Incentives for Amount of Releases

Put over two hours of REMF and an alternate on a flight into DSM when it’s a non-tanker flight, 10 and clear day with no NOTAMS or MELs on the flight consistently and see if we don’t become revenue generators real quick.
 
gopherdx said:
I do and don’t agree. The dispatcher in its current form can change if the FAA stops mandating we exist but many aspects of the job won’t go away. I can’t see the FAA and any safety focused airline (which should be all of them) get rid of a pretty important layer of Swiss cheese.

Essentially there will always need to be someone watching flights from the ground who works in the airlines SOC who can make decisions when the pilots are not able to and or see the big picture. At the most I can see dispatchers all becoming flight followers and eliminating the flight planning portion.
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Someone sitting on the ground, helping pilots see the big picture, also helps avoid diversions. That's a big cost savings on the revenue front.
 
I think we may be confusing revenue generation with revenue protection.
Dispatchers are simply a net cost to the airline. We produce no revenue on our own. What we do do, is find ways to not eat into the revenue being produced by the flight in the way of injures, lawsuits, diversions, excess unneeded fuel, etc.
 
MT said:
I think we may be confusing revenue generation with revenue protection.
Dispatchers are simply a net cost to the airline. We produce no revenue on our own. What we do do, is find ways to not eat into the revenue being produced by the flight in the way of injures, lawsuits, diversions, excess unneeded fuel, etc.
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Feels like splitting hairs but I'm not a financial expert. Just a lowly dispatcher.
 
MT said:
I think we may be confusing revenue generation with revenue protection.
Dispatchers are simply a net cost to the airline. We produce no revenue on our own. What we do do, is find ways to not eat into the revenue being produced by the flight in the way of injures, lawsuits, diversions, excess unneeded fuel, etc.
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What’s that old saying “a penny saved is a penny earned?” Seems to me with everything you said it’s generating some kind of revenue.
 
MT said:
This is 100% false. My position exists to ensure the safe operation of the airline because the FAA says so.

We single handedly control the second largest expense in the airline. Nothing we do from a dispatch chair produces revenue of any sort, just expense. What we do for the company is keep them from even larger expenses such as diversions, inflight injuries, or god forbid accidents and the associated bad press, lawsuits, and other costs that would come from them.

None of my colleagues are naive enough to think we wouldn’t be among the first on the chopping block if we were not required. We are not revenue producers, we are safety officers.
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I agree that we are safety officers first and foremost, but I disagree that we don't produce revenue ourselves. I would argue the dispatch position produces revenue through avoiding losing it via safety incidents and accidents that cause airplanes to break or people to get hurt and all the logistics and negative press that factors in. We're just as much loss prevention officers as we are safety officers, eating the cost of a lesser loss to avoid a potentially bigger one. Even something as relatively simple (from our perspective) as a diversion to an alternate has LARGE profit consequences and eats into a company's bottom line both directly (prepping the alternate station to deal with passengers now upset they are not where they planned on being) and indirectly (the negative press and therefore potential lost revenue that generates and the "I'm never flying this airline again!" effect).

I consider dispatchers an airline's prophylactic measure to protect against revenue losses already incurred either by limiting the effects of aforementioned safety events or ideally planning ahead well enough that they are avoided altogether. There are few feelings a dispatcher can have as good as having a bad weather day when all your planes land where they need to be, all the passengers are happy and at least one PIC commends your flight planning ability for creating a smooth flight path for him/her and the passengers on a challenging day.

I suppose I'm splitting hairs with this view on revenue generation versus revenue loss prevention but that's simply how I see it. We forecast potential logistical issues on a flight-by-flight basis and mitigate the effects they can cause, thereby saving the company money by preventing potential harm to the crew, passengers and/or airframe.
 
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