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Old 24th Mar 2009, 16:34
  #12 (permalink)  
jerboy
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: North East
Age: 37
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Dispatch in the UK on the whole is a pretty cool job. Although I've not worked for Servisair, I've worked very close to them for a good few years.

Servisair dispatchers do not produce their own loadsheets. They are either produced locally or at a CLC centre. When this works well its a perfectly good system. However in my opinion it is far too open to errors. One of the airlines my company handles (a UK, full service major) uses CLC and on the whole they're very efficient and get the job done properly. However if they take their eye off the ball for a minute it can go tits up - I've had quite a few incidences of loaders having to reload the a/c after it was out of trim. I've also had the aircraft sat at the end of the runway with CLC on the phone to me and me on the radio to the crew (I was covering ops at the time), asking them to change where the pax were seating. This was all because CLC saw the a/c was out of trim after it had pushed back. If I'd have been doing the loadsheet locally, the trim would have been sorted out in the gate with far less time taken.

Depending on where and when you decide to work, the level of work can vary hugely. There can be hours on end where you have nothing to do, or you can have 4 or 5 aircraft waiting for you to get to them. This results in ped off crew shouting at you, ped off passengers shouting at you because they haven't been able to board (boarding is your job as well... all the pax service agents are 'ill' today), and at the end of it all you have to tell ops/the airline why their flight pushed late; 'Aircraft movements' is a personal favourite. Not that we ever lie. Ever...

But it is a good fun job. I wouldn't go into it thinking thats what you'll spend the rest of your life doing; the pay is shocking and the conditions are enough to wear anyone down. But for a summer (or six summers in my case), its a brilliant experience.

For interviews - yup as mentioned above: Safety, security, dealing with pressure, passenger service (), critical thinking, prioritising etc etc.

Servisair generally use CODECO (I think) and a variety of other airline specific systems - FlyBE Shares for example.
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