Ladies and Gentlemen
This debate has been rumbling for years, personally i believe there is a very strong case/argument for the licencing of Airline Ops staff. I say that because i work within the discipline and have first hand knowledge of the benefits an experienced and technically qualified dispatcher can provide for an Airline. Any good Ops director / Flight Ops manager has / will realise that such people are entrusted, on occasion, with complex decisions which can and do either save or cost a lot of money notwithstanding the safety issues. Unfortunately, very few people in an average airline realise the input an ops officer/dispatcher can have and so we are relegated to similer status as the crew bus drivers (no insult intented)
On the subject of safety, Ask yourself how many times have you had to correct or amend flight plans/load plans for crew??
How many times have you had to explain meteorological info to crew??
How many times have performed a flight crew briefing and had to maybe clarify reqd minima at an air field which they had got wrong because they had not read notams correctly??
How many times has an aircraft diverted to an airfield without checking with ops and realising its closed on arrival overhead??
There are many more......
No doubt however the bean counters will win as long as those involved in Ops do not band together as one official,effective body (correct me if im wrong but EUFALDA does not appear to do much)and lobby hard with weight of numbers.
Any comments???