By: Rod Pickin

Rod Pickin — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 05:59:26 +0000

I am mindful of the effort, investigation and concerns that airlines are putting into the welfare and safety of pax and crew concerning ULH flights, all congratulations to them for so doing but the advances in technology has allowed the reduction of crew numbers in particular Tech Crew due to what they say is work load redundancy and this fact concerns me. The skipper of that BA B747 that had a 4 engine flame out over Indonesia (and the crews’ magnificent skill in overcoming that potential disaster) is on record as saying that had the aircraft been a B747-400 with only two tech crew, no FEO, he was not confident that a similar positive outcome would have occured. Similarly, I wonder if the bulked up Tech Crew, all Capts. on the ill fated QF32 ex SIN assisted that wonderful result. The published workload of the FO can only be described as persistently constant and clearly had the crew nos been down to the normal 3, there may have been a problem, thankfully not. As for the boys and girls down the back truly there is little let up, there is always someone pressing that call button somewhere needing their attention and that is on top of the planned workload so with an augmented crew rather than a double crew I do see potential problems for their health in the long term. I can also see the views of the bean counters concerning a double crew not forgetting the extra weight on what are critical operational legs. It is more than likely that we will have these ULH flights so we must remember when crewing them, cater for the worst case otherwise you might end up with one. As for the punter down the back of the bus, expect to pay more, these will be premium flights so forget about ECY prices.

Comments on: Sleepy outlook for cabin crew on ultra-long haul flights

By: Rod Pickin