Number of Flights Worked

crow said:
Our POI talks a big game. He has a history of forcing changes on the company as well. He recently made appearances in recurrent saying to file ASAP's and use real numbers and if the company won't make a change he will. We shall see what happens with that. With our recent management changes, they seem to agree that there is a workload issue, but at this point its about collecting useful data to find a point where "an average competent dispatcher can do their job without feeling overwhelmed" as one of our managers put it.
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See, this is the problem though. That is the epitome of a moving target. What day are we using? A nice calm day in the fall? February on the East Coast? Midwest in storm season? There is so much talk about the dispatcher in regards to load management, when in reality dynamic redistribution of work to fit a scenario is where good management comes in. A shift coordinator, manager or whatever your company calls your on scene higher up is responsible for watching the overall functioning of the floor and anticipating as much as possible where workload bottlenecks might occur. I would say a good 95% of dispatcher saturation issues are predictable events that can be mitigated with early intervention. Certainly there will be those times where a dispatcher is handling an emergency and has to offload his other work, but these are extraordinarily rare events.

Workload by numbers is useless information. It's the NATURE of that work and the environment you are doing that work in that tells the bigger story. 60 releases sending planes up and down the West Coast on a VMC day is cake. 60 releases doing ETOPS and redispatch is unmanageable.
 
@pljenkins everything you said is valid and really i have no disagreements with the overall premise and point. where i will take umbrage is the idea that because the company SHOULD be able to predict these overloads and SHOULD be able to mitigate it with early intervention is that a) the company WILL do that and b) that if they call someone to come in to help with dispatcher saturation the people who are off WILL come in. while these policies are in place in some places it doesn't mean they are utilized. so, if management is willing to consider a workload by numbers approach and even create a specific bid line for this purpose then why not take them up on it and be even more proactive
 
@crow I get your point, and to answer from my perspective. I can crank 60 releases in VMC just like what @pljenkins is saying and far less if the entire U.S. is marginal. However, what you should wonder about is how many can you have at one time instead of through a shift. 25 isn' that bad but if they are in the same 30 minute window do you have operational control? How many flights in the air can you have divert while continuing to release flights? Potential workload is the key, that is much more weather neutral and really the concern. On a VMC day ORD shuts down again, fire in the center building like before, how many planes can you handle through that? How many can you get fuel burns to? Find that and in my opinion you'll have your answer.
 
pljenkins said:
60 releases sending planes up and down the West Coast on a VMC day is cake. 60 releases doing ETOPS and redispatch is unmanageable.
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While releases are part of the job, it is only one part. We are still responsible for flight monitoring and sending weather and airport/atc operation updates to the crews enroute as well as coordinate diversions, medical phone patches and the possible diversions or paramedic call outs with that, the required notifications to management for a laundry list of incidents, the MEL placards and figuring out where a plane can be sent with certain placards, ATC delay programs and route initiatives that require the dispatcher to coordinate with stations, crew and flight plans. Dispatchers have so many potential things to do even on a VMC day that you cannot predict in advance that no desk should have more than 25-35 flights in a 24 hour period domestically. International ETOPS desks should have no more than 2-3 flights on them to plan. One issue can easily take your attention for a full shift.

The issue is that dispatchers with too many releases merely become release monkeys and even that we dont do that well at times because there are simply too many NOTAMs, too many TAF changes, too many airports in a dynamic environment that so much gets missed.

The quality of dispatch work is too often overlooked in favor of quantity.
 
This is all true. Again, any argument that starts with "X number for releases" is immediately an invalid argument. Other factors are at play: What equipment are you working? What flight planning tools are you using? What are the operating conditions? What are your means of communication with aircraft in flight, insofar as how fast and efficiently can you relay information back and forth to crews?

Also, a lot of in flight workload depends on preflight planning. The saying goes "proper planning prevents piss poor production". This has as much to do with experience as it does with actually reading what is in front of you, but you get the point. Anyway we are all barking up the same tree. Management needs to understand that they need to staff in a way that allows dispatchers to be efficient while also allowing for effective and positive load shedding for dispatchers that become task saturated. This is like trying to balance an egg on its end on a moving train but it still needs to be considered, and not all companies have a firm grasp on that concept.
 
PHL_Approach said:
Yea I had heard you guys were going to FPM. How's that working out?
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Depends on who you ask, personally I'm fine with it. First few weeks were tough (as expected), but a lot has been ironed out. Hell, our previous system that was in since the beginning was planning WATRS flights at FL050 2-3 years ago. So nothing's perfect.
 
You guys were using Monitor before right? If so I know what your talking about with flights at 3000-5000 haha. I went from Monitor at last shop to FPM at new place myself. FPM is pretty powerful. But I don't think it needs quite as much hand holding as Monitor did.
 
PHL_Approach said:
You guys were using Monitor before right? If so I know what your talking about with flights at 3000-5000 haha. I went from Monitor at last shop to FPM at new place myself. FPM is pretty powerful. But I don't think it needs quite as much hand holding as Monitor did.
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Yeah, monitor was great for multitasking and automation, I see FPM great for fine tuning a flight, but more manual work per each release. But hey, they gave us a fourth monitor now because of FPM, yipee! (/sarcasm).
 
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