Difference between dispatcher and "dispatcher"

[merlinxx]

Kellmark

Here, here. Even back in the distant '60s we (UK #2 flag carrier) operated a flight watch system, though only enroute ctc was HF, it worked and saved a whole bunch of expensive probs with ops raging from domestic, intra eruo, East/West Africa & South America. Most staff in those days wanted to fly, so got basic ground school, met/nav/perf etc, so had more than a bisic understanding. Some long and lonely nights followed, even playing football/cricket on the ramp!

There is NO, REPEAT NO substitute for applying an integrated Flt Watch/Flt Following system to compliment a good pre flt planning system, in fact they are all part and parcel of the same CRM, SOP function. Some staff may be required to hold licenses, some may not, that does not detract from good SOPs with good resource management.

Rant over, gone to the pub!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[boredcounter]

Schibulsky

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!

The Ops Contoller who fu**ed up royaly, but even without his log, remembers so much about the MSK CPH divert day that you will never know!

It was me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Bored

[Schibulsky]

Please enlighten us, boredcounted!
YOU can probably tell us now WHY they depart with outdated FCST?
And WHY didnt you plan fuel to cover for that?

[boredcounter]

Schibulsky

Where does the info regarding outdated forecast come from? I am sure you have not grabbed that bit from thin air, can you advise the source? You are not the first to mention it on PPrune, yet others are not prepared to answer that question. A link would be much appeciated.
Many factors came into play that day, Multiple AOGs, huge slots, tecnical diverts, Ops/Crewing staff shortages, undue commercial pressure from all angles on Ops/Crewing.....................A whole lot was going on behind the scenes, one of the worst days I can tell you in a 20 + year career in Ops.
I would love to read, what I guess is the AAIB report on this one. The reason I get very defensive, I appear to have played a big part, by F##king up, yet my debrief from the Co. FSO was a five min chat outside the gents. The internal report on this incident, was discounted as pure fiction at my request at board level. All Crew involved, rostered meetings with FSO.
If you do have an interest in this flight, PM me by all means.
Further background for you, B* 767 LHR-CPH recalled to LHR, VB next BHX-CPH cancelled despite oposition from above airline ground team due to the Cl*b load! Said airline provided all systems, including Wx as part of the franchise agreement.
At the time, no teflon shoulders intended, UK AOC, Commander has full authority for flight.
FAA, now, as told by Sheffield and CO training Capt on same course, CO carry no alternate fuel trans-Atlantic, having proved it is not required?
Fuel for second alternate?
Bored

[Schibulsky]

Hi Boredcounter,
the Maersk info was brought on by Kellmark, the selfproclaimed "Professor of Aviation" as an example why the chinese have a better dipatch system than the EU!!! I merely quoted it and assumed when it comes from such an highly source directly from the land of the "knows it all" it is fact checked.
But anyway, accrding to your info, it looks actually like a combined f...up of BA Ops and the Cockpit.
Nice to hear they did not try to load this **** on you!
An old rule says: Extra fuel is no substitute for brain, but if you are in doubt about conditions at your destination it is a good idea to cover for that!!!
FAA probably think, due to their superior flightwatch, they can make bad wx just go away

[kellmark]

