BA CC industrial relations (current airline staff only)

[Betty girl]

Well I was told that this was a temporary measure because the situation of Pursers sitting at home on Availables was worse than for main crew and it was a silly situation calling Pursers out as main crew, on some flights: and having a main crew member do the job that used to be done by a Purser on other flights.

Yes, you are right that this is a totally separate thing to all those Pursers already working down as main crew. God knows what will happen when they come back on line as Pursers!!

I hope that they do get the numbers right because it is silly, as you say, having crew sitting at home and then recruiting more and more M/F crew. It surely negates the saving being made by them.

M/F are themselves over-crewed too. They are sending out Prague flights with seven crew on and calling them training flights. I was told this by a Dispatcher, who was himself, trying to understand where the savings are in putting on three more crew than if operated by a E/F crew.

This is also happening on M/F loghaul flights, a CSM told me that he almost always has 14 crew on a 777.

I am more than happy for M/F to have extra crew while learning the routines but it is not fair if their 'customer survey' scores are compared to ours, if we only have 3 or 4 crew on an airbus compared to 6 or 7 of them!!

Lets hope these are just teething problems because, lets face it, BA often gets the crewing levels wrong!! We are either under-crewed or over-crewed!! We just seem to be very over-crewed at the moment!!! Which is very silly as we are supposed to be saving money!!

P.S. Well just been told that these Pursers will still be working in a main crew position, so I apologise for getting that bit mixed up. At least you will be getting rostered a trip instead of yet more available but it all does sound very silly!!Can't quite understand what the point of taking the Purser off each flight and then putting more Pursers back on but have them working as main crew. Bonkers!!