Whitlow

[dispatchguy]

Just curious, what are some of the other airlines doing about monitoring Whitlow compliance? Is it the crew's responsibility to monitor their daily dropdead time, or does your airline give you a calculated dropdead time, and if so - where? Is the dropdead time on your copy of your pairing or what?

Reason I ask is that my carrier put the crew names and their dropdead times on the flight release, and I think that that is not the right place for it - I am a dispatcher, not a crew scheduler, for that info (IMHO) belongs on the pairing or the crew names list.

 

[Simon Says]

At XJ we have crew schedulars to figure it for ourselves, but we are also responsible for making sure we are legal to fly. If crew schedualing screws up we wil take the fall.

 

[skyboat]

Actually, this may not be a bad place for it. Of course this is just my immediate reaction. Here's why.

At my carrier, it's a dual crewmwmber/scheduling responsibility. Once the pilot reports, I don't believe scheduling really monitors it beyond dealing with it when someone calls them to tell them they are coming up on the dropdead time. A dispatcher should, in theory anyway, always be monitoring flight delays and departure/arrival times. If this information is readily available to them, than perhaps they can prevant a furthur delay/cancellation. I can't tell you how many times I've been flying with a reserve and they call up and say they are coming up on a duty time issue- usually contractual at my carrier. Scheduling usually has no clue that this was coming and is then scrambling. If the dispatcher leans over their shoulder and tells a scheduler, than perhaps it could prevent further delays.