View Full Version : SAA grounds flight due lack of pilots
JetNut
8th Oct 2007, 12:51
SAA grounded a 744 flight out of Cape Town yesterday due to the unavailability of suitable flight deck crew (apparently if one pilot books off sick the entire schedule goes for a ball).
Can anyone elaborate further?
boypilot
8th Oct 2007, 16:05
SAA are in the process of removing the 744 from its fleet. Many of the crew have moved across to the other fleets. The 744 basically operates a few JNB CPT sectors, LHR, LAD and LOS
But surely you should know this? :8
SAASFO
8th Oct 2007, 20:11
This is just the beginning! 65 SAA pilots have interviews with Emirates this month, 80 next month, plus others going to Jade interviews, Oasis interviews, Etihad interviews, NCA interviews, Korean interviews ............:cool:
No wonder the CEO has two roadshows scheduled for flight deck crew this week.......and completely out of the blue.
Before you guys start speculating lets just clear some things up ...
On Sunday 7 October (the day in question) SA220 from CPT to LHR was operated as scheduled by an A340-600 and not a B747-400! It departed CPT 20 minutes late at 19:20 arriving at LHR at 6:10. The later departure was as a result of a curfew violation - LHR only opens at 6:00 and no departure can take place if the ETA is earlier than opening thus the pilot would have held on the ground in CPT rather than in a landing pattern at LHR burning fuel.
On Saturday 6 October SA234 from JNB to LHR would normally operate with a B747-400 but was not scheduled to operate. This is a strange annomanly but the schedule clearly indicates that this was a planned event - most likely as a result of an aircraft shortage or planned mechanical. on Sunday SA operated three flights from JNB to LHR with SA9234 operating as a scheduled daylight flight with an A340-600. The 9 at the front of the flight number indicates a carry over flight. No matter how strange it seems the schedule clearly indicates this as a planned event even though it may have been planned at very short notice.
I think it is unfair to speculate until we know the facts - the facts known so far indicate something strange but certainly not grounded flights out of CPT as the original post indicates!
grgplanes
9th Oct 2007, 07:02
Did Jetnut mean that it was a CPT-LHR flight? It could just have been CPT-JNB?
65 SAA pilots have interviews with Emirates this month, 80 next month, plus others going to Jade interviews, Oasis interviews, Etihad interviews, NCA interviews, Korean interviews ..
No wonder the CEO has two roadshows scheduled for flight deck crew this week.......and completely out of the blue.
Would be very interesting to hear/see what KN's next move will be.
AFAIK, the day after the Flight Attendant's were released at least one Long Haul flight was delayed by more than 3 hours because there was no Cabin Crew available.
Then they had the audacity to the phone the one's released the day before, asking if they would do the flight....Guess what the answer was?
:sad:
Don't think so ... there was a CPT JNB flight on a B747-400 scheduled for Sunday October 7 (SA352 departing CPT at 16:10) but this aircraft was scheduled to arrive in CPT from JNB as SA323 at 12:10. If there were no pilots available they simply would have substituted both flights for a different aircraft (an A340-600 or for two B737-800s or A319s)!
By the way, they were the only B747-400 flights between CPT and JNB for the month of October so far!
AirwayBlocker
9th Oct 2007, 12:35
Maybe no flights have been affected by the lack of flightdeck crew yet, but then none of the flight deck crew have been released on the voluntary service package yet.
Another longhaul flight was delayed by over two hours on Sunday due to the lack of suitably qualified cabin crew. And as was said earlier, the cabin crew that were offered the voluntary service package have already left.
Coincidence? Methinks not.
Expect to see more delays and quite possibly cancellations
Although flights being delayed by cabin crew are more common than those delayed by flight deck crew ... generally flight deck crew are more responsible than cabin crew i.t.o. turning up for work! BA have had major problems at Heathrow over the years with cabin crew not pitching up or scheduling problems and having to delay flights because it takes hours for the replacement crews to get to Heathrow since the majority of them live quite far away!
At the end of the day a 2 hour delay is a delay ... but its a very different problem to cancelling a flight altogether! In fact 2 hours is the point at which EU carriers are required to start paying compensation to passengers!
From what I have seen no SAA flights have been grounded as a result of unavailability of flight deck crew!
AirwayBlocker
9th Oct 2007, 21:19
BA have had major problems at Heathrow over the years with cabin crew not pitching up or scheduling problems and having to delay flights because it takes hours for the replacement crews to get to Heathrow since the majority of them live quite far away!
I'm not sure how BA's problems relate to SAA.
SAA usually has cabin crew on standby at ORTIA. There should be no travelling time issues as you describe at Heathrow. Only if there are no standby crew available (as was the case Sunday) should there be an issue.
The question is why there was no standby crew member?
The more than 2 hour delay on certain sectors could quite easily lead to a cancellation of the flight if it causes the expected flight duty time to exceed the max allowable.
MrBernoulli
9th Oct 2007, 22:47
BA does have Cabin Crew on airport standby, but only for shorthaul I think.
oerlikon
10th Oct 2007, 01:35
Yawn!
bored already with the thread, except to say, please give me the 744, because sitting in the back of a 300-anything is like sitting in the back of a taxi. BUT! Why the F doesn't SAA provide the extra service their cost inspires?
I have run down SAA here previously, because I cannot see why I should pay more for the same seat on a different airline.
Why the hell don't they improve the service, or is it more important to be seen to be changing than actually going it?
evanb
10th Oct 2007, 06:38
In terms of standby flight crews, we were talking about CPT and not JNB - as you say stanby crews are based in JNB and not CPT - it would have taken time for the standby crew to get to CPT!
The point about BA was that this is not an SA specific problem but happens everywhere! BA only keep standby crews for short haul and not long haul because of the maximum allowable time issues - again this was a long haul flight we were talking about and not short haul!
In terms of service and price on SA (long haul): the A340-600s and A340-300s are far more comfortable in economy class than the B747-400s, this is not my opinion but the opinion of skytrax surveys! In terms of service the service on SA long haul it is quite comparable to many of its competitors and probably better than most (especially when compared to the likes of DL, BA, KL, AF, LH, QF, IB) although not as good as Asian and Middle Eastern carriers! In terms of price their prices are pretty much the same as most of the competition - if they were not they would be flying empty and given the loads that they are reporting on long haul that just is not happening!
AirwayBlocker
10th Oct 2007, 12:57
Sorry EvanB
You were talking about Cape Town.
The delayed flight I was referring to definitely operated out of JNB. I'm not sure where the flight referred to by Q4NVS originated from, but it seems to be seperate to both the original one on which this thread is based and seperate to the incident to which I referred. This seems to indicate a growing number of such incidents.
I profess not to be fully aware as to the rules regarding standby cabin crew at SAA but in the case of the flight delayed by more than two hours that I was referring to, it is my understanding that the cabin crew member eventually sourced was not even on standby for the day but scheduled to operate on a later flight the same day. Which indicates to me no standby crew at either the airport or on home reserve (if that is the correct term).
And while I realise that BA and for that matter all airlines have similar problems on occasion, I believe that in SAA's case we are going to be seeing quite a few more in the coming months than what is usual for most carriers. Except perhaps for NWA in the States. Who, may I remind you, also cut their crews to the minimum and in so doing ended up cancelling roughly 10.7% percent of its mainline flights in June due to the lack of pilots.