normal amount of pilot crew/airplane?

[EightsOnPylons]

Hello,

I am wondering how many pilots are usually hired per aircraft in a airline company like easyjet, ryanair. Is a normal amount about 10 pilots /plane? If someone has examples of different companies would be great! thanks

[EightsOnPylons]

I posted this eight days ago, and no replies. Is this a too difficult question that nobody really can answer?

thanks

[Nineiron]

No replies probably because not too many beancounters read this forum. The answer to your question is probably 'yes'.

It depends a lot on the type of operation, the number of hours the aircraft is expected to fly, and FTLs - where all too often limitations are used as commercial targets.
Other factors would be the extent to which crews are involved with management and training duties.

There's many a rostering department that have to do a 'manual reversion' when the computer tells them there are not enough crews.

[Airbus Girl]

We are at about 5.5 crews per aircraft, I think possibly Ryanair work to around 4 or 4.5 crews per aircraft whereas someone like BA probably work on around 8+ crews per aircraft. We used to have more like 7 crews per aircraft, which was quite pleasant, but since Sep 11th, we, like many other airlines, have felt the pinch. We do IT work, so have very mixed rosters, standbys, ad hocs and lots of night duties to fit in as well as standard stuff.

[GlueBall]

5 per airplane, average.

[Big Tudor]

7 crews per aircraft short haul.
10 crews per aircraft longhaul.

You can normally acheive a headcount saving by centralising assets to one base. As a rule of thumb you can save 0.5 crews per additional aircraft in a base, i.e. 1 a/c = 7 crews, 2 a/c = 13.5 crews, 3 a/c = 13 crews.

As nineiron says, it depends on the type of operation and how many sectors the aircraft is flying versus how many the crew can do. If you're doing 1 flight every day then you only need 3 crews, based on CAP371.