BA "Cancels 1,000 Flights"

[Localiser Green]

"British Airways is cancelling almost 1,000 flights from Heathrow over the next few months in a bid to improve its performance, the company says."

New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Edinburgh, Manchester, Frankfurt, Munich, Brussels and Amsterdam will all be hit by cancellations of an average 12 flights per day.

BBC News Online article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3658556.stm).

[Mark Lewis]

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=144073 ;)

[Localiser Green]

Sorry about that, BBC were a bit slow picking this one up I think as it was only released today...

[WHBM]

It's good how all the news organisations reporting this today have swallowed the "benefit" line about it being done solely to improve performance !!

What's the real reason ? Not enough crews ? EWS fiasco ?

I notice this bit at the end of the BBC article though:

"Meanwhile, BA's board is meeting on Friday to discuss last month's cancellations, amid investor speculation that some senior managers may be for the chop. "

Any speculation about who ? Could the situations be linked ?

[PilotsPal]

Please don't shoot me for asking this - it's only asked out of genuine interest.

If BA cancel all these flights in and out of LHR, what happens to their slots?

[fiftyfour]

BA keeps each slot provided it uses that slot for 80% of the season. So a cancelation of a regular route for a month or so is not a problem.

Apart from all the obvious reasons for not being able to manage the schedule (not enough pilots, recruiting bans, voluntary redundancy packages, encouraging folk to take leave after 9/11 etc, budget cuts that are not aligned to service reductions etc), BA is having severe trouble keeping its aircraft serviceable. The introduction of a new spare parts computer system has gone badly wrong. All the parts are on a shelf, somewhere, but the computer can\'t locate them. When they are physically located there is no system to allow engineers to just \'take\' the part - they have to fill in the boxes in the computer, which then forbids the transaction because there is \'no part available.\' This goes for even the simple things like portable oxygen bottles for the cabin. My source says it will be two years before it will be fixed, and that the senior manager involved won be falling on his sword - some minions below will be taking the rap.

[easyprison]

I thought BA had a nice glossy TV advert with some American fellow banging on about how low fare airlines leave you high and dry!

:ok:

[DarkStar]

BA has always been trumpeting about increasing utilisation of its fleet and here we are pretending that the flying program has been axed to improve performance. The sad fact is that the flying program has been cut because of the inability of EWS - The one size fits all Engineering system...also known as 'Everything Will Stop'. It's been a fiasco and looks like nearly a 1000 flights have stopped. There are Christmas trees littered around LHR/LGW and CWL, including 744's, 777's and 734 - so no wonder BA hasn't got credible standby A/c even with Titan flying for them. It's depressing to hear Engineers getting so frustrated with such a complex system, along with so many unservicable aircraft causing such expensive cancellations and it doen't matter how BA tries to dress it up, its another PR disaster. Just wait till EWS Part 2 kicks in later this year.......:{ Tin Hats on order at Waterside... if EWS can 'find' them that is...:E

[Hot Wings]

EWS = Engineers Want Spares

[Flame]

Folks

This does not exactly instill confidence in BA, I was about to book DUB-LHR-DXB and now notice that the DXB is affected as well

If you canot rely on a published schedule and it is changed willy nilly, why should one book with BA at all

Me thinks I will let BA management do what they want with "their" routes and service...its Emirates for me from now on.

[EasyBaby]

Yip, with EasyBaby of to Oz later next month and flying down to LHR from EDI, there was no way i was going BA, cancel my flight, lose my bag.........

Well here goes BMI

EB;)

[leander]

Everything Working Smoothly

Engineering Without Spares

Every Worker Suffers

[Rollingthunder]

I've worked with spares and records since it was paper to mainframe, then computer tracking on PCs and then comprehensive integrated mtce/spares programs. Can't believe BA's system is apparently so screwed up. It's really not that hard, expecially with good programs and good IT support. Of course you throw a lot of money at it as well. However the cancellation of so many flights in order to free up aircraft so they can Not fly and earn revenue indicates an under lying problem or problems. It's not good business.

