BA Strike - Your Thoughts & Questions II

[Betty girl]

Alot of people are just making stuff up on this forum to suit their own personal feelings.

First of all I will address the issue of the Melbourne service. This service was removed because of low loads when it was a part of a shuttle from Sydney or because of the bad utilisation of the aircraft, as mentioned by Wiggy, when it was a terminating flight direct from Singapore. Cabin crew costs pale into insugnificance compared to the costs of having an aircraft sit on the ground or fly with low loads. At certain times of the year the loads were ok but BA being a schedualled carrier has to fly and operate a year long schedual and unless a flight is full it cannot make a profit it has nothing to do with the crew costs.

BA does need to get it's crew costs down as well as get many of it's other costs down, but the example and reasoning that it is the cabin crew costs that caused this flight to be cancelled is completely incorrect.

The link up with Qantas as a full code share partner also played a part in the decision. Many of you may have noticed that British Airways flights to Austrailia are being operated out of Terminal 3 not Terminal 5 and this is also because of our strong link with Qantas and the need for both airlines to operate out of the same terminal.( I am not sure but I think I heard that this was at Qantas's request that we both depart from the same terminal at LHR.)

Now I will address the posts that suggest that BA does not operate flights from the Far East during the day because of the cabin crew union insisting on bunk rest longer than the legal requiremet.

This is yet again totally untrue and just made up information.

The maximum duty day of any one sector flight duty can vary between 11 hours to 14.3 hours long. The duty day starts 1 hour before the flight and ends at chocks. The length of the duty day depends on a number of factors and these are the rest taken before the flight and between the proceeding flight, the time of day of the departure and whether the crew is aclimatised to the time zone or not.

In order to extend a flight beyond the normal maximum duty day as above, and make it a long range flight, bunk rest is required for all the crew. The minimum bunk rest required is 3 hours. So as all Far East flights fall into the long range category, 3 hours is the minimum bunk rest legaly required and for some flights it could be 4 hours. The duty period is increased by one half of the total rest taken. So if three hours rest was taken then the duty day could be increased by 1 1/2 hours only and so 4 hours in the bunk extends the duty day by 2 hours only. So as you can see alot of bunk rest is required by the CAA to extend the flight duty day by just a small amount.

As 3 hours is the bare minimum for a shorter long range flight you can see how achieving this is hard for any airline. 3 hours rest plus 30 mins changeover, between one half of the crew with the other half, and then the second 3 hours rest equals 6 1/2 hours minimum removed from the time available for meal services to be completed.

Now take the time it takes to complete the initial bar and meal service on a flight. It takes approximately 3 hours from take off and until all the meal services are complete. The second smaller meal service takes 1 1/2 hours and it takes a further 1/2 an hour to prepare the cabin for landing. All this adds up to 11.30 hours of rest and service for a short long range flight. Even if BA wanted to do an extra meal service in the middle of the flight there would not be enough time. Or they could maybe put the second meal in the middle, between the two sets of cabin crew rests, but even on day flights many passengers may not want to be woken up or disturbed and then it would leave nothing to serve before landing. The other problem is that there is no space on board the aircraft for a third meal to be stored. The trolley space for even two meal services is very limited.
However BA do provide snacks throuout the flight available from the galley like pot noodles, crisps and buscuits etc.

Now I have gone into a lot of detail for you because I wanted some of you to understand the nature of long range flights and the legal requirement by the CAA for rest during the flight. BA do operate daylight flights to long range destinations and lack of catering space and the long time between meal services is a problem. But it is a problem for all airlines and not just BA.

An ex of mine worked as a pilot for THAI airways and as such I have flown on many of their flights and the bunk rest for their cabin crew is the same and the meal services are at the start and end of the flights just like BA's.

I feel like I have gone on alot but people seem to want to hear detail. It is obviously very anoying for me to see people write incorrect speculation as if it is fact and to rubbish BA cabin crew at the same time. BASSA are at fault for alot of things but crew rest on long range flights is not one nor is the schedual BA adopt nor is where BA fly to the fault of how much BA cabin crew are paid.

Thank you.

Now I hope I haven't upset anyone by explaining the facts and not just guessing the reasons for things. I know that alot of you have been upset by BASSA's industrial action and I too have been upset by this. As I said before I worked during the strike and wanted my union to negotiate not strike but it seems that this IA has caused people to try and blame crew for everything.

Some crew are paid well at the moment and BA are addressing this but I hope no one would want current crew, who have mortgages etc., to have their pay taken off them. Remember BA agreed to all our pay and conditions. Times have changed and the future costs are being addressed and I hope an agreement can be made.