Max amounts of flights allowed to handle

[izanti]

Does anyone else think the FAA should mandate how many flights a Part 121 dispatcher can legally handle?

My current airline does not over work us at all but at my first regional airline we were forced to handle so many flights that it was near impossible to maintain situational awareness with every flight and in my opinion was very dangeous. I have at one point had to maintain operational control of around 15-20 planes, for the most part if weather is fine it can be done safely but if poor weather or metering occurs it can be crazy. I dont think that most captains would be too happy to hear that their dispatcher didnt pay attention to their flight because he/she was too busy sending out another 10.

Does anyone else think this sort of airline operation is unsafe and should the FAA cap the number of flights a dispatcher can operate? If anything it can be considered job creation

 

[manniax]

It's kind of hard to mandate an absolute limit because every airline has a different operation and flight following requirements. I agree some airlines like to push things to the limit though, having worked at a regional carrier similar to the one you described. Ideally the PDI for the airline will closely monitor the workload and let management know if more dispatchers are required for the operation.

 

[izanti]

It's kind of hard to mandate an absolute limit because every airline has a different operation and flight following requirements. I agree some airlines like to push things to the limit though, having worked at a regional carrier similar to the one you described. Ideally the PDI for the airline will closely monitor the workload and let management know if more dispatchers are required for the operation.

See that is the thing, my airlines FAA rep (whom I was on good terms with) mentioned to me that he felt our airline severly over worked us and if it was up to him he would set a limit to the number of flights were allowed to handle. He made it seem like it was above his paygrade and there is nothing legally the FAA can do.

So how it that we all can have a max duty day under 121(supp excluded) but no safety rules in place to prevent airlines from unsafely over working dispatchers?

 

[BobDispatch]

Being worked to hard should be looked at by the union not the FAA. If the FAA were to make a rule about this we run the risk of pricing ourselves out of a job. If the number of flights they came up with was something to low and you needed a huge dispatch team all the airlines would jump on board with the outsourcing of dispatch to companies like Jeppesen or whoever else would say they can do it for cheaper.

At my previous regional and at my airline now any time there has been a problem with this the union has always been the one to make things happen.

 

[BobDispatch]

I have at one point had to maintain operational control of around 15-20 planes, for the most part if weather is fine it can be done safely but if poor weather or metering occurs it can be crazy. I dont think that most captains would be too happy to hear that their dispatcher didnt pay attention to their flight because he/she was too busy sending out another 10.

Also flights in the air always take priority. In a weather event or if you get busy you should not be working up new releases. I have had to ask to have new flights pulled off my desk because I was getting to busy with an event or an emergency. If a release gets sent late to bad. Believe me it will get the attention of your bosses when delays start happening because there were not enough people to dispatch all the flights and the paper work goes out late. In dispatch you should never be afraid to ask for help or send a release when you are being distracted by something else.

 

[PHL_Approach]

To answer your question YES!!! there should be an FAA reg. At your last regional how many flights did you plan throughout the day? Lately on a typical day we do no less than 72. On a bad day we are at 88. Mostly due to under staffing... which could have been prevented by Mgmt. I'm not gonna get into it. But we do way too many flights. Most I've heard anyone doing at my company was 115 for planning by themself. Another desk did 120 for months last Spring but about 20 of those where in the air being passed down from the Mid shift dispatcher.

 

[belgiumania]

To answer your question YES!!! there should be an FAA reg. At your last regional how many flights did you plan throughout the day? Lately on a typical day we do no less than 72. On a bad day we are at 88. Mostly due to under staffing... which could have been prevented by Mgmt. I'm not gonna get into it. But we do way too many flights. Most I've heard anyone doing at my company was 115 for planning by themself. Another desk did 120 for months last Spring but about 20 of those where in the air being passed down from the Mid shift dispatcher.

I will never complain about workload ever again. 120 is INSANITY. How do they expect you to do your job adequately?

Where is this?