[Jet II]

Can't believe BA's system is apparently so screwed up. It's really not that hard, expecially with good programs and good IT support.

Of course its not that hard - but only if you have a good program and good support - BA has neither.

Last night I spent 4 hours waiting for a part that was on shelf 50 yards away. Bearing in mind that I am only on shift for 12 hours, with a 4 hour wait for each spare seriously cuts down the amount of work I can complete - but look on the brightside, according to senior management these are only 'teething troubles':sad:

Of course these 'teething troubles' also affected MFI who happen to have the same computer system ;)
Two MFI directors ousted after computer bungle
By Damian Reece City Editor
15 September 2004


Two board directors at MFI paid for last week's disastrous profit warning with their jobs yesterday, agreeing to leave the company "by mutual consent".

Martin Clifford-King, the finance director, and Gordon MacDonald, in charge of the company's supply chain, were relieved of their executive duties with immediate effect after accepting responsibility for the bungled implementation of a new computer supply system which resulted in chaotic trading at the furniture retailer.

The company revealed its supply chain problems last week, along with the news that its UK retail operations would make a "substantial loss" for the current financial year.

John Hancock, MFI's chief executive, said yesterday the company would be instigating an independent review of the installation of the new supply chain system supplied by the German software giant SAP and the computer maker IBM.

He said it was too early to say if MFI would have any recourse to its IT suppliers over the botched system, which left customers waiting weeks for deliveries that were often incomplete on arrival.



full report in the Independant (http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=561816)

[wrenchbender]

I find it interesting that the software comes from SAP. My wife has been involved with this software, and she has NOTHING good to say about it.

[JackOffallTrades]

Has anyone every written anything good about BA on pprune?

There seem to be lots of militants out there who would love to see BA close down. They thrive on this sort of news. Sad Gits!!
Is all I can say about them.

People in BA do actually care about disrupting their passengers journeys. Unfortunately the militant ones don't and that generates a bad image that the rest of the workers get the blame for.

Grrrr....

:* :mad: :sad: :ugh:

[cirrus01]

It refreshing to see that the true scale of the self inflicted problems at BA are getting an airing at last. EWS is a complete disaster......it didn't work 18 months ago and it still doesn't . what should be easy just isn't.
Fantastic idea to implement such a major upheaval right slap bang in the middle of the summer season.

If any of the senior mis-managers had a shred of decency they would fall on their swords......but hey !..... guess what ? they're still there .....spouting such drivel as "teething problems " and the current favourite " reducing flights will give a more ROBUST service"


:* :* :*

[Runway 31]

Hey Jack

It's not militants that are disrupting BA, it's bad management

[Flight Safety]

Reduced flights + more idle planes = EWS (Easier Way to Spare)

[Hot Wings]

Why confess to a huge engineering problem when you can put the blame on being short of 50 or 60 staff?!!!! The cancelled flights will cost BA £40m+. (Rumour has it that EWS has cost the company £150m).

[MercenaryAli]

Well BA provoked much anger in the aviation community when they committed Aviation Vandalism by not only taking out of service the magnificent Concord (English spelling - sorry Frogs) but then proceeded to vandalise each one in order to ensure that nobody would EVER be able to get them back into the air.
Considering they were paid for with tax payers hard earned cash and cost BA almost nothing I consider this a national scandal and could not give a monkeys hoot if BA went into terminal decline as of tomorrow!

[Sunshine Express]

Political correctness aside, I am so pleased you have an opinion
shame it isn't relevant..........

:D

[ojs]

...and cost BA almost nothing...

Well nothing apart from the money they paid to the Government when BA was privatised; and the money that was invested in the product over the years (over 1 billion); and the cost of starting flying again after the Paris crash... I would love to see Concorde fly again but let's deal with facts Ali.

But back to the thread.

EWS is a nightmare, and the worst part of it is that there's no going back (although I read this week that MFI have had supply problems too since implementing their SAP system).

