Reduced Cabin Crew so Passengers Left Behind
 

My sister in law just returned from Geneva. Apparently one of the cabin crew was injured on the outbound flight so for the return flight passenger numbers had to be reduced.
Would this be for covering the exits (in case of Emergency Evac) or would it just be for passenger service?

It's to do with safety, not service. Operating with reduced crew is fairly rare. It's just a way of getting back to base to get crew. Unfortunately it means some pax may get left behind but it's often a choice of that's or a severe delay or cancellation.

Thanks HM. I remember now - so many passengers per cabin crew for safety.

Usually 50 pax per CC iirc

Its treated the same as having a door unserviceable, passenger numbers are reduced to what's allowed with an exit unavailable. Basically it's a get you home solution and can't be used at a base where replacement crew could be called out.

I guess depending upon the country of registration of the aircraft but in UK, and other countries, the rule is based upon the number of fitted seats and not the number of bums occupying those seats.

So, as an example, a 148 seater with only 50 passengers requires a minimum of 3 cabin crew.

Yes, it varies from country to country.

According to ICAO SARPS (Annex 6):

"An operator shall establish, to the satisfaction of the State of the Operator, the minimum number of cabin crew required for each type of aeroplane, based on the seating capacity or the number of passengers, in order to effect a safe and expeditious evacuation of the aeroplane and the necessary functions to be performed in an emergency or a situation requiring emergency evacuation."

For example, a theoretical aircraft seats 154. It needs four cabin crew wether it has 1 passenger or 154 passengers.

If a crew member goes sick, you're limited to 150 passengers for a flight only to get you back to a crew base. The crew member then gets replaced or in exceptional circumstances, the four seats get turned into tables. The additional 4 passengers get offloaded. So you have 154 seats, 150 passengers and 3 cabin crew.

In normal ops its 1 per 50 seats. If your crew member goes sick and you're not at a crew base, then you can reduce the crew by 1 to get the ratio of 1 crew member per 50 passengers.

There is occasionally a further restriction on some aircraft types associated with doors i.e. all doors (or door pairs) that are required to be manned must be so. Going back to my 757 days, you could never have less than 4 crew, whatever the pax load - 4 pairs of doors, none of which were overwing/self operating type.

Back in my DC10 days 8 doors = 8 cabin crew

Re the previous two posts, I believe the regulation in some jurisdictions (Australia rings a bell, for example, though I may be wrong) is:

Narrow-bodies: one cabin crew member per pair of (opposite) doors

Wide-bodies: one cabin crew member per door

Can anyone confirm ?

You're asking that I stretch my memory back some 35 years but as I recall, for a 345, indeed 380, seater DC10 the normal minimum was 8 cabin crew (for 8 doors) but I seem to recall that when the :mad: hit the fan, dependent upon the 1 per 50 rule, we could operate with less but the pax needed to be seated away from the inoperable door(s).

I have just talked again to sister in law and she says it was 120 or 130 passengers with some left behind because they were a cabin crew member short. The mystery deepens?
She doesn't know what aircraft type but it was GVA - LHR.

If we knew the airline we might work out the aircraft type and calculate accordingly. As for her guesstimate of passengers actually on board, I would respectfully question it's accuracy unless she counted them all.

Presumably BA on GVA-LHR, hard to imagine that Swiss would start a rotation with one crew member down.

True! Suffering from cough virus and brain not fully engaged today! :O

Take an A320 for instance. Minimum crew is 4. If a crew member is sick or injured downroute then there is a special dispensation to reduce crew compliment by one but only if pax figure is reduced to max 150. This dispensation can only be permitted away from a crew base.

For an A319, and presumably a 320 too, three crew operation (1 crew member per 50 pax) is permitted but max capacity of 150.

This is the case in the UK anyway.

The A319 configuration that BA use on non-domestic routes has 123 seats (and therefore presumably three cabin crew) so one crew member down would allow only 100 passengers.

More likely to have been an A320 or a 177-seat A321.

Of course if the OP's sister could remember the the date/time of her flight, we would know for sure. :O

Sister in law was pretty certain it was 120 or 130 so I was puzzled as I was expecting the 1 per 50 rule. She is off to Rome now so I will check with her when she gets back - or maybe she will get some info from the Rome bound crew.
She did say there was a pilot (presumably dedheading) sitting at the front of the business(?) section. I see in the rumours section a pilot did the safety briefing on a 747.
I wonder if necessary you could have a spare pilot make up the 1 in 50 rule.

If the crew compliment was three (I don't think any BA mainline flight has 3 crew) then you cannot reduce to 2 crew. 3 on a A319/320 is the absolute minimum. Any less, you aren't going anywhere.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but as silly as it may seem, I don't think a pilot can operate as cabin crew without some sort of extra training. Their SEP training is abbreviated and refreshed infrequently. In a reduced crew scenario however it would be prudent of the cabin crew to ensure he/she was sat at an exit.

Given the airline specific context of this thread (BA) can please stop that rumour in it's tracks, for BA at least?

BA Flight Crew I believe ;) do SEP renewal: e.g. door operation ( manual and automatic etc,) slides, lifejackets, etc etc etc much the same as the Cabin Crew and just like the cabin crew it's normally done annually. No idea how other companies handle it.

OTOH BA Flight Crew don't do the annual medical training/refresher the BA Cabin crew do, but they do some annual Flight Crew specialist stuff the cabin Crew don't do.

easyflyer

Granted.................................

That's the whole point of the alleviation, to operate with less than minimum crew. At least at my previous and present company.

Chesty Morgan. At the airlines I've worked for, operating the A319/320 with just two crew members would not be permitted. Minimum crew has been four with an alleviation to lower that to three in order to get back to base.

Wiggy, I think you might have needlessly got your boxers in a twist over my comments. I said forgive me if I'm wrong because I wasn't 100% sure. But if BA pilots know the cabin/passenger emergency drills and shout commands (the most cabin crew specific SEP training) then genuine kudos to BA for training their pilots to that level. I don't recollect that being the case at my former BA franchise carrier mind.

I've got nothing in a twist at all but TBF you yourself did say you weren't sure about SEP for pilots but then nevertheless went on to make a definitive statement re. pilots, i.e. "Their SEP training is abbreviated and refreshed infrequently". I was merely pointing out that certainly in the context of BA (subject of this thread) that statement was inaccurate.

FWIW they do, commands covered/checked/shouted in the annual check on door drills and also in some of the CRM exercises done jointly with the cabin crew during SEP checking/revalidation.

That said I have no idea of the FCOM/Ops manual requirement for Minimum crew on BA's Airbuses, so back to the thread.........

in UK at BMA it was always for narrow bodied a/c 50 pax per one CC

If you look at all the small commuter propellor aeroplanes like the jetstream 31, bandierante, twin otter, saab fairchild metro liner, beach kingair, etc etc, They were all configured to carry 19 pax as it meant they were not required have cabin crew, if they had 20 seats they would have required a flight attendant and would have cut in to operating profits.

yup Brymon days in their otter from LGW to BHX was one pilot one hostie and up to 19 pax

Standard crew complement at BA for the A319 is 3. This can be reduced to 2 with the corresponding reduction in passengers. If the Club cabin goes over certain numbers (this varies depending on the length of flight), an additional crew member is carried. BA A319s have either 143 seats (legacy BA) or 144 seats (legacy bmi).