SN to Africa - one cancellation per day

[SFM]

SFY took off again today, operating SN465 (KGL - EBB)

[FlightMate]

Well, to be fair to Flanker, I think he is right when he criticizes the system in place at SN.

We were having a lot of AoG avros and BaE146 a few years ago, and we were very short of engineers.
Which is not surprising seeing as they could be better paid by working in a garage, without night shift.

good engineers, bad engineers, not the problem here. (there are good pilots, bad pilots, good managers, bad managers, even good people, bad people, all too relative of course)

But the point is: the A330 fleet is old, it will require more (and more) maintenance, and we should get the right amount of engineers to cope with it! And if we get more A330 as backup, even better. But it's easy to piss off passengers by having too many and too long delays.

[LJ]

The best thing for SN, PR wise, is to admit that there is a problem and that it needs to be fixed.

Yet another proof that you are not working in the aviation business.

And also not in PR business, because your suggestion is probably the most stupid PR idea someone will ever have had.

I hope you don't work in the PR business. The company I work for has followed your strategy and as a result was made fun of in the newspapers on on the news.... There is nothing wrong in admitting you have a problem when everubody sees you're having a problem. The only thing you have to do is to make sure that you present a solution together with mentioning the problem.

The question here was, is that SN's fault in a direct way (lacking maintenance, failed planning,...).

I don't think this can be debateable. The management takes a risk when is uses its resources (aircraft) extensively without back up. Moreover, it's the airline's decision not to hire a replacemnet plane to ensure that the schedule can be fulfilled. Thus if these things happen (and they will happen) you can say that SN management is responsible (regardless of wether or not they have a good excuse).

Look at KLM, they operate 24 year old 747's, no plans of replacing them yet, and nobody is complaining. Just very well maintained.

You're not very good with picking examples. Apart from the fact that KL is looking for a 747, they had their operational issues with the 747. The same apllies to the MD-11 which had an even worse period a few years ago. At present the can do a reliable schedule because they have ample of back up and have learned the hard way.

[Inquirer]

Just a little remark from a dull number cruncher like me:
What everybody seems to forget is that it might be perfectly acceptable to have these occasional cancelations from a business case perspective.
Sure, as aviation enthusiasts, we'd all like to see them operate on very dense schedule with as many flights as possible, all running perfectly on time, but obviously that costs money, notably for back up and redundancy.
Given the nature of their African flights (mostly ethnic traffic) and the price conscious attitude many of their passengers take, they may not be able to offset the higher costs for such additional back up and redundancy in their ticket pricing structure.
Also, I could be wrong, but cancelling a flight 24 hrs before it's scheduled to leave doesn't bring them much costs, as they can just warn everybody to stay home and rebook/refund them as they please: in fact, ironically, this can even be a cost saving in the short term as it concentrates all (remaining) passengers on fewer flights, thus increasing the load factors on the remaining flights, all while reducing the overall operating costs of the route.
Sure, passengers won't be very pleased with a schedule change, but we all know how it goes: very few will categorically refuse to consider them again if the price is right for their next flight in so many months from now, so seriously, just how big an investment can they afford to avoid occasional cancelations?
It's a genuine question nobody around here can truly answer as one would need to have access to loads of commercial data for that, but it's good to point out that it's a very valid question nevertheless and the answer might be disappointingly sobering for all those who cry loudly over what a shame it is and have offered radical advices of which they most of the times haven't considered the cost aspect, let alone the return on investment: flying a larger fleet of brand new planes may be a good technical solution, but its exactly what brought Sabena down, remember, because in the end, as good as nobody was willing to pay sufficiently extra to cover the investment in such a fleet.

[JOVAN]

Well, to be fair to Flanker, I think he is right when he criticizes the system in place at SN.

We were having a lot of AoG avros and BaE146 a few years ago, and we were very short of engineers.
Which is not surprising seeing as they could be better paid by working in a garage, without night shift.

good engineers, bad engineers, not the problem here. (there are good pilots, bad pilots, good managers, bad managers, even good people, bad people, all too relative of course)

But the point is: the A330 fleet is old, it will require more (and more) maintenance, and we should get the right amount of engineers to cope with it! And if we get more A330 as backup, even better. But it's easy to piss off passengers by having too many and too long delays.

The problem at SN is a general Belgian problem: no vision ; no plan, lack of competence, conservatism,..
Look at NMBS (safety, punctuality,..), look at the Road conditions and road safety, , look at how Mobility problems are (not) tackled,..., look at how our Patrimoine is (not) taken care of, look at how disasters are handled (Wetteren now) and how NEVER lessons are learned.
When things go wrong nobody is responsible.

