CC6468 - On-time departure pressures put on SCCMs
Initial Report
Boarded the aircraft following the company’s SOP to ensure we departed on time. Caterers were still loading, we were unable to start boarding due to the safety implications of trolleys and canisters blocking emergency exits. During our SEP/Security checks, one crew member immediately informed me that a forward stowage was faulty and they couldn’t complete their security check. I asked for an engineer to attend to fix the stowage. The engineer arrived very early on and fixed the issue enabling my crew member to conduct their security check. We started boarding which was slow at first due to boarding lots of PRM pax and the flight being nearly full.
Once I checked into my hotel after a long duty day I was greeted by an email from the office asking me to explain why we had a 4-minute delay which had been attributed to cabin crew. Followed by another email requesting for me to call into the office again to explain why I had 2 delays attributed to the cabin crew. Both were due to safety issues and I spent lots of my rest period trying to find out why this flight had a delay put down to the cabin crew, it transpired that it was because I had asked for engineering support. This practice can potentially cause SCCM to cut corners and think twice about asking for engineering support. Please note this is added to our files and could have detrimental consequences to SCCMs moving forward.
comments
Company Comment
When cabin crew related delay reports are received, the cabin crew management and operations team are keen to learn the events and reasons that led to the flight departing after the target time. The cabin crew management and operations team were contacted and a copy of the email communication that is sent to crew was reviewed.
It states:
- There is no obligation to reply on a day off.
- The communication is not positioned as a performance issue.
- The communication seeks to understand ‘what happened’ to allow a review of the process and prevent recurrence. It also identifies if crew require support – there are no punitive actions associated with the follow up.
There are many factors that contribute to on-time performance, it’s important that as a team we continue to engage, learn and deliver improvement.
Action has already been implemented from the responses already received. The team have received many responses to date. So far, changes have been made to some report times for more challenging flights and at stations where there is a long transit time through the airport. These adjustments will help crew complete their pre-flight safety and security checks in the time provided.
CHIRP Comment
CHIRP was advised that some of the points in the company comment have only recently been included in the internal communications, these changes may have been as a result of internal reporting.
It is commercially important that operators monitor timings, this reporter’s concerns however are related to the communication between the reporter and the company. Whatever your safety concerns are please report them to your operator, without reports and the data gathered from these reports other internal teams cannot make the appropriate/required changes/improvements. The more information you can include in your report the better, if a report doesn’t contain any information then contact from the management team is usually to establish delay codes. As stated in the company comment above there are no punitive actions associated with the follow up.