Aviance awarded Air France contract @ MAN....

[Tony_EM]

Sometimes, the system you learn first is the one that makes most sense, usually because of your familiarity with it.

Redcap, so you don't embarass yourself by using that debating technique against me; I have over 5 years ops experience at LHR with over 15 different airlines, 4 different wgt/bal systems and am a qualified SQ wgt/bal trainer. I also have 300hrs on a US PPL and studied AeroEng til it hurt, which gave me a solid background to learn so much about ops.

My brother was wgt/bal trained by KLM and also had 3 years experience before moving on to air traffic control and my father worked 17+ years at LHR, also for KLM.

We spent many hours discussing the various merits of dedicated despatching and CLP.

There are so many different types of CLP where the respective despatcher and gate controller have varying tasks and responsibilities, so stating that CLP is better and cheaper (or not) is a sweeping statement that depends entirely on which particular manifestation of CLP you are talking about and exactly who it saves money for over what period of time.

If you are saying that CLP, as it was originally concieved, works well, then I can't completely disagree, as long as you are talking about well trained office and gate staff that know eachothers' jobs well, because they swap regulary, and that have been well trained while retaining well defined responsibilities and authority.
If you are referring to the perverted mutation of CLP that exists in many ops depts these days, then it is you that has a lot to learn.

I had a good reputation for very short turnarounds. Why? Because I got to know the people in every company/department I worked with at a personal level. Rather than shove demands and regulations down a phone line, I could make effective decisions outside of the box in time to make a difference with the authority to carry it through. If I had to phone someone up who really did not know the deal at the gate in that particular instance and I had to waste 10 minutes describing the problem only to be given a solution that was inneffective and too late, I would not have been able to prevent as many delays as I did.
I also knew the problems of each dept as well as the merits and shortfalls of the particular staff from the various companies/depts, which made it very easy to identify where the potential problem/delay would be coming from and I was therefore able to preempt it with planning or by direct resources/effort where it was needed. I was also known for getting my hands dirty and loading bags/cargo, helping to clean planes, load catering and help boarding. Basically, whatever was threatening to delay my flight.

Now, there is no reason that CLP type ops should not be able to achieve the same, except for the fact that the drive to cut costs has perverted the circumstances creating more of a barrier for efficient planning and utilisation of resources than fascilitating short turnarounds.

It always seemed to me that if an airline wanted to cut costs, they should improve efficiency by concentrating on the ability to coordinate resources and efforts effectively and direct improvements where they will best support those goals. So saving a few pennies by having a crappy CLP system while losing ponds through the increased delays and inefficient use of resources just never made sense to me. It also confirmed that the people making such decisions where after personal praise and gain rather than looking at the operation/company as a whole.

I spent 6 months of my own time and effort studying the problem. The procedures and systems I developed where designed to increase operational efficiency and effectiveness without the need to employ more staff in the long term or buy expensive equipment. It relied on extensive training which was one-off and could then be imparted through the way that key departments would be restructured, mainly load control. The plan was also designed to prevent the appalling amount of errors that seemed to be increasing exponentially.

What happened was that the management in their infinite ignorance took elements of the plan, applied them in an abstractly stupid way, called it their own genius and proceded to blame the workforce when it didn't work.

I really do hope that you work with a CLP system that works well, but don't for a second delude yourself that every CLP system works that way. The vast majority of those that I researched were clearly less effective while a few were incompetently run to the point of being a threat to safety.

Saving a few quid in one department's budget while making other departments less efficient and the operation more costly and less safe is something only accountants and wannabe managers can like.

Good points Nibor.

We had a traffic coordinator that would sit in the despatch officemanning phones and generally supervising the staff.

There were times when I had tight turnarounds and was stuck in some hold stacking stuff to get the plane out on time,where I would radion the TC and ask him to enter last minute changes in the system and send a loadsheet to my gate. It was a useful way to cut a few more minutes off a delay.

This stopped when BMHS and Aviance saw fit to put people in this TC position that knew nothing about the airline, system or aircraft I was using. It may have saved the handling agent a few pennies in training etc, but cost the airlines so much more. An airline would never dream of doing such a stupid thing, but I think I have yet to see the depths of stupidity to which a handling company will go, and get away with.