How does your club schedule crews?

Our club is considering changing the way we schedule the ground and flight
support crews ( tow, instructors, recorder, crew chief, assistant, etc.)
Would like to find out how your club schedules the volunteers who make it
work.
Some clubs have only the Director of Ops, Tow Pilot and IP scheduled -- all
others are volunteers/day flyers. Others have every position scheduled every
weekend day. Finally some do it all by a reservation system - with those who
volunteer a specific number of hours paying less in monthly dues than the
those who do not volunteer.

I would like to gather some details on this before we change our system.

While answers from European and UK clubs are appreciated - I am focused on
USA clubs - Thanks!

Dave--

We also schedule a Field Manager, 2 tow pilots (AM & PM with some
overlap), a duty instructor (AM only), and 2 field assistants for every
weekend and holiday day. This works out to 3 duties per season for
field managers and assistants, about 10-12 for tow pilots, and 6 for
instructors. In addition, we need 3 CFIGS per day and the volunteers
normally fill in the slack for each day--but with a duty instructor we
aare always certain of one CFIG present.

Frankly, the system is not perfect, but it works and we have not found
anything better. Each group self schedules--for example Ops for the
filed crew, and the tow pilots and instructors schedule themselves. If
you instruct or tow you do not have to serve field duty. We do have a
substantial fine for "no shows" and that helps.

Our weekday PM flying days are strictly volunteer, and we manage them
by having a dedicated CFIG and tow pilot for Wednesday and Thursday PM.
The remaining instructors (we normally have 2 to 4) are on a "show up"
basis.

I am certain there may be a better way, and we will be watching the
forum for ideas.

Regards--

Skip Guimond, Phila Glider Council

When you join the club you're assigned to a crew.
The crew is made up of a Flight Operations Officer