Confidential Human Factors
Incident Reporting Programme
The Charity
Aviation
Maritime
CC6572
Initial Report
We had an incident where two crew members were not fit for flight two hours before check out in AAA.
We thought we would need to stay or not be able to operate the flight back as we were 8 cabin crew reduced to 6. The manual said it was a minimum of 7 cabin crew on the aircraft that we flew back on. It also mentioned about it being 50 pax per crew member. We had around 230 passengers.
We got told that it had been approved by the UK CAA to fly back with this amount of crew.
We had check out delayed and flight delayed by around two hours while this was being decided.
The flight went okay but safety wise this didn’t feel that great. If anything were to go wrong there was a lot less of us to evacuate or deal with emergency/medical situations.
CAA Comment
It is permissible to operate with less than the minimum number of cabin crew in unforeseen circumstances when away from an operating base. The procedure is required to be described in the operations manual and should specify revised allocation of duties for normal and emergency operating procedures and the maximum number of passengers permitted to be carried. The number of passengers may be restricted by the reduced number of cabin crew (i.e. one cabin crew member for every 50 or fraction of 50 passengers carried). If the flight in question was operated with six cabin crew and 230 passengers this is in accordance with ORO.CC.205, however it is necessary to ensure that an equivalent level of safety can be achieved with the reduced number of cabin crew.
CHIRP Comment
The operator’s manual (OM) should contain a process for reducing the crew complement in certain situations and these dispensations are all about managing risk. The flight reported operated in accordance with the regulations and if the OM stated so, may have been reduced further by one more crew member (230 passengers to 5 crew).
After an event such as this, a Mandatory Occurrence Report (MOR) must be completed by the flight crew to advise the CAA of the event.
‘Unforeseen’ allows an operator to return an aeroplane to a base from a layover/turnaround destination (where a replacement cabin crew member is not available) this is for unforeseen circumstances only and not for ‘planned’ or a known eventuality where-by the operator has time to position a replacement crew member.
ORO.CC.205 Reduction of the number of cabin crew members during ground operations and in unforeseen circumstances…
(b) By way of derogation from point (a), the minimum number of cabin crew members may be reduced in either of the following cases:
(1) during normal ground operations not involving refuelling or defuelling when the aircraft is at its parking station;…
(3) at least one cabin crew member is required for every 50, or fraction of 50, passengers present on the same deck of the aircraft;…
For the full regulations please click on this link ORO.CC.205 Reduction of the number of cabin crew members during ground operations and in unforeseen circumstances (caa.co.uk)