes to 25 minutes - but in order to compete on price, we need to keep our costs down, so we can't afford a standby aircraft."
I have no link to Aer Arann and don't know what went on last night. For all I know, they could have known from the start that there would be a five-hour delay, but cared too little to bother doing anything proactive about it. But somehow I suspect that the situation was rather less black-and-white.
The aircraft used was operating a "W" pattern from Cork. Passengers were told it would operate 2 hours late, when in fact the aircraft was still parked at Cork yet to reach Nantes then Manchester.
A five hour delay on a short route does seem unusual but if there is no replacement ship available then that's it. Yes, you sit around for five hours and get there at 2am but the alternative is the flight is cancelled and you have to be rebooked on another flight or deal with it yourself and apply for the refund etc.
To the best of my knowledge, it's something of a policy in Aer Arann that they will always try to get there the passenger there, eventually, on the flight that they booked. It seems like a bit silly at times, but aparrently the passengers appreciate the effort. Another example - take a Dublin-Cork flight. If Cork is fogged in, many airlines would simply cancel the flight and bus or train the passengers down. Aer Arann will get their plane in the air, fly it to Cork, go back to Dublin or divert to Kerry or Waterford and then arrange to get the passengers to Cork from there.
The aircraft used was operating a "W" pattern from Cork. Passengers were told it would operate 2 hours late, when in fact the aircraft was still parked at Cork yet to reach Nantes then Manchester.
Should the passengers have been told what was going on? Yes, absolutely - I agree with your wagging finger. As noted above, no excuse for keeping pax in the dark. As they say, though, "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
Should the airline have subbed in another aircraft? Not sure that would have been the right decision. I think if it had been my call I'd have operated 5 hours late but tried to ensure that the pax were given a choice of waiting for the delayed flight (with correct information) or getting a refund. (Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with what EU delayed-boarding compensation would prescribe in this case, if anything.)
Thats not what been suggested. You have to realise that there are gaps in schedules where aircraft are perhaps at base between flights and can be redeployed on standby.
Its a pity the RE service to SNN from DUB doesnt depart earlier! If it had an am departure from Dublin, the likes of DL, US and CO could put pax from Dublin onto the flight, and catch a seat from SNN!
Almost every airline with more than ten aircraft actually does have a replacement aircraft sitting around the place. In the case of Arann, they have 14 aircraft so it would be very hard to see the logic in flying all 14 without having one in reserve - all it would take is one minor snag and the whole schedule goes pop. If you look at their first flight each day, they have four starting from Galway, three in Cork, one in Luton, two on the Isle Of Man (one of which is operating for euromanx), and one each in Kerry, Knock and Donegal - that makes 13, so number 14 must be a spare.
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 07:37.
Still don't know the reason for the delay, but the flight didn't leave MAN until about 2315, which would make it back into Cork probably about 4am ish. I'd of thought the CRK-Nantes would be better returning direct to Cork & another aircraft drafted to ops the MAN-Nantes return. I'm fairly certain by 2315 REA didn't have all the other 13/14 ATRs in the air.
The over-riding let down was being told at check in the flight would operate two hours late, when the aircraft was in fact still parked at Cork, which would = a 5 hour delay minimum.
Obviously OPS gave it their best shot but whatever plan they had, just didn't work on the day in question.
Almost every airline with more than ten aircraft actually does have a replacement aircraft sitting around the place. In the case of Arann, they have 14 aircraft so it would be very hard to see the logic in flying all 14 without having one in reserve - all it would take is one minor snag and the whole schedule goes pop. If you look at their first flight each day, they have four starting from Galway, three in Cork, one in Luton, two on the Isle Of Man (one of which is operating for euromanx), and one each in Kerry, Knock and Donegal - that makes 13, so number 14 must be a spare.
Think the 14th aircraft is AerArann flying on behalf of Thomson Fly. Defo seen in Jersey regular. Don't know what exact routes it does
Just to clear things up a bit..
Regarding the flt on 30th, it appears it was not just one tech fault but a combination of several. As for spare capacity there was none. The extra aircraft is not leased to TOM however it does operate their JER flts,only 2 sectors each day. There is an a/c on contract but this is to EMX on their DUB/LPL routes. This kind of delay that was experienced is not normal for REA and the ops cons do have the ability to spend money and bring in subcharters but it is always as a last result and approval has to come from the top, and as I said it was a snowball effect compounded by more tech probs which is why perhaps the pax were told 2hrs as this was the original delay.
You dont honestly think that Aer Arann have replacement aircraft sitting around the place do you?
Myself speaking I should agree with Dash-7 lover Most airlines wouldn't and shouldn't have a/c sitting around doing nothing that's alot of money in a year going down the drain, but !!! You wouldn't think Aer Lingus have one sitting on the ground but yes they do after experiancing a lenthy delay at Paris-CDG lately when a member of ground crew drove away with a pipe still attached to the A320, Air France mechanics and the Aer Lingus crew tried to fix it but after a fair bit of diologue the Air France mechanics and crew decided the a/c was not fit to fly so straight away a standby crew hoped in an A320 in EIDW and flew to CDG. So I should think that Aer Arann may have the same like Aer Lingus like SamS said and there for you're both right. Like you displayed above.
in this kind of thing, but at a guess if you were to call up e.g. Titan and say "I need a MAN-NTE-MAN rotation, as soon as possible" on a July Sunday evening," they'd have an RJ100 aircraft ready to launch from MAN within a couple of hours and would charge you - oh, I don't know, not far off £10k? - for the privilege. So if you're the Ops controller and you're already an hour into the delay (i.e. the engineers have just told you it'll take an hour to fix the aircraft rather than 30 minutes), you now have a choice: call out the spare aircraft (Titan etc), burn off the airline's entire profit for the day by doing so, and delay everyone by another two hours, or hope that you can recover the programme with the existing fleet. That's not a straightforward call.
But somehow I suspect that the situation was rather less black-and-white.
Like you displayed above.
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