I just thought I'd add a bit about airline 'headcount planning' re: a quick lesson about how it, sort of, works.
Nb. What’s described as follows is not actually how it really works ( as that’d be very bloomin’ hard to write that down ) but it is meant to be something close to a sort of feel for it:
The players
Airline Commercial Director – amongst other things, is responsible for ensuring that as much as possible of the airlines fleet capacity is sold.
Airline Operations Director – amongst other things, is responsible for ensuring that sufficient pilots / crew are on staff to ensure that the commitments of the flying program, as sold by the commercial department, can be fully met.
TRTO Training Director – responsible for providing a quality TRTO product and meeting its commitments to its customers ( both airlines and self-funded applicants ).
Planning
Now imagine if the Commercial Director sells, say, six aircraft and a total of 4000 flights to the airlines customers, i.e. to the tour operators.
He then passes this on to the Operations Director and asks that it’s crewed - with NO gaps !
So the Ops Director goes away and works out, with the help of both the Operations Manager and the Rostering Manager, just what impact the proposed flying schedule will have on crew numbers – taking into account crew leave, days off, recurrent checks, sickness cover, standby cover, etc….
So let’s imagine that they come up with a figure of 5 crews per aircraft ( which is actually very lean in a charter airline operation ), i.e. for each aircraft there would 5 of every rank that normally forms a crew compliment.
Thus the Ops Director confirms to the Commercial Director that, with a compliment of 30 Captains, 30 F/O’s, 30 Senior Cabin Crew, etc, ( i.e. 6 aircraft x 5 people of every rank on each ) he will be able to ensure that all the flights will be covered.
Now as it happens the airline already has enough people to crew five of the aircraft – so the Ops Director therefore needs to find / recruit another aircrafts worth of crew.
But then along comes a the TRTO’s Director of Training who says, ‘Ah, but, hold on a minute, we also need to train our type-rating candidates’.
So, after doing some crystal ball gazing, they guesstimate that the TRTO might require to line-train, say, 5 people per month.
“Great!” says the Ops Director, “I’ve now got an entire aircrafts worth of F/O’s from the TRTO students and all I need to ensure is that in the left seat I have ( expensive ) Training Captains”.
It’s all a bit of a 'no brainer', right ?
Wrong !
The Commercial flying program is contracted months in advance – and in some instances over year out from the flight date - and you can't let the charters down, it'd be akin to commercial suicide !
However a TRTO can’t possibly guarantee to an airline that they can supply sufficient people, from a proposed ‘line-training’ package, to ensure that the commitments ( i.e. to the charters ) by the airline can be fully met.
E.g. it would be unreasonable, in spite of the assured best endeavours from all involved within the TRTO, to expect that type-rating training always goes to plan – just indeed as many who’ve taken their fATPL exams, GFT’s, and IR’s can attest – and just indeed as their might be less people either taking and / or completing the type-rating than was planned for.
As such, should the airline actually go ahead and reduce the number of permanent ( experienced, type-rated ) crews, in preference for an as yet unproven supply from a TRTO, it stands at considerable risk of not being able to crew all of its contracted flights; just as it similarly it stands at considerable risk if it takes on less ( or more ) permanent crews than it actually needs ( albeit that this is less of a variable - given that the airline has control over the recruiting, e.g. of type-rated candidates, or not )
Accordingly there is NO WAY that either a Commercial or Operations Directors would allow such a scenario to occur – as doing so would put the airline at considerable financial risk, e.g. un-crewed flights would require sub-charters, and you just don’t want to go there !
Nb. Some of you still, as yet, outside of the industry might not be aware that it can take 4 to 6 weeks ( or even longer, courtesy of the newly introduced airport security rules for the issue of airside passes ) from the initial start of employment with an airline until the time when one first steps foot within an actual flightdeck.
As such quick fixes are just not possible. I.e. get your headcount planning wrong in early May and you’ll likely still be feeling it in late June, and the whole thing usually gets worse from knock-on effects as a summer progresses.
Hope this helps.