I can only agree with the Real Examiner. A very good friend of mine has worked for Aer Arann for a number of years and he regularly expresses the concerns outlined by the original poster.
The chief pilot who may have started out with the best of intentions is a complete management lackey these days. He only operates once a week and then can’t see why certain duties are not fatiguing to him!!! He oversaw the illegal pay cut of crews, allowed crews to operate almost on a daily basis in fatigue on aircraft with multiple defects into small regional airports.
Apparently some of the guys and gals in Galway have a 6 sector duty that is only legal by around 30 minutes. It is fatiguing at the best of times apparently and then factor in the current cold spell and it is a complete nightmare, the chief pilot apparently gave his personal guarantee in the autumn that he would not sign it off for the winter, it is still being rostered!!!
The operations department are not able or not allowed to prioritise or cut flights when things go wrong. This is apparently due to a completely inadequate “commercial” department who want every flight to go even though some are almost empty and the cost of de-icing the aircraft wipes out any revenue. The delays push the actual revenue flights back by hours, annoying a great many more passengers, paying out of hour’s airport charges to the regionals and putting the crew on constant max flight duties and minimum rest. Just what does an ex marketer from Vodafone Ireland know about commercial flight operations?
Also they have insisted in rotating two ATR72-201’s into Galway. These aircraft have a huge performance penalty for both take off and landing. Often crew have to fuel stop resulting in between 5 and 7 sector days for crews or at the very least taking minimum fuel to Luton in CAT 2 conditions. All this only serves to add to crew fatigue and stress as well as throwing out the entire days schedule so the later duties have to operate into the early hours of the morning. All this goes on while the 500s and 212s are happily operating in Aer Lingus colours on non limiting runways. Utter madness.
The pilot body and cabin crew body as a whole are treated with utter contempt by management. They were subjected to an illegal pay cut but not only that saw all pay scales agreed upon completely thrown out of the window. There is now no pay scale at all and many crews are effectively on a year one salary despite being there for many years. There is a huge pressure applied on crews to operate into discretion. Crews are driving hire cars the length and breadth of the country in horrendous weather, operating and then driving back to base again in the middle of the night, the management even have the audacity to get crews to fill the car up with fuel and then claim the expenses back.
A select amount of crew have added to and facilitated this madness for quite a while now. They insist on working days off which adds to the crew shortage and operating into discretion is a just something that is done. Operating into discretion should be a carefully considered procedure when you factor the type of flying that Aer Arann crews have to endure. The rostering is a complete joke with the Christmas roster only coming out a few days beforehand leaving many of the crews who try to commute at a complete loss as to their festive arrangements.
What the airline needs is for the current management, board and commercial department to up sticks and leave and allow competent people to take the helm.
What the guys and gals in Arann need to do is come and join me flying the ATR in the Mediterranean Sun.