Nothing was learned from Sabena disaster; more or less the same people are in charge again; company is still and will always be old fashioned, un-attractive, flying old planes, ...

Certainly many people do their best, but the problem is very Belgian: lack of good leaders, lack of top-managers. Mediocre level.

[b720]

Inquirer, I don't agree. It is indeed a huge deal, many cancelations in ashore period.
1. Africa flights not exclusively VFR, a lot of business pax. Cheapest fares in y class are very
Expensive, that's why Africa remained bread and butter of SN,maybe less today than earlier;
However flights to Luanda for instance are by far more profitable than any tatl can ever be for
SN.
2. C lass pax will never fly the same airline again if they get cancelled twice in a month! Those pax
SN - and every other carrier - desperately need. I know some who will never fly SN again long haul
After their JFK flights got cancelled back in dec/jan. they paid full fare C fares. Now they fly LX
Instead.

[FlightMate]

B270, I think inquirer has a point. How much money can SN throw in to stop the technical difficulties?
And when is it not worth investing in engineering / planes anymore? We know they haven't deep pockets.

All airlines have their fair share of technicals, but a good (or better) airline, is one that can cope with unexpected circumstances. I mean, on a JFK flight, it should be damn easy to rebook passengers on another flight departing on the same day, even if it's via FRA...
On an african flight, might be more difficult, but I hope the managers just don't think like inquirer, saying it is saving money by grouping pax on a later flight. That's how you loose frequent flyers.
If there is the option to make them go, even if it means them flying AF, that must be a priority.

[RTM]

May I point out that SN actually has a backup almost all off the time... And from june 18 on, every day. There will be an A330 down for mx every day, and this will be available as backup should the need arise. Just a matter of planning some slack into the mx, and don't take them in at the last possible moment. However, at the moment, SN is allready one 330 down, as one is in Malta for a C-check. So an AOG in this period is very inconvenient, but it can happen. Murphy's law, remember. So be fair, and accept that you cannot plan everything. Management did what it was suppost to do, and made sure that for as much as possible, there is a backup. But for a double AOG you will have to consider other things. I am sure they gave wetleasing a serious thought, as the AOG was lasting several days, but decided not to. Inquirer pointed out how that works. And no, no one involved likes this. Not SN, not its personell and definately not its customers. But you cannot plan every thing, as it just gets to expensive. You will not survive that way.

So, as from next month, operating 8 A330's, of which one will be backup. Consider that, and read the last few posts again, and decide fairly.

As for the remark that the schedule is to heavy for the fleet by Flanker... I don't get you... A while ago you were advocating the A32F to fly round the clock, and maintenance was just inconvenient. And now you turned it around... You must be a politician.

[LJ]

but I hope the managers just don't think like inquirer, saying it is saving money by grouping pax on a later flight. That's how you loose frequent flyers.

However, they already do. If you really want you can get an aircraft from another airline. However, that won't be cheap and it's better to cancel (and pay the compensation) than to do the flight with a leased aircraft. That's why it's always a management decision to cancel a flight. Fortunately we have the EU laws making sure that it will be in the interest of the airline to transport the passenger.

BTW many frequent flyers don't have an option due to either scheduling or corporate contracts and as long as don't do it too much, nobody cares (and every frequent flyer should know that these things happen).

[Inquirer]

Inquirer, I don't agree. It is indeed a huge deal, many cancelations in ashore period.

It must definitely be disappointing to them, but you'd need to look at the full cost-benefit aspect of it to judge whether or not it is such a huge deal as some here make of it.

Somehow my remark that it might not be such a brilliant idea to invest millions in whatever gets them a full 100% insurance against these sort of events because indeed it may not be worth all the money, is something that is hard to accept as a possibility for many, but let there be no doubt about it's nothing but a normal business-like trade off all airlines have to make in their business plan. It's all nice to pretend customer demands must absolutely be met at whatever cost, but realistically speeking, nobody is going to do that, or they won't be in business for long.

As tolipanabes pointed out, the larger the fleet, the more mutual back up possibilities there will be and from what RTM writes, they will achieve this status this summer with the arrival of their latest A330, so if indeed they can achieve that, that would obviously be a huge step in the right direction: it's one of the economies of scale, in fact.

[convair]

@RTM

Re back-up aircraft, I did have a look at the summer timetable. To make it short and easy, their AFI flights are:

Abidjan: daily
Dakar: daily
Douala: daily
Kinshasa: daily
East Africa: daily
Banjul: 4x/week

If you add JFK daily and, from June 18, Washington 5x/week, the "back-up" will be available 5 days/week.