 

[PHL_Approach]

You can't do your job adequately. Flight following? Forgetaboutit! People say sometimes well then make flights go out late. We're humans and it's human nature to never give up and never fall behind. Even if your office picks up your slack it puts them at risk to getting behind because they have just as many flight. But we get it done! Because we are Americans whom cannot let ourselves drown or give up. We push ourselves to do more and more every year in all jobs in all industries with increasing hours and less vacation. Why? I have no idea. Maybe because no one of higher power will stand with us. We are given more burden and responsibilities but we get it done because we pace ourselves and prove to Mgmt that "it can be done". It was the same thing when I was on the Ramp. If we were short a person (instead of 5 we'd have 4) we would go out and load an A333 going to FRA in max optimum config 8 Pallets, 8 cans of bags in 50 minutes. But because the team paced themselves and refused to slow up it would get done and then Mgmt behind closed doors or in their heads would say "well, they got it done with 4 people instead of 5, so let's just stop giving the teams 5 people"

/end rant.

You can message me privately if your really curious who I work for.

 

[RRPower]

I am not a dispatcher but I certainly believe it should be limited. My airline had a big sh** sandwich with the Feds when one of our planes had roughly 10 ACARS messages overlooked when they were diverting to a different airport than was listed. They were gone after for not attempting airinc or declaring an emergency but they had a field day with our dispatch. They were like WTF are you ignoring ACARS...turns out their software uses some light to alert of an ACARS message however that same light is used everytime a TAF, runway conditions, special Wx is happening and it was a bad Wx day so it was going off continuously. They also cited how overworked they become in Wx situations.

Well after a short story has been made long, I agree they should lighten up on your load.

 

[Flagship_dxer]

At my airline, we routinely do 50-60 releases a shift plus flight folllow a bunch from passdown. We also do all the load control and weight and balance. Most of our aircraft are CRJ200s that have a ton of weight and balance issues.

One thing we do that is very UNSAFE is to close out and read back all weight and balance and performance numbers when ACARS is inop. It takes five to 10 minutes to get the pax and cargo count, imput them in and then read the final numbers plus takeoff and landing nums. Its even more time when the pre-plan cargo load sheet wasnt followed and you now have a flight that is way over weight and you have to pull pax from the plane or throw an hours worth of gas into taxi fuel. All of this while you have five flights sending you an ACARS message because they are diverting plus you have a boatload of releases to do and gate agents angry and calling you upset that you wont turn the anti-ice off at a station with short runways during icing conditions to get more payload on.

And when you finish all this, half of your flights have gone illegal because you missed numerous TAF changes because you spent all your time dealing with weight and balance issues and the phone ringing nonstop for five hours.

If you do have an emergency and some bad weather and fall behind, all your co-workers get angry at you and ask for you to be fired because you increase their workload which is very high. This increases your calls when stations call every two minutes demanding a release. They call so much that you can easily have one call on the phone and two on hold for you.

We have pilots that are so high maintenance that they start to report dispatchers to the FAA if they dont respond within three minutes to their ACARS messages. When you have an emergency that requires all your attention, you are sure to get three messages from crews asking if they can keep their aircraft instead of walking to a new gate for their next flight. These crews get mad when you dont respond to their messages and keep asking. Some will keep demanding even after you tell them no.

All this stuff happens rather routinely where I work. I dont know if there should be an FAA mandate but there does come a time where safety needs to drive decisions. It isnt safe when you never have time to flight follow and monitor weather and NOTAMs because you have a thousand other things to do that involve stuff that dispatchers shouldnt be doing.

 

[womanpilot73]

@Flagship... Wow, that sounds crazy!

To all you dispatchers out there - is Flagship's experience the norm everywhere? I'm looking to change careers later this year and think dispatching would be a great fit for me. Is this the 'norm' that I have to look forward to???

 

[jynxyjoe]

I love dispatch stories, reminds me of 'Nam.

 

[manniax]

@Flagship... Wow, that sounds crazy!

To all you dispatchers out there - is Flagship's experience the norm everywhere? I'm looking to change careers later this year and think dispatching would be a great fit for me. Is this the 'norm' that I have to look forward to???

It's pretty uncommon for dispatchers to do weight and balance as well as dispatching. At my airline we have a specialized load planning department that does it - at previous carriers the stations took care of it. But, being overworked at regionals is unfortunately not all that uncommon.

I guess my concern with a strict limit on number of releases allowed is that it doesn't allow any flexibility for different situation. So, if you have a place where the dispatchers do releases plus W&B, then perhaps they should only be allowed to do 20 per shift - but at another airline they could perhaps get away with more. And every place is different, some carriers operate numerous short haul flights where the weather is usually VFR (such as Island Air in Hawaii) and then some regionals have flights in the Northeast US where ATC is a challenge, and some carriers deal with weather all across the country. I am just trying to say that I don't see a one size fits all "limit" as being the best solution. I currently work an international desk and we have a much lower number of flights per shift than domestic - but we also have to put a lot more work into each flight we plan (reading international NOTAMS is just a blast, let me tell you.)

