CHC Aberdeen Roster
There are (at present) two patterns within the roster system, 5 on, 2 off, 5 on, 9 off, 5 on, 2off. 6 on 8 off, which is a six week cycle in total, this perticular pattern is called the Monday /friday system as you always start the cycle (youv'e guessed it ) on Monday!!!
The second is called the seven/severn pattern (any takers for the pattern!!!) and those pilots on this roster are those that will work every other weekend and the ratio of pilots on either pattern is decide by the company to cover the weekend work schedual.
Both patterns are fully inclusive of leave and as previously stated if you want to take what would normally be a work day off then you would need to swap a day with another pilot (subject to ops approval), However that said we have developed the roster with a couple of mutual benifits in mind and these are as follows, the first and formost is that of predictability and plannability.
For the pilots
Predictability.
This is achieved by the publishing of a roster pattern for each pilot showing his/her days on duty for the next FOUR years (FOUR years!!! previously we were only given the next months roster 28 days in advance and then this changed many, many times.)
Plannability.
This is achieved by the publication every Thursday the next four weeks roster with the first week showing the individual pilot schedual for the week (starting monday), and weeks two, three and four showing those days that he/she is on duty and any training/CRM/other course's that are comming up.
For the company.
Flexibility through the year.
This is a major step forwards for the company and we have gone to great lenghts to build in a method to allow the company cover shortages or extra short term work by having tha ability to offer pilots extra days work (subject to the FTL scheme) and rather than incur an immediate overtime payment the company are able to Bank the day worked in the pilots name and offer it back to them at some later mutually agreed date when capacity allows, this should reduce the companies overtime bill.
Ther are other benifits like training planning and recruitment planning that have been no existant under the old system, that would increase efficiency and cost savings yet to be realised.
The major problem that we face with the introduction of this roster is not one of our making, and that is we are short of around fifteen pilots in Aberdeen alone and this is going to be a very hard winter for all those pilots working to FTL limits.
However we will not revert to the chaos system of before of that I can assure you.
MaxNG
