Originally Posted by
eggc
Is it not sensible not to have spare staff sat around just incase the odd divert turns up ?
It seems to make perfect sense to me as long as all involved have the staff they need to handle MAN's own traffic.
Not if said staff want paying! As others have said, the airlines have driven costs down so much that there is less than no slack for handling agents to offer 'nice to haves'. A good example is the fact that I got what I thought at the time was a cheap MAN-FRA in 1988 for about £110. 25 years later I baulk at paying that much for the same trip! Fuel costs and crew costs have gone up a lot since those days, so the savings need to come from somewhere.
I suspect that the reason that MAN handling agents are less able to take diversions is that although quiet in winter, it is not as quiet as some of the other regional airports mentioned. Thus BHX may have 2 handling staff on duty (I'm assuming there is a minimum level regardless of flights) but no flights for 3 hours, while MAN also has 2 staff but a flight every hour. Add in a bit of managerial caution wanting to avoid penalties for mishandling their own flights, and it makes perfect sense for the MAN handler to decline diversions in that situation, while BHX accept them.
I'm sure if SQ, CX etc were prepared to pay a MAN handling agent to have some people on standby in case a diversion was necessary then a solution would be found, but I can't really seeing that happening.
The final point is that in the old days it took less weather to trigger diversions, and so as well as the cost angle, the likely frequency of diversions also made it more worthwhile to have staff available just in case, as the odds of using them, and getting the extra income from unscheduled visitors was much higher. Weather such as LHR had the other day would have caused 75%+ flights to divert, rather than the handful that did. A beancounter would be more likely to pay for standby staff if the odds were that 200 aircraft would divert to MAN over the course of a winter rather than the 10 that would probably happen now.