Standby crew / out of hours

[jrudge]

Happy New Year!

I had the misfortune to spend Christmas eve at Gatwick and explain to the kids how clever Santa was that hew could even find his way into hotel rooms!

The flight was delayed firstly by a gatwick power cut, then they got us on the plane and then the crew ran out of hours so they got us off again, put us up in a hotel ( not cheap).

The airline was Firstchoice / Thompson. I would have through that they would have just called a standby crew in as this would be cheaper and simpler than putting 250 people in a hotel, and the situation had been brewing for hours so did not / should not have caught them by surprise. Especially as Gatwick / London will be a major base for them.

Interested in how standby works and why they did not do this?

[Mr @ Spotty M]

They only have a limited number of crews on standby.

[Natstrackalpha]

Well at least Santa was on the ball!

[Mr Angry from Purley]

Sorry to hear of your poor start to your Hols.
In theory Airlines have standby crews and in the case of Thomson a large established airline they probably have more than most airlines particularly at a large Base like LGW.
So some simple answers may be the standbys had been called out already. They wouldn't have a standby crew for every flight. In my airline we're lucky to have 1-2 standby crews a day to cover XX aircraft.
Once the standbys are exhausted they may be able to rely on crew that are willing to sell their days off / leave. The problem with this is your date of travel, crews willing to sell days off xmas eve - no chance sorry.
It also depends on where you were flying too, standby hours are limited etc you dont want a tired crew flying you off they have to sleep etc.

Hope it helps.

[easyflyer83]

Given the delays experienced and depending on where you were flying to abd how long they had been on standby for, the standby crews may have been out of hours to operate your flight anyway.
As already mentioned though, given the situation it is more likely the standby crews had already been utilised.

[PAXboy]

Sounds like three cheers for Firstchoice / Thompson. :ok:

[Johnny F@rt Pants]

I understand that Thomson don't routinely have standby crews at all. They make it work by reducing overall crew numbers, therefore reducing the wage bill, but have crews that are prepared to give up their days off for a nice tidy bonus payment.

I suppose this is then going to be one of those days when those who are usually amenable to this thought otherwise it being Christmas for them too.

Bad timing all round.

[west lakes]

And of course when they got to destination, would the airport be open to allow a landing!!

[BUGS/BEARINGS/BOXES]

Given all of the Thompson/FC cut backs of recent years, I doubt there is are enough crew to cobble together a fully constituted crew per base, let alone fleet per base.

[SawMan]

If an airline doesn't want to keep adequate standby crews, perhaps someone could make a suggestion to the bean-counters who will see the massive savings in this idea :rolleyes:

Allow the off-duty crews to bid their own price for their contingency of working in emergencies. If you have, say, 300 pax to hotel at say $100 each you just spent $30,000. I'm sure hotels in London, NYC, HK and similar places cost a lot more but let's work with the minimum figure here. Now if the Captain went to work for $6000 and the FO went for $4000 that leaves $20,000 to gather the other needed staff. I'm pretty sure that even at Christmas some crew would be willing to fly at those prices, thus making for a needed reserve without costing the airline a dime if they were not needed. Even if the crew price cost exactly the same as the hotel, there would be the benefit of it still being a revenue-generating flight instead of a loss, pax would be happier since they didn't get stuck and would be more loyal to the airline, and those who crewed would make a big chunk of money to compensate for the missed time off. Since each crew member sets their own price those who really don't want to go would simply set their price so high it wouldn't pay to use them thus they stay at home where they want to be.

If done this way, everybody wins and I can think of almost no other times I've seen that possible, let alone workable. And the biggest winners would be the crew as the bean-counters would finally have to come with the grips with who the most important part of their company really is :ok:

[PAXboy]

Terribly frustrating but it was safer for the pax.

I once had to lose a day of holiday due to Algeria closing their airspace to overflying aircraft (long story) but we all arrived safely.

[vctenderness]

Standby crews are really only there for ad hoc disruptions. It would be impossible to have enough crew to cover a major disruption such as the Gatwick Terminal incident.

Changing entire crews under standby arrangements is not really common it is more a case of topping up or replacing sickness or no shows.

[VC10man]

How do you spell Thomppson correctly?

[PAXboy]

The weather was described (something like) the 1-in-25 years storm??