Carmen Compliance

[36050100]

Ladies and Gentlemen

The airline I work for has a somewhat patchy history at ensuring that rosters comply with our scheduling agreement. They currently use Netline but are proposing the use of Carmen for crew planning.

I have a couple of questions:

1) Is Carmen robust enough to prevent the schedulers from intentionally breaking the scheduling rules ?

2) Does anyone know of any software available to pilots that can read a roster produced by Carmen and check it for compliance ?

Thank You.
:ok:

[Flightrider]

I can't help directly with your questions, but I would question the sanity of any company introducing Carmen. From my past experience of it, I have never seen a crew system which is so awful. You will have your time taken up with trying to work out why it has done something exceptionally odd, instead of whether it complies with the scheduling agreement.

It is a nightmare in BA and the sooner that WW wakes up and throws the system in the bin, the better. Much of the disruption which occurs following bad weather, industrial action, security strikes etc stems from Carmen's bonkers approach to rostering. Whilst the rest of us try to keep aircraft and crews together throughout their working day, it is not uncommon to find a flightcrew inbound from Lisbon, cabin crew inbound from Nice, aircraft inbound from Stockholm all trying to meet at Heathrow to operate an outward flight to Milan. If any one of those incoming flights suffers, the outbound Milan is stuffed. It holds together for the first couple of disrupted flights, as they have enough airport standbys etc to cover one or two problem areas, but as soon as the problems escalate to hit more than two or three flights, it's rather like a spinning top going out of balance. When it's spinning and balanced, it's great - but as soon as it goes off balance, it falls over pretty quickly.

Carmen also does numerous other exceptionally odd things. I seem to recall one Gatwick BA 737 crew plot which had crews nightstopping in Genoa even though we didn't have an aircraft nightstopping there; three crews per night overnighting in Barcelona for one nightstopping 737 (when two ought to be the absolute max if not one on a split duty), and all sorts of other really strange outputs. It drives ruthlessly towards maximising pilot utilisation and takes no account of other factors (operational integrity, allowance payments, quantities of hotac required and sheer common sense) which ought to be part of the crew planning process for any company.

God 'elp you, is all I can say.

[Sparkle]

I concur!

It seems to try to maximise your time you can legally do. E.g. if you have a 4 sector day, and one sector is say 1hr long and you have half an hr turnrounds, it will aim at filling you into the the CAP daily limit. So instead of getting it over with, you end up with 3 to 4 hour turnarounds, just to make sure they "utilise" you to the max.

Many times I would operate one sector to AAA from BBB after a nightstop, to then hand over the plane to another crew, who then take the plane to CCC, whereas we went to the crewroom hanging around for 4 hrs, to wait for that crew to bring us back the same plane, to hand over to us, so we can then do the next CCC and back.
It is CRAZY!!!!
And the muppet management haven't got the guts nor the brains to do anything about it!!:yuk: :yuk:

[36050100]

Thanks for the replies Gents. We already get crazy pairings and aircraft / crew changes with Netline. To a certain extent, I can live with that if the Company think that they are building an efficient roster. :D

I just want them to work within the rules and for them to know that I can prove it if they dont.

[World of Tweed]

Greetings folks,

I would agree with most of the comments here, especially regards crew swaps which for us occur down route on turnaround with say the FO leaving the aircraft in FAO to get on the LPL inbound a/c due in at the same time etc. A number swaps just don't happen as one of the aircraft may be late and then it is a case of "do we delay both flights for the sake of "she who must be obeyed"?? - clearly On-Time is more of a priorty so it makes a mockery of the supposed advantage of Carmen pairings.

What has been observed perhaps is that there is a apparent lack of tactical thinking in such situations - possibly just company specific here but I don't believe Carmen leaves any "fat" in the roster for so-called unlikely events.

RE: "Carmen Recovery"

Carmen is bought in a number of different parts I believe. There is a pairings optimiser and a rostering tool both of which are Strategic, mid-term planning tools effectively but there is a third package aimed at Tactical rostering - that is on-the-day effects.

Apparently its called "recovery" and I'm told no UK airline has bought it yet. It, on-the-day, for instance can look at a delay to an intended crew swap flight and provide the "Best Optomised Solution"(!). ..... Effecticely we can optimise and allow carmen to produce a beautifully productive roster....then we have a delay.....

..... "Carmen Says..... INSTALL DISK 3 !!!!


What can I say......would you by a Kitten without Litter tray???