Schibulsky
It is so nice to deal with someone who is so sure about everything. Even so, I happen to think that we can all learn something. (Of course, there are always exceptions).
I say this in all collegiality to you. We Professors have this funny thing called collegiality. It means that you can discuss and argue, but always show respect for the other colleague. And I do have a great deal of respect for you. After all, you have “been there and have the T-shirt”.
I know, being a “self-proclaimed” professor is a great burden. It must mean that I work in an ivory tower and I never actually worked out there with the smell of the jet fuel and had to deal with those “fellows in the front end”. I don’t have much time compared to many others. I worked for 23 years in the industry, less than some, but more than others, of which I enjoyed every day I went to work. I definitely would have worked more if I could have and I admire those like yourself who have stayed with it. But I feel that there is a great contribution in teaching as well, and I also enjoy it very much, having done it for 12 years.
I,of course, realize that I am at a disadvantage, as I am from the vaunted land of “knows it all”. That same land that has taken on hundreds of Airbii. I personally am fine with them. But I admit it, we are just those crude “colonials”. How could we have anything to contribute to safety? I guess some believe that where someone comes from is more important than what a concept can do for safety. Also, just because a region builds great aircraft, doesn’t mean that their operating rules don’t have a big hole in them.
As to the Maesk incident: Boredcounter, you were ok, you didn’t do anything to contribute to the problem. You apparently gave the crew the briefing package, which was current at the time, before departure. I have the report, and let me know if you want it e-mailed.
The problem occurred after departure when the weather changed drastically, and became far worse, as we all know. And there was no flight watch from the air carrier to support the crew. And ATC was not much help either, as the crew found out very late into the flight about how bad Copenhagen was and then their alternate of Malmo being bad as well, and then they wound up at Billund in 70 knot winds.
In the Maersk case, the whole weather system turned far more severe than had been anticipated, and the crew and ATC controllers never seemed to get a picture of the whole system but only had fragmentary information from airport to airport. The flight’s diversion possibilities were actually much greater when the problems first became apparent, but the crew was continuing on outdated and fragmentary information.
The point to be made here is that if the air carrier had had a flight watch system with a qualified flight dispatcher who would have had the whole picture, and a communication system to the airplane then the crew could have been warned much earlier than was the case and gotten much better support and their choices would have been much greater. But it didn’t happen because no such system was or is required in Europe.
The philosophy behind a flight watch system is to keep a crew informed of any and all safety issues, including weather and airport conditions and the general weather picture and how it can affect operations. But if there is no such system, then the crew is on their own in a very difficult environment. And that is when incidents and accidents happen.
And this is not the only incident. There are quite a few others in Europe with similar circumstances where flight crews either ran into severe conditions without warning or continued on with a degraded aircraft when it simply wasn’t necessary.
And I have to tell you a little secret. The Chinese do have a better flight dispatch system than the EU. They require flight dispatcher licensing and a flight watch. They have a communication system requirement between the air carrier and the aircraft. The JARS do not. Nor do the new EU-OPS. The Chinese system is not just better, it is far better.
So, you can have great aircraft, highly qualified and experienced crews, and excellent maintenance on your aircraft, but if the crew can’t get what they need when they need it or make mistakes which simply could be easily prevented, then there is a problem. And that is what we have in Europe today.
That doesn’t mean that the “know-it-all” system we have here in the “Colonies” is perfect. People do make mistakes. But, there is a human factors double check between the Captain and the Dispatcher. Critical safety information is given to the crews much more effectively, and far fewer operational mistakes are made.
But you guys still have the best wine and food.
Best Regards
Kellmark

[Lauderdale]

For what its worth:

Kellmark - as far as good posts go that was one of the best I have read in this particular forum.

And before anyone jumps on the bandwagon - i am referring to the style of the post rather than the substance (I will leave that for another day).

It invites postive contribution (isnt that what CRM is all about?) - and that I applaud!


BTW Kellmark, I will be down your neck of the woods in a few weeks time to meet up with E.M. in FLL for some EWINS training! Hope the <29.92 systems behave while I am down there!

[kellmark]

Lauderdale;
Thanks for your comments.
If you are going to be in the area, drop me an e-mail/PM and maybe we can have a visit.
Best Regards
Kellmark

[Schibulsky]

Hi Professor,
If I am not sure of what I am talking about I would just shut up. But nice you noticed it!
Anyway, I baited you with some keywords and you took it "Hook Line and Sinker"!!!
When I changed my experience yesterday to "been there, done it, got the T-shirt" I told my friends "it should be obvious that its a joke, but
some dude will definetely go for it!!"
And VOILA looks like you took it for my CV.
You REALLY have to relax a bit, hope your students are not putting you off balanced so easily!!
So I will just ignore the rest of the yadda yadda and get back to the original problem.
I am really interested in the Maersk report because now the "outdated" wx info suddenly changed to "current" info!!
Just to give you an insight how a LBA trained Dispatcher would have handled the problem I tell you the options I would have tried.
If the wx was indeed current but not the last available, I always try to get that latest info, especially in December!!!
Your system doesnt have it, try your local met guys. No Have, try the CPH station. No have, try the CPH WX guys. Call SAS Dispatch,
call any other dispatch office BUT call around for f... sake. There are also a lot of WX data services to try.
In Europe there is always a way to get the latest info! But instead they went with the "current" wx, BIG mistake!
And I would bet some money that the "current" wx already showed some **** wx anyway!.
What about having a looky looky at the wx map or the surrounding Airports! What did the actual wx at CPH say?
The whole story stinks of sloppy dispatch!!
And you still keep mixing up JAR Ops and the REALITY in Europe.
Now I am telling YOU a little secret: not even 10% of the european airlines are working acc to JAR-OPS.
In our office the JAR-OPS Folders were accumulating dust in some corner. The LBA (german aviation authority) still ask for the license,
you know the one with half a year full time course at the Lufthansa Pilot School AND half a year training at an airline dispatch!!!
And on top of that most airlines have internal regulations that demands a licensed dispatcher, you can be sure that in the future
the pilots associations and Flight safety of the airlines are having an eye on that!!!
AND the established airlines have all a monitoring system implemented.
Its like the US has changed to the metric system in the late 70s. Ask a guy on the street in Oklahoma City how long his dick is in centimetres,
he will have no clue and will most probably lie to you anyway.
And to be honest, I also regard the JAR-OPS as complete BS in a lot of areas including Dispatch!!
BUT if you really trust the chinese control mechanism that much, go to ToysrUs and buy your Kids some nice chinese toys!!!

