Dropline wrote...

Unfortunately that is the nature of aviation safety. It is a tombstone industry. I for one am happy in the knowledge that all of our dispatchers, whilst not necessarily system trained, are ALL manually weight and balance trained so I can send someone out to a flight knowing full well that they know what they are doing. Dispatch used to be such a respected position. I remember a day not that long ago when flight decks looked to us as THE decision making authority whilst at the gate. Now the position is so watered down that flight decks these days just assume that every person who enters their flight decks claiming to be a "dispatcher" are in fact just paperwork monkeys.

How does it save money? It seems your employing 2 people to do one persons job - plus renting some office space for the clc hub, can someone explain ( i might just be thick ) - Anyway CLC does tend to slow things down a little, although it doesn't bother me, i do however think the TRC / dispatcher or what ever we are called these days should have a good weight and balance knowledge, i have have many glaring errors by CLC from various airlines, from incorrect aircraft to missing ULDs and so on, its just fortunate i picked them up, ( would hate to see the ones i have missed) - by the way, i make mistakes too,
The fool is not the one who makes mistakes, but the one who never makes mistakes.

Whats this European fetish with having so called dispatchers or basically ramp coordinators at an aircraft?
US airlines have safely operated for decades without such a position.

I too know this airline, and to be honest it is one of the most user friendly systems out there which can be used by clc and/or dispatcher.

where i work, there have been so many delays/issues over the past few years on clc flights that simply would not have happened if we were making the loadsheet/Load instruction ourselves.

-jd

A properly trained dispatcher is expensive. Its a licensed job which means fairly extensive training/revalidation etc. Because of the nature of 'traditional' dispatch, a trained dispatcher/load controller needs to be present at every single aircraft on departure, this ties them up for a substantial amount of time, the best part of an hour from start to finish on a normal turnaround. This means that for large operations a large number of dispatchers are required.

If you think of BA back in the day, the number of dispatchers required for T1, T3 and T4 would have probably run into the hundreds (somebody correct me if not!). These 'Red Caps' earnt a fair amount of money and would have cost BA a significant amount - I've not been to LHR/LGW for a looong time, are they still around?

CLC allows one person to do the load control for multiple flights at any one time, they sit in front of their computers all day producing loadplans/loadsheets and the associated gubbins. They don't have to worry about pesky passengers/loaders/flight crew etc - just the loadsheets! This allows them to complete many many more flights than a traditional dispatcher would ever be able to ,under a similar license with similar training.

This means less licensed staff need to be employed, with monkeys (TRCs) running the paperwork around!

Yes, i agree, dispatch is not what it should be in the UK now, but what do you expect when GH companies are paying us £7.25 an hour?

The role of dispatch is what it is now because of cost cutting measures.

Yep, still there earning the big bucks, but they're now called "TRM's" but without the responsibility of loadsheets !!

So Trm's at BA earn big money without doing loadsheets ?
Loadsheets are done at Waterside or whatever that place is called ?
so that means that 2 people are being paid to do what one person could do ? doesn't seem to make much sense, particulary as Mr WW is trying to trim down the cost base at BA :ugh:

On the subject of CLC i know of several airlines handled by GHA where trained Load controllers are at the aircraft calling or telexing CLC on the other side of the world yet actually looking at the system themselves and knowing what's going on before the CLC bod does.

So tell me what benefits are gained if for example Cargo is late at the aircraft which often happens at LHR and the Ramp want to change the loading order, if the TCO or dispatcher or whatever you want to call them understands weight and balance then they have to call CLC yet if they were doing the Loadsheet they would make the decision., which is quicker ? which is more time consuming ?
I really think this is a pointless discussion and it is clear which is the answer.

That said and before anyone puts foward the costing argument, i have been on both sides as a load controller and an Operations Manager and i agree that CLC is better for training where GHA's are concerned but if your Load Control office has a mix of CLP flights and Loadsheet flights etc then it balances out.

The real cost saver is to use a generic system for all contracts you handle something like D-Plan (which is load control for idiots)

There are good and bad Handling agents, there are good and bad CLC’s there are good and bad agents in both environments.