Like most members who posted under this topic, I hope more A330s will come soon. {and btw, it is hard to understand why LH, which has several times stated that they see a big potential in BRU and which, i'm convinced, has already decided to go ahead with the purchase of the rest of SN's shares, does not hurry to give SN the means to develop more rapidly and so hopefully fend off the competition on AFI flights: they could lease aircraft under their own name and lend them to SN, what would be their risk?}

A few years ago, SN used A319s to Dakar (non-stop) when they were short of A330s.

More recently, they quite often wet-leased A330s, B767, B777 and even (old) A310s from EuroAtlantic, HiFly, White or Blue Panorama when their own A330s has a migraine. However, I guess in the summer such wet-lease is more expensive in view of the normally higher demand, hence the cancellations.

[RTM]

Ok, thanks. My mistake. But I do know they want to work towards a 7 day per week redendancy. So probably after the introduction of #9... Still a year to go though.

Do you know which days there is no backup?

[sean1982]

Well, to be fair to Flanker, I think he is right when he criticizes the system in place at SN.

We were having a lot of AoG avros and BaE146 a few years ago, and we were very short of engineers.
Which is not surprising seeing as they could be better paid by working in a garage, without night shift.

good engineers, bad engineers, not the problem here. (there are good pilots, bad pilots, good managers, bad managers, even good people, bad people, all too relative of course)

But the point is: the A330 fleet is old, it will require more (and more) maintenance, and we should get the right amount of engineers to cope with it! And if we get more A330 as backup, even better. But it's easy to piss off passengers by having too many and too long delays.

The problem at SN is a general Belgian problem: no vision ; no plan, lack of competence, conservatism,..
Look at NMBS (safety, punctuality,..), look at the Road conditions and road safety, , look at how Mobility problems are (not) tackled,..., look at how our Patrimoine is (not) taken care of, look at how disasters are handled (Wetteren now) and how NEVER lessons are learned.
When things go wrong nobody is responsible.

Nothing was learned from Sabena disaster; more or less the same people are in charge again; company is still and will always be old fashioned, un-attractive, flying old planes, ...

Certainly many people do their best, but the problem is very Belgian: lack of good leaders, lack of top-managers. Mediocre level.

Best post on this forum ever. Period
That and the unions are slowly killing this airline

[Passenger]

This topic is yet again another great opportunity for the Brussels Airlines bashers to have fun.

Proof for posts? Own opinion.

Sources? Others say so.

Facts? We make them (like the title “one cancellation per day”).

Fairness? No, it’s the accused who has to bring this up. Let me give one example: somebody brought up a cancellation, whilst it was a triangle rerouting, causing indeed a cancellation (that was mentioned) ànd a new flight number (marked as SN1…). The cancellation was mentioned, the new flight was not mentioned.

[sean1982]

Almost sounds like a ryanair topic, doesn't it passenger??

[convair]

@Passenger

No SN bashing from my side.

I can understand you don't read all posts every day (neither do I btw) but there was an engine failure; some SN or BRU "insider" stated that. The aircraft concerned (OO-SFY) was idle for 6 days finally, so there WERE cancellations, even as triangular, or rather quadrangular, rerouting were organized.
Moreover, OO-SFO is in Malta (for a C-check? planned I presume) since April 30; this has led to de-scheduling (OK, not cancellations in this case) of some AFI flights (e.g. Douala and FIH flights have been cut from daily to 4-5/week and East Africa flights cut by at least 1/week, some others as well,compared to SN's summer timetable).Another example: SN231 is in the timetable on Thursday but was not flown today, not cancelled, only taken out of the schedule( you still have the possibility to check the BRU arrivals board for tomorrow morning).

Sources: flightradar24; BRU departures/arrivals boards (and btw the arrivals board often tells you more about cancelled flights than the departures board).

To me, pointing out to problems encountered by SN due to its present situation is not negative but might help people feel some sympathy for SN personnel.

PS: I stated this before: I never worked for the aviation industry.

[convair]

@RTM
Banjul is on 1 3 5 7; Washington will be on 2 4567. So no back-up on 5 and 7.

[OO-ITR]

Looks no more cancellations for tomorrow
I'm wondering how other airlines handle cancellations due to an AOG. I'm sure SN is not the only and first airline that had to cancel flights due to AOG.
We can compare it with airlines like ANA, Qatar, United, JAL who had to deal with the B787 battery problems. OK those airlines are much bigger in fleet size as SN, but still ANA and JAL have already a substantial amount of 787's so they must have found a solution to operate their flight schedule. Did they have to cancel flights?
Hopefully SFU will quickly join the fleet so it will be easier to get a spare aircraft...