[Lauderdale]

Off course, LBA dispatchers have a 100% safety record and are generally regarded as the best in the world.....

And yes we have fairies in our back garden as well......

[Schibulsky]

Who said that?? Talking about one group of dispatcher doesn't automatically disqualify the others. Like Kellmark is doing with his famous China/JAR comparison. BTW most of the chinese toys even glow in the dark!!
Lauderdale, the only contribution you made so far was whining about my style, slobbering all over Kellmark about his brilliant post and asking the admin to censor me!!!
Just TRY to add something that has some value or even some facts!

[merlinxx]

Schbulski, Lauderdale at al

If all else fails, as it has in times past, I have one of my folks always have wunderground idle, some times their Metar updates beat some other databases, even ours! Also great for historical metars.

[boredcounter]

K

Cheers,
Can I take you up on the offer of the email copy of the report?
I will PM you my personal e-mail address.
Bored

[kellmark]

Schibulsky
You are, I must admit, amazing. You are the gift that keeps on giving. You keep giving me opportunity after opportunity.
To you it is about “baiting”. You seem to think that I don’t give you credit for your background and experience. I just figured that this is your usual way of expressing yourself, not that you had no background or experience. When I say that I admire and respect your background, I actually mean it. But you don’t seem capable of figuring that out. And the “baiting” thing, it strikes me as a bit of schadenfreude. But it shows two things. One, that you are more than willing to falsify something as a “tactic” to try to “win” an argument, and that two, if that is the case, then the argument itself you are making must be weak. When you falsify something intentionally, it affects your credibility on everything else that you say. And I can get a joke. In fact some would say that I have a decent sense of humor. I do get a chuckle every time I see one of your responses. You also seem to think that this whole discussion is about who “wins” and that it must be you, so you look good to your friends. To me it is not about that. It is about whether or not the European system of operational control/dispatch is a safe system, or more accurately, could it be made safer? To me the answer is clearly yes. To you, it seems not.
You make some pretty wild claims. In effect, that in the future in Europe the pilot’s associations and the airlines will require additional licensing. Show me where the European Cockpit Association has ever supported licensing for dispatchers. I am not aware of any such support. Show me where the Association of European Airlines has ever advocated Flight Dispatcher licensing? I can assure you that they have not.
The direction in some places is going in the opposite direction .For example, the Swedish CAA are actually looking at eliminating the flight dispatcher license. Countries are moving away from their own CAA requirements and more towards JAA/EASA, which have no licensing, training or flight watch.
You are correct about the LBA license in Germany. It is well respected and some would say superior to the FAA license. But you don’t talk about the rest of the package. Europe is a patchwork regarding flight dispatch licensing. Some countries, such as Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Iceland, etc do require licensing. But few or none of them actually require a positive flight watch on all transport flights, whether short or long haul. And you leave out two of the big ones. France and the UK have absolutely no licensing requirement whatsoever. And they are very significant.
You talk about what an LBA dispatcher would have done with Maersk. But Maersk wasn’t a German operation in any way. And you talk about getting the weather. But you fail to state how it would be delivered to the aircraft enroute. Many carriers in Europe don’t even have ACARS, or a VHF system of communication for enroute information by the air carrier to the crew. They depend on ATC. That is what happened with Maersk. That is also what happened with Swiss in Berlin, when they crashed there in bad weather, running out of fuel. No ACARS and no flight watch/monitoring system.
You say that “all the established airlines have a monitoring system implemented”. That is simply not true. I have been to a number of European Ops/Dispatch Offices, and the vast majority of them that I have seen are basically flight planning functions. Those that do have a “monitoring” system usually have no one actually assigned to tell the crew anything or warn them and it is not a focus for them. There are a few that have good systems, (KLM comes to mind as an excellent one), but most do not. I don’t believe that any of the large LCC carriers such as Ryanair and Easyjet have flight watch either, and they have become a high percentage of operations. They are certainly “established “ now.
Even with the German system, all of the finest training and licensing in the world won’t plug the hole. You must know about Hapag Lloyd and the A310 that ran out of fuel and crashed at Vienna, destroying the aircraft? That was a German carrier. And before you go and blame it all on the crew, which is easy to do, let me explain another part of the story. The crew on that flight not only made a poor judgment to continue with the gear locked down past a number of good airports (Zagreb, for example) and ran out of fuel in the air, they also used the wrong gear down airspeed, of 270K IAS instead of 240K which used more fuel. In the US there was an exact parallel, where an A300 also had the gear locked down after takeoff, and after consulting with the dispatcher, continued on toward the destination with the gear down. But they had agreed to check with the dispatcher half way to the destination to see how they were doing. They did and they were using more fuel, but the dispatcher found that they also were using the wrong speed, and advised them to slow down. They did, the fuel consumption reduced, and the flight made it to its destination with reserve fuel. Also, the US dispatcher could have told the crew that they must land earlier, and could not continue. Everything that the US crew did was agreed to and checked by the dispatcher the whole way, but he could have stopped the flight in the event that it would be unsafe to continue. Hapag Lloyd never had that kind of support. They made a number of errors. And they crashed. And the German Captain was criminally prosecuted. The US crew flew the next day as normal. The US system requires licensing and training of dispatchers, ground to air communications systems with the flight for the entire route, a positive flight watch/monitoring system and joint responsibility between the Captain and the Dispatcher. No European system has this. But a number of others have adopted it, including the Chinese.
You make fun of the Chinese toy problems and recalls. Brilliant move. I got a kick out of it. But you failed to note something. We are comparing airline operational control systems, not toys. And, since the Chinese have adopted the US system, I can’t think of any of their aircraft that have run out fuel and crashed. But European flights have. And that is not a joke.
But I do have a joke for you.
Yadda yadda is not an argument.
Best Regards
Kellmark
Boredcounter;
Happy to. Just check my profile and e-mail me.