Ideally, the FAA should clamp down on regionals where the workload is too high and demand that they hire more people to cover all the flights. Unfortunately, it usually takes a situation like the one described above (where nobody knew about a flight diverting because of workload issues) before that happens.

 

[womanpilot73]

Thanks for the response Manniax...

 

[belgiumania]

It's pretty uncommon for dispatchers to do weight and balance as well as dispatching. At my airline we have a specialized load planning department that does it - at previous carriers the stations took care of it. But, being overworked at regionals is unfortunately not all that uncommon.

I guess my concern with a strict limit on number of releases allowed is that it doesn't allow any flexibility for different situation. So, if you have a place where the dispatchers do releases plus W&B, then perhaps they should only be allowed to do 20 per shift - but at another airline they could perhaps get away with more. And every place is different, some carriers operate numerous short haul flights where the weather is usually VFR (such as Island Air in Hawaii) and then some regionals have flights in the Northeast US where ATC is a challenge, and some carriers deal with weather all across the country. I am just trying to say that I don't see a one size fits all "limit" as being the best solution. I currently work an international desk and we have a much lower number of flights per shift than domestic - but we also have to put a lot more work into each flight we plan (reading international NOTAMS is just a blast, let me tell you.)

Ideally, the FAA should clamp down on regionals where the workload is too high and demand that they hire more people to cover all the flights. Unfortunately, it usually takes a situation like the one described above (where nobody knew about a flight diverting because of workload issues) before that happens.

Maybe then the solution could be a flight time limit like with many of our regs. say 100 hours of flight time released per shift, reduce able down to 60 for each takeoff and landing? Or something like that.

That way those who work at extremely high workload regionals would get relief based on the number of actual releases they have to work through, but long haul operations where the DXers are doing just fine could maintain whatever workload they currently have.

For the record the workload at my airline is currently quite manageable.

 

[mikey52]

Although I didn't work that long as a dispatcher specifically because of what you are talking about here. I also spent a career as an ATC type prior. The problem is that the FAA has covers this issue in FAAH 8900.1 but most inspectors don't spend much time insuring that it is complied with and the carriers obviously don't care due to cost factors. I am speaking just as a former regional dispatcher. I would hope that the majors do a better job in this area.

 

[pljenkins]

This is too nebulous of a question to really put a fixed "number" on. The reason being that every airline has its own system of doing things and their own system for doing so. Let's say for instance a scheduled Domestic rules regional airline vs. a Part 121 Supplemental rules ad-hoc charter airline. Your regional airline is going to have a fixed schedule going to the same places every day, where you have waiting for them your own people and handlers. This setup is conducive to getting releases and other paperwork to the airplane quickly and relatively trouble free, lending to a system that is able to be "click send and forget". And though you might release 100 flights a day, you are dealing with AT MOST 50 city pairs, and likely less, since you'll have return flights and multiple flights on the same leg per day. Of those MAXIMUM 50 cities, not all of them are going to be what would be considered challenging from a planning standpoint, so let's say it's a real bad day and 20 of those cities are marginal. And that is a HORRIBLE day, to be sure. You have to plan 20 re-routes in the course of your 10 hour day. Busy, to be sure, but certainly not impossible.

Now let's take a look at your ad-hoc charter company flying. You are working with a constantly changing schedule, and most times to places where your airplane is being handled by people who do not work for your company, and where you have no set infrastructure. You have to plan and build a route, sometimes through places that are difficult from a performance, driftdown or accessability standpoint.

You can see, if the FAA said "you may do no more than 80 releases per day per dispatcher" you've done the ad-hoc guy no favors at all. If the FAA took a look at the ad-hoc and then wrote "you may do no more than 10 releases per day" you've put a real hardship on the Domestic regional airline that can safely push out more releases.

Every dispatcher is different in what they can handle, and their experience level. Some can handle more flights than others. It's human nature. Thus, I believe that the question of "how much is too much" is a matter best handled on a per-airline basis between management and the FAA.