The legacy systems needed to be replaced - but for goodness sake make sure the training and "expert" users are there. Part of the problem is with data quality - of course everything was tested, it was just done with clean data which doesn't reflect real life situations. Surely that could have been anticipated?

The situation will improve (can't get any worse) - mainly because too much time and profile has been spent implementing the system. Users will gain experience and eventually all the data in the system will be trusted. Whether that improvement will come too late for BA though remains to be seen...

[jerrystinger]

First the routes are canx due to lack of staff, now it's supposedly an engineering prob.....what other excuses are up the sleeve? I, too had planned to travel on BA to MAD in Nov, but it's definitely BMI because there is too much risk involved otherwise...

And this isn't a negative post, but the sad reality of how poor a state our "flag carrier" (ashamed) is in.

[TURIN]

jerrystinger,

It was NEVER down to staff shortages!!

The fiasco in the terminals a few weeks ago was caused by passengers being dumped back in the building due to u/s aircraft which in turn was caused by lack of spares (EWS).

The company decided it was easier to tell the public nothing and then the TUs jumped on the "lack of staff" bandwagon to promote their point of view.

It is now (due to this website and others) coming out that EWS is the root cause and joe public is losing even more confidence in BA.:mad:

It is very sad for all involved and I and others will no doubt be looking for work very soon when the CAA eventually says "enough is enough.":(

[Jet II]

ojs

The situation will improve (can't get any worse)
Hmm:hmm:

There goes a brave man - only phase 1 of EWS has been introduced (spares control), when/if phase 2 (aircraft maintenance control) goes ahead anything could happen :uhoh:

If phase 2 implimentation does go ahead and it performs as badly as it did in the trial, then the chaos we have seen so far could be seen as a walk in the park.

[Runway 31]

If the cause is purely down to EWS, how come flights are being cancelled for months ahead?.

[Jet II]

It was deemed to be better to cut the program and therefore give a bit more slack in the system to allow for delays from the start, rather than cancel flights on the day due to a shortage of aircraft.

[Jezebelle]

WHERE is Swiss Toni now??? I wonder what his opinions are on the biggest C..k up in BAs history? No doubt the suits in Waterworld are thinking up how to cover their backsides!:mad:

[SWBKCB]

One of our Silver Card holders has also been told that there are problems with recent changes to the on-line check in system - BA staff reported a 50% failure rate (i.e check-in on line, but details not available at the automated machines at the airport). Could this be exacerbating the 'check in staff shortages'?

[Jet II]

I see from todays Sunday Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2769-1268601,00.html) that no heads will roll after the recent tribulations at BA.

But Eddington won one key point from Broughton. No senior BA executives will be sacked, despite reports of a management clear-out.

Eddington told the directors that he wanted to move on and draw lessons from the episode rather than start a witch hunt.

Senior BA sources had expected one or more heads to roll in the wake of the flight-cancellations chaos.



Is this the best way to proceed? - surely if someone has failed in their job to such an extent that it has almost brought down the company then to simply sweep it under the carpet with the attitude that you should 'move on and draw lessons' is simply not good enough.

Only last week we saw a captain sacked by his airline for drinking on duty - surely taking responsibility for your actions should also apply to senior management - if the senior managers in place cannot cope then they should be moved out and someone who can cope brought in.

Or do I have it all wrong?:confused:

[Human Factor]

Sadly, it's the usual BA whitewash with no-one at the top prepared to take any responsibility.

[HZ123]

Clearly we at BA need to insert another tranch of management to identify and rectify these issues. Be assured that there are many of us within BA that are appalled at what goes on and are fed up with managers that have no accountablility and leadership that is weak and ineffective. I see no reason why BA will survive in the long run, however, what still amazes me is that we are still lucky to have loyal customers and are respected throughout the industry. For what that is worth ?

[Runway 31]

Another tranche of management, you have got to be at the wind up surely. It is management that is causing these problems

[Diverse]

Yes Runway31 he's winding you up:}

I think?

It's very disappointing that nobody swung for this one. Not at all surprised though. Still going by the number of mistakes we have had over the years if we're learning from them all I would think there must be nothing left to learn;)