Originally Posted by
wanna
With the best will in the world at the moment due to staff shortages all over the U.K maintaining an on time schedule is somewhat of a miracle. Whilst they have 'their own' handling at BHX elsewhere they're relying on Swissport who have struggled to ramp up staff levels to meet demand. No doubt the crews and management of flybe are trying their best to keep things on time, but when you're relying on a 3rd party handling agent who is struggling its never going to be ideal.... combine that with 8 sectors and well delays happen.
That last point seems very valid, and given their past experience with (alleged) reliability issues on the Dash 8 not having a 4th machine for back up when you're push the other three aircraft so hard is perhaps surprising. But then again the new business is undoubtedly unwilling to repeat mistakes made by the former Flybe and keeping a much tighter lid on cost, and potentially having an aircraft sitting idly around means cost, unless they had an agreement to pay by the flying hour. I wonder when airframe No.4 is likely to appear.
From the post above the irony of the self handling at BHX would appear to be that this morning the BHX aircraft was the one badly delayed. who knows the cause; could have been crew sickness, missing passenger, security. I'm sure an insider knows, but if I were them I wouldn't be piping up here!