How many crew

[rob39]

Hi all
So flying from a regional airport say Prestwick for instance (nearest to me)
An airline with 1 aircraft B738 flying 2 destinations per day. How many crew would be required to fulfil the schedule.

Mon PIK- FOA - PIK - AGP - PIK
Tue PIK - TFE - PIK - ALC - PIK
Wed PIK - LPA - PIK -PMi - PIK
Thu PIK - FUE - PIK - AGP - PIK
Fri PIK - ACE - PIK - FOA - PIK
Sat PIK - TFE - PIK - ALC - PIK
Sun PIK - LPA - PIK - PMi - PIK

[sarnold]

Assuming minimal crewing. I would say 6 sets of flight crew / 5 sets of cabin crew. Assuming 1 early crew, 1 late crew. 2 crews on days off. 1 standby crew. 1 crew usually in SIM or any other ground related task.
6 CP / 6 FO / 20 CC.

[Denti]

Interesting, as most in the industry calculate with a blanket 5 crew per shorthaul aircraft factor. Some do even get away with 4 crews, but that is usually with somewhat less dense operations. But i suppose the difference is that standby coverage for just one aircraft might skew that a lot, whereas in a fleet one standby crew is usually covering for quite a lot more than just one aircraft. Although EASA FTL really requires two sets of standby crews to cover a whole day.

[cumbrianboy]

Generally as rule we'd work on 5.5 sets of crew per aircraft. So for a single aircraft base, 6. That way 2 sets early, 2 late, 2 days off.

So, for a 738 you need 2 pilots and a min of 4 cabin crew to be legal, so that's 6 lots of 6 so 36 in total. Plus you'll need to allow for base captain and base cabin crew duties. The. There's engineering cover, but that depends how the airline fulfils line maintenance.

As the number of aircraft increases you get back to 5.5 or even 5 sets as you don't need as many standby sets.

Remember you have to have a standby crew as well as an operating crew in order to be fully covered.

[Peter47]

I have three further questions on standby crews someone may be able to answer:

What level of standby - if any - would a legacy carrier have down the route with overnighting crews (obviously not applicable to the example here).

What level of standby is required at bases and would crew actually be physically present or be available to be called in? If crew are present how long can they remain before going out of hours? Would BA for example need a new standby 747 crew every few hours. Presumably you can't hang around from the first flight of the day to the last.

Could a captain cover for a FO?

[kenparry]

Down route cover: usually none at a minor destination, perhaps one crew at a major one.

At bases: some carriers will have crew on airport standby, but it's more usual to be at home with a nominated time within which to report.

Captain cover for an F/O: only if the Capt is current to fly from the right seat, which is normally the case only for trainers.

[WindSheer]

The UK airlines I used to work for used 6 per a/c.

Captains that were certified right hand seat could fly as FO. This used to get rostered quite often during winter and caused some discomfort for both pilots - understandably.