Cirrus01 said.........BA have suffered an increase in maintenance related incidents, including two at the highest (cat. A ) level in the last two months........ this is with the old systems still in place !
(How do you get those nice litle blue boxes for quotes.....RTFM I suppose)
I got handbagged on another thread for suggesting that BA might not be perfect...I had those two cases, among others, in mind....
Seriously, BA's probems are BAs. The industry's problem is that there is too little money coming in from the end users, through the low-fare revolution. Revenues per flight hour are simply insufficient to pay for proper maintenance and build reserves for future maintenance.
So what gives way...
Flight crew are in demand...can't save much without losing them to a competitor.
Aircraft cost the same to buy or hire no matter who you are, unless you are huige enough to get discounts.
Running costs ditto, varied only by skilled management eg forward purchase of fuel, clever bargaining with airports and handlers etc
Cabin crew; with respect to the boys and girls, they couldn't get much cheaper anyway
Cabin Service ..all gone anyway
Parts and component overhauls are and will be expensive.
Ah, here we are; Maintenance Labour. let's save on that, by paying them so little they'll go somewhere else (Rail is popular) and we can then get in cheap foreigners and/or send the aircraft overseas to the cheap foreigners. Ticket to Estonia from Prestwick, anyone?
So the guy that signs off a B757, say, as airworthy in all respects could get far more pay, in many or most cases, by servicing Beamers for yuppies.
(Incidentally I am well aware that the foreigners are well-qualified in many cases, bioth here and at home. But that's not the point. They'll finish up on the railways too, sooner or later)
That's the real problem. Aircraft engineering does not attract the right young people; except perhaps on funded "Foundation Degree" courses for the wrong reasons. They don't stay, often, after getting the "degree".
Apprenticeships are dead, with a few praiseworthy exceptions such as Marshals, because Tone does not understand what they are and do, and the publicly-funded sycophants in SEMTA don't want to rock the funding gravy train; they might fall off it.
The CAA presides over all this saying they can't interfere. As an EASA agency perhaps, but as the body which is still charged with ensuring the economic stability and future of UK Ltd aerospace industry they are ineffective, to put it mildly. Did they have anything to say about Airbus? I didn't hear it. Do we believe the stuff about how the jobs will stay in the UK for ever if we don't have a stake in Airbus? Not if we're off the medication, we don't.
Does the CAA have anything to say about funding or nature of aircraft engineer training? 'Not our business, old boy, that's another department. We just licence them, so we use all our energy on making sure we set much more difficult standards than those awful French people, Spaniards, Greeks and so on. You know, over there. No, of course we can't stop them working here on their EASA licences, don't be silly; why would we ever want to do that?'
Sorry, I'm ranting again..................................!
An RAF Tornado Pilot was taken on in Aviation House, to look after JAR Ops 1 Compliance Issues, after a combat injury in Iraq removed his t*******s, c/w container and drainpipe.
Boss, sorry, Team Leader, on the pilots' first day; "Now, listen up, this is important. We work from 8.30 - 10.00, then it's a cup of tea, and from 10.30 until lunch in the subsidised canteen at 12.30, bit of a kip, then restart at 2.00 for a jolly hard slog until 4.30 when we all go home exhausted. Working outside those times achieves nothing careerwise and upsets the cleaners, so please don't do it. And you, dear boy, only need to start at 10.30."
"Why's that, then?"
"Well, you see, for the first session we just stand around and scratch, and without wishing to be rude, m'dear fellow, you've got nothing to scratch, have you?"