[Schibulsky]

Hi Kelly, old chap!
Please try to limit the post to 20 lines max. You are really testing the attention span of my old brain!
And I did not know that you also got a degree in Psychology!?!? Hope your diagnosis is free of charge.
Anyway I dont give a rats ass about winning something on an open forum. And the baiting thing is only to keep it from getting boring.
Who will bother reading our posts when there isnt some spice in it. But please dont mix it up with falsifying, thats hurting me!!
You also seems to read my posts selectively, did you see that one where I admitted that actually JAR Ops is lots of BS??
And I do know that the Vereinigung Cockpit (german pilots association) is definetely supporting proper licensing just to get the best possible
dispatch performance. After all, they are a lazy bunch, so they want US to do all the work.
And its not a secret that the Airlines itself are not promoting licensing, these beancounters are only interested in keeping the costs low.
Talking about costs, please do not call LCC like RyanAir or Easyjet "established" Airlines. Best possible Dispatch is not on their agenda anyway.
You did not get the point that I am also criticising the trend towards the JAR-OPS for just profit optimization!
Back to Maersk; I did talk about getting the WX and I indeed said how to deliver it: AT THE BRIEFING!!!!
BEFORE the **** hits the fan, BEFORE they f... up with the final fuel order!!!
To Hapag at Vienna: They were in contact with the dispatch in Hannover all the time. The System used by Hapag did not support inflt calculation with gear down.
And the Capt was resistant to any reason, even from the FO, kind of old age stubborness.
Thats why he got convicted and the FO, to my knowledge, was aquitted later on.
But PLEASE I do not need a computer to figure out that the fuel consumption easily doubles with gear down. Thats covered in Performance 101.
Anyway I probably was projecting the good conditions at the Lufthansa Group onto Europe in general.
And please, especially after the "Toy Story", do not put too much trust in ANY chinese control mechanism, thats a bit naive!!
Lets just agree for now that both systems could be improved and that the trend to maximize profit is going to f... up flight safety in the future!
I am going on vacation tomorrow so I cannot entertain this forum for a while, you have to get your chuckles from somewhere else.
But I really enjoyed having this little "fight"
Cheers Schibulsky

[Lauderdale]

Was that Shibulsky admitting that he actually was wrong??

Shibulsky that makes you a better man! Well done!

[Schibulsky]

Lauderdale, didn't I ask you to contribute something with value?
.......?....? Nothing????

please....

[kellmark]

Schibulsky. Or should I say "Schiby"? Or "Schuby"?. Or "Ski"? Naah. I think I'll stick to Schibulsky.

I just have one line for you.

FLIGHT WATCH.

I hope you have a great vacation. I also will be traveling from tomorrow for a little while.

Thanks for the "chuckles".

Best Regards.
Kellmark