[Flanker2]

May I point out that SN actually has a backup almost all off the time... And from june 18 on, every day. There will be an A330 down for mx every day, and this will be available as backup should the need arise. Just a matter of planning some slack into the mx, and don't take them in at the last possible moment. However, at the moment, SN is allready one 330 down, as one is in Malta for a C-check. So an AOG in this period is very inconvenient, but it can happen. Murphy's law, remember. So be fair, and accept that you cannot plan everything. Management did what it was suppost to do, and made sure that for as much as possible, there is a backup. But for a double AOG you will have to consider other things. I am sure they gave wetleasing a serious thought, as the AOG was lasting several days, but decided not to. Inquirer pointed out how that works. And no, no one involved likes this. Not SN, not its personell and definately not its customers. But you cannot plan every thing, as it just gets to expensive. You will not survive that way.

So, as from next month, operating 8 A330's, of which one will be backup. Consider that, and read the last few posts again, and decide fairly.

As for the remark that the schedule is to heavy for the fleet by Flanker... I don't get you... A while ago you were advocating the A32F to fly round the clock, and maintenance was just inconvenient. And now you turned it around... You must be a politician.

Mr Inquirer and RTM, you indeed can't keep a spare plane around the clock for the occasional cancellation.

But what about a spare engine, special tooling that they always have to take on loan because they don't have their own, and small teams of A330-dedicated staff who can manage engine/APU changes much more efficiently than one proficient guy walking a bunch of first-timers through each task.
Actually such issues can even leave complications like this one that followed an engine change: http://www.avherald.com/h?article=43e5cb61&opt=0

SN manages engine changes on the Avro in less than one shift because they always have the tools, equipment, spare engines and savoir-faire available, as readily acquired through the heavy maintenance done on the Avro's.

Regarding flying A32S to Africa, I don't see where the MX issue kicks in. You have a fleet of 20, of which a small part will night-stop elsewhere (although this task can also be done by smaller aircraft depending on the route), part will fly to Africa and a minimal part will stay in BRU.

As of next month you have 8 aircraft. One will operate IAD though.
So nothing changes. Whenever there is an aircraft out on C-check, an AOG will lead to flight cancellations.
The more aircraft you have, the more likely that one of them is on C-check at any given time. If SN wants to continue doing this this way, it's very efficient but it's also necessary to provide the necessary resources to do it in a durable way, instead of only pocketing the money and leaving passengers to dry.

Then, talking about "the merits of cancelling flights". Believe me there is no such thing at all.
1. The worst PR from a passenger's point of view is "sorry your flight is cancelled". Bad PR equals unhappy pax equals a lost customer and a lot of bad mouth to ear publicity.
2. You can't tell pax to stay home a day longer. You only have a small chance that the pax's home is near the departure airport and that the pax is willing to pay for transportation and go home.
What do you do for pax from CDG? Holiday Inn of course.
But don't forget also all the pax in Africa who are waiting for their flight. Not all African cities can cope with the hotel demand for straight-days cancellations, so you almost have to cancel different destinations each day.
3. You can rebook some pax on the next flight, but if these next flights were already booked to over 80% load factor, it takes 4 own flights to mitigate one flight cancellation. If you only have low frequency services like SN to Africa, it can even take weeks to get pax to their destination. In the meanwhile, you pay Holiday Inn.
4. Airlines have negotiated rates with hotels but you also have to provide:

Financial compensation
In addition, if you are denied boarding, your flight is cancelled or arrives more than 3 hours late on arrival at the final destination stated on your ticket, you may be entitled to compensation of €250 - 600, depending on the distance of the flight:

Within the EU

1,500 km or less – €250
over 1,500 km – €400
Between EU airport and non-EU airport

1,500 km or less – €250
1,500 – 3,500 km – €400
over 3,500 km – €600

http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/tr ... dex_en.htm

Let's do the math together: 600€ x 500 pax = 300.000€/day
Without counting cost of accommodation, meals, crews on standby, aircraft lease and insurance still running, phone bills and human resources to deal with each and single pax.
AF will happily charge you the full rate for short-notice bookings if you re-book pax, if they even operate the route.

No savings to be made here, believe me.

[Pocahontas]

Off topic:

With all the knowhow of some members on this forum, I would urge them to start an airline themselves. With all I read here that company will grow big in a matter of a few years. A business plan made by them will quickly bring people to invest big money, so a start up should be possible very fast. It seems not that difficult to run an airline company... If I were a headhunter, this would be my fishing pond to find bright cookies.

If you should look for pilots, please give me an address to send my CV, I would love to fly for a perfect airline, where delays don't exist, where people are very well paid, flying new planes (which are almost free by the way), and where even the weather is good everyday, so no extra stress when there's a snow- or thunderstorm.