A TUI pilot praised by passengers for loading luggage onto the plane in the rain after 30 hours of delay.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/lifestyle/travel/tui-pilot-praised-for-loading-bags-onto-plane-in-the-rain-after-30-hour-delay/ar-AAXUhnL?ocid=mailsignout&li=AAnZ9Ug

Question is, will he get pulled for not having done the Triple A course by some jobsworth? You're supposed to complete that one before you can chuck bags onto a plane at Manchester, and as far as I'm aware it's usually only the rampies who do that course. 🤣

More seriously, I've actually had several Sun Air (operating for BA) pilots on Dornier 328s help me load catering cans into the rear of their aeroplanes, so in my experience, it's not unusual for the crews to pitch in. It's worth noting too, that whilst Swissport (and indeed most service agents) are suffering from staffing problems (actually it's more a case of new staff not being trained up quickly enough), in this case I suspect the very lengthy delays on this flight were probably not down to Swissport, but rather the ongoing effect of a series of staffing problems throughout the industry as a result of the pandemic, which includes the staff at airlines, the gate staff, the rampies etc, which most people reckoned would continue to be an issue until at least 2024. In spite of Swissport struggling a bit at EGCC at the moment, it's doubtful that would be a reason for a delay of more than a few hours. It's far more likely to have been caused by availability of airliners and crews to fly them at a time when the schools are out and, as a result, holiday flights being many from Manchester, which even in normal circumstances, does inevitably lead to some turnaround delays. In such a situation, it only takes one airliner based at a particular airport to go tech in those circumstances and it ends up having a massive knock on effect in terms of aircraft being out of position for following flights, and crews going out of hours and so on.

Contrary to what most people probably imagine is the case. If an airliner does not go on time and it then perhaps goes the next day from Manchester, it cannot just be left there with the bags on it until it is time for it to go. For reasons of security, all the bags have to be offloaded, they are then taken to Global Baggage Solutions to reprocessed with new tags for the following day's flight, then they are collected by the service agent, then they all have to be re-screened by the service agent and the airport security staff, so they are signed off with a new sticker which is valid for the day they will fly on which confirms they have been screened for that day. This is then an extra flight everyone has to deal with on that day, so it of course has to be resscanned with the SITA system, then reloaded onto trailers, taken out to the aeroplane, reloaded onto that aeroplane so it can go. Then the aeroplane itself has to get a Euro Control slot in among all the flights ATC are already dealing with and of course the airline has to find a suitably trained and in hours crew to fly the thing. The aeroplane, and the crew will then be out of position and have to be fed back into the normal schedules, which of course then affects other flights and so on, and this is also dependent on the airline having an available aeroplane too (they don't just have spare airliners sat there not earning revenue for weeks on the offchance that they may be needed). The ripple effect of all this is what is usually behind a delay rather than one singular issue and as ever journalists completely ignore all that and want to attribute the delay to something which they can easily zero in on as a simplistic news item.