Hello ricky.
May I tackle some of your points please.
Yes I accept that the CAA slapped down IFS training, and quite right too.
The company had the csd's talking for 12 minutes about business issues and how the service will be done and other secondary crap.
Top and bottom don't dream that IFS training wish for us to hold our own licences, why would they? it is commited cabin crew that are sick of the shortcommings that IFS safety demonstrate that do.
The breifing is IMHO the place to consider recent SEP changes and refresh the whole teams knowledge of That perticular A/C type, what it has to do with club meals, I never understood and am glad to see the end of that.
The reason I would like to see individual licences is that each crew member would be more responsible for their role, after all it is not every flight by far, but sometimes crew do not properly check their equipment, on one flight a crew member pressed the evac button not the horn silence button, cabins are not correctly secured.
These are mistakes that are made because of carelessness, if the crew each had a licence then these things could be recorded and if someone does not give a Fig or consistantly scrapes by or fails annual check then it can be dealt with.
I hear a lot of waffle on here, by my best mate toni for one, that I can be replaced in five days, well that may be so, but not by somebody who is as committed and that has the experience levels that I do.
I certainly, over my carreer, have never met a pilot that does not wish to have only alert, experienced, inteligent well organised and led cabin crew dealing with the day to day behind the locked door, let alone when it all goes horribly wrong.
Individual licencing would be a solid step in the right direction.
20,000 aplications for 300 places oh please did you think this statement up before you got out of bed
In the headdy succesful days just after privatisation with unemployment running at over 10% BA cabin crew would beat about a seventy people to each place are you saying that is still the case HA HA come on.
I know for a fact that we are really struggleing to recruit suitable aplicants, this is generally well known if you wish I will find out the exact figures.
Glad to see that you have nothing to say about the huge amount leaving however, or perhaps that is a figment of my imagination too.
Your quote "But they also work six sector days. "
But how many flying hours and is it safe, the top and bottom is that Ryan earn about 25K I as I am sure you don't either have any Idea what the total flying hours are for their cabin crew.
I have recently had a huge, and very enjoyable debate about the missconception that BA cabin crew are underworked I must say that I am at what is generally considered to be the easiest base work wise for BA cabin crew, yet it suprised all of the piots that last year I did 991 FLYING HOURS, this is not that big a deal as I expext to get well above the thousand this year.
If any carrier is doing considerably more than this it must be a safety issue after all I am sure there are pilots doing less than half my hours and the guys that do over 800 are, rightly, considered to work perhaps too hard, and lets not forget that I am at what is considered London's easiest fleet.
Top and botom sectors are not everything, personally I would like to change to the same system as the pilots, I just wonder if the extra flexibility can outweigh the extra Hours I am doing to the company.
I think as regards to your benchmarking statement you will find that Air France do work out about the same as us, yet they all work part time, lufthansa well we will have to look at that one.
After all on one of the other forums I frequent we have people who partners work for lufthansa and they feel that it would be slightly less for the juniors loads more for the Pursers but no CSD so we couldn't compare like with like there.
Again they efectively work part time comparitively.
Lets be honest about this ol' benchmark thing, There have been many quarters, flight crew included, that feel it is a great tool to beat cabin crew with, well as each year goes by cabin crew get cheaper as the old contracts leave or retire, look in the mirror and ask if that is true of your department?
If not perhaps its only a matter of time till this whole arguement comes back and like a junk yard dog bites the hand that once petted it.
Ahh Good ol Toni,
Hello again, I would like to add to my collegue THS.
As is usual with you waterside dwellers you talk about Box payments yet have no idea what exactly they are and who gets them.
The majority of cabin crew never see them as they are a long range payment, and lets be honest how many times do you guys stay working for over 25hrs.
I say 25 as it is generally accepted that working one hour at altitude is equivalent to 2 on the ground.
I will explain so you can correct your collegues, in latte land, box payments are earned, only really by LHR WW crew they are paid for planned duties in excess of 12.30 at night or 13hrs in the day.
Silly, is it not that all your comments are aimed at a fraction of the crew community still I suppose if the management don't understand the basics in cabin crew it goes to show that it is no shock you feel we are all overpaid and underworked.
To be candid toni you asked "Do you actually know any positions that are surplus to requirements? "
Yes yours and all the suits like you, as you have no idea what you are talking about as regards the day to day running of this airline.
The biggest mistake was moving all the managers away from the coalface as they have lost sight of what we actually do.
Face it toni I take 5 days to train a replacement you don't need replacing we can do without you and yours, after all you are doing no work as you are probably on your laptop working from home doing this forum