The minimum number of Cabin Crew required to operate an aircraft is determined by each airline’s national regulator. While one Cabin Crew member per door is not a hard and fast rule exactly, it is probably a pretty good approximation.
For the maximum number of Cabin Crew, count the number of Cabin Attendant Seats, also known as jump seats.
I wonder if in theory there is nothing to stop an airline boarding additional crew for an extra-attentive service and having them occupy passenger seats? Answers on a post card…
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A solid airline Cabin Crew management process has seven ingredients:
1. Planning – figuring out how many crew are needed at a given point in time
2. Rostering – assigning specific people to specific flights
3. Crew tracking – so the airline can understand where crew are in real time
4. Reporting – notifying operations managers, dispatchers and gate agents when crew arrive ready for duty
5. Logbook – helping crew record all their duty hours
6. Change management – for example, operating a flight when a rostered crew member reports sick
7. Route bidding – helping crew fly where they want to fly, subject to priority rules covering seniority and operational requirements
The systems need to focus on legality – ensuring that Cabin Crew do not exceed their permitted hours and that all flights are appropriately staffed. They also need an element of flexibility to facilitate recovery in times of disruption.
But there is also a cost management element – a crew management system needs to incorporate the cost of overstays, deadheading and crew staying in hotels vs crew returning to their home base into it’s decisions.
I think there is an opportunity for a startup in the crew management software field to integrate Revenue Management (RM) demand forecasts in real-time into the planning and rostering stages.
The idea is that airlines who are able to use RM forecasts can allocate crew further in advance and more efficiently to flights that are lightly or more heavily loaded, and flights that generate higher or lower revenue.
For example, flights that are expected to be lightly loaded may need fewer crew. Flights that are expected to be higher revenue may be an opportunity for airlines to deploy their most highly skilled and Cabin Crew to deliver the best service possible.
It would have to be the type of startup that is looking to create something to sell on rather than transform the industry. The current vendors may not be too far off.
Do current Cabin Crew management systems really need to integrate an RM forecast?
Existing Cabin Crew applications help crew understand real-time passenger information. Think the iPads that you see crew holding on an increasingly large number of airlines.
These show loyalty status (used for meal priority), plus anything the airline knows about a passenger’s preferences or typical service requests.
Such information is made available to Cabin Crew in “real-time”, but are in many ways a digital daughter of the old Passenger Information List that you can see printed out and pinned to wall somewhere in the galley. They are defined at the time of the flight, when things are controlled by airport Departure Control Systems (DCS).
Integrating an RM forecast into crew planning and management software would take place at an earlier stage, when things elsewhere in the airline are handled by the Computer Reservation System (CRS).
It is unlikely that a crew planning and management system would interface with CRS directly to roster according to forecast load and revenue. It would interface directly with RM.
Why might a real-time RM forecast be helpful for Cabin Crew planning?
I think there are seven potential benefits of incorporating RM forecasts in Cabin Crew planning and management. Together they are a pathway to dynamic and variable crew rostering that flex staffing around demand and regulatory requirements, in the same way that RM flexes availability around a capacity constraint.
First-up is forward-looking demand-driven shaping of rosters. Far in advance, RM can flag flights or periods expected to be above normal load. This might be driven by seasonality, for example flights over Christmas being busier, but it is likely that crew planners already account for this.
More exciting is the possibility of RM telling crew planners that certain points in the year or particular flights are expected to be busier or quieter than usual. This would allow the planners to adjust their roster accordingly, potentially saving money.