Fact, there are no turn round coordinators in the US and the aircraft leave on time and dont crash because of misloads.

Fact, if everyone did their job on time there would be no need for a TRC

Fact, the quality of Dispatch staff in the UK has fallen in the last 20 years OVERALL, again there are good and bad staff.

In my view more and more full service airlines will start to move to CLC especially if they are using a vertically integrated package like the Amadeus system for all their flights. There are clear benefits in cost and experience*. There will be a number of airlines who will not do so, especially the charter airlines who don’t need the functionality and therefore cost of these new generation systems.

It remains to be seen if the handlers will all chose to move to CLC or not, I know Servisair have but I don’t know about the others. In my view if there is a cost saving then they will move to the CLC concept if not then they wont.

*At the risk of being flamed using the following scenario that saw in a presentation recently

An airline flying to 50 destinations three times a day using the airlines system which requires 5 days system training

Costs benefits
In a decentralised environment that is
• 200 staff to be trained and a total of 1000 training days
• 200 flights to a training location
• 1000 nights in a Hotel.

In a centralised environment
• 10 staff to be trained
• Training at the CLC so only the trainer needs Hotac and Travel
experience

total savings 95%

In a decentralised environment assuming a 4 and 2 roster the load controller will complete about 250 loadsheets for this airline. In a centralised environment the 10 load controllers will clock up about 5,000 load sheets per year. This is 19 years of experience more than the decentralised load controller every year. The centralised load controllers performance can be monitored a lot closer in the single location that the 200 staff at 50 different airports and to quote a famous CEO, what gets measured gets managed.

STN Ramp Rat.

I must say that from a management perspective that's a very persuasive argument and i have to agree with most of what you say and the facts you state are also known to be true.

From a training perspective and on a financial basis CLP would undoubtedely be a major cost saver, however we live in the real world and whilst i accept that the skill of weight and balance trained load controllers / dispatchers or whatever you call them is a dying art and the job is now filled with untrained wannabes who have a high opinion of themselves.

That said there are still a large number of Major airlines who at present are not using CLP.

Just a few examples at LHR include the likes of Gulf Air, Etihad, Malaysian, Jet Airways, Kingfisher, Alitalia, Iberia, Thai but to name a few.
The GHA's handling these airlines obviously in there departments have people who can do loadsheets and these people would also have to become TC's for otherairlines who use CLP.

Therefore Aviance, Alitalia (CAI), Servisair & Cobalt have to employ staff to perform both functions.

Finally back to my initial question where is the cost saving for BA the TRM's obviously still earn big bucks for doing less functions although i presume they monitor Health & Safety.......
So presuming we are talking about the same CEO what is being managed or measured here ?

That's one thing that bugs me, and I've been in the position many many many times before where I know exactly what needs to be done, I know the entry, and I know it'll be safe. But I've had to phone CLC to get them to do it. It's frustrating for the TRC, however I'd say it was one of the more minor niggles about working at our place!

However it gives the most airlines the excuse to put TRC/Ms on lower money despite their knowledge and (previous) responsibilities.

Pretty impressive stuff! However I'm sure the savings aren't quite that huge :ok:

That is why with a decent CLC, I think can overall make an operation safer.

If you have well trained TRCs to be the interface between 'real world' and 'CLC world' and spot the errors therein, and well trained CLC agents doing good quality load control, problems are overall less common in a CLC environment.

Of course if you have a crap TRC and crap CLC agent, that's a disaster waiting to happen. Errors will be more common and potentially more dangerous. With the ruthless cost-cutting in the industry over the past few years, it (to me) is an area of worry, which needs constant attention paid to it by the CAA to ensure adherence to standards and regulations.

I agree, we are in a period of transition that will last a few more years and some airlines will not change systems in any case. there will still be skilled decentralised load controllers just like there are still skilled loadmasters on Cargo Aircraft, its just there are less of them now than they used to be.

I totally agree, there should be a CAA Load Control qualification just as there are CAA qualifications for pilots and Mechanics. it is silly to have the captian sign a statement that the aircraft is loaded in accordance with the company manuals. I doubt most B747 captains could find their way round the hold let alone know if the aircraft is loaded in accordance with the manual