Wacky,
I'm very suprised that the fleet manager knows nothing about oxygen requirements and drift down for pax flying - after all he started as an F/O on the dash for Brymon (a part of Bacon), so would he not have been taught it there and then have been able to bring the benefit of his vast experience to flybe, as you have?
In your huge experience of flying over the alps in whatever it is that you fly for them how often have you looked at a topographical chart of the mountains - if you had studied it to see what was underneath you, you would be aware that you only have to be 20 miles past Mont Blanc on track to be able to descend to FL140, which is the JAR requirement for aircraft operating without drop down oxygen (and before you start I am well aware of the increments for wind speed over mountainous terrain). The drift down covers approximately 60 miles if I remember rightly, and if you depart the UK at max weight the dash will stabilise at approx 18000ft by the time it gets to the Alps. Drift down therefore was never a real problem, it was the oxygen requirements which were limiting.
It would appear that this whole discussion you have started is some attempt to prove that Bacon crews are more experienced than flybe crews, if that is the case then as has been said before you spout rubbish. When I left flybe I joined my current emloyer at the same time as an ex Bacon captain who had less total hours than I did and less time on the type he had been flying than I had on the dash 8. That didn't mean that either of us was any better than the other (we subsequently got commands after the same amount of time having jumped through the same hoops), but proves the point that you will find some Bacon pilots have more experience than some flybe pilots, and some flybe pilots have more experience than some Bacon pilots. Live with it.
As to the drift down and briefing for operation over high terrain which included all the things which have been mentioned in these last few posts they were certainly in the ops manuals when I looked last - although that was 12 months ago before I left. If they are no longer there then that is, as I said, down to either the fleet manager or ops director, neither of whom were home grown by flybe.
4468 - MOL may not know that you don't need oxygen for the pax, but his crews probably do. The 737 is allowed to despatch with the drop down oxygen inoperative provided that you have enough available for 10% of the pax, limit the max operating altitude to FL250 and can descend to FL140 within 3 minutes - exactly the same rules to which the dash operates. I'm very suprised if other jet types with UK certification don't have something similar (it is a long time since I have flown any others so can't remember off hand).
Last edited by excrab; 9th May 2007 at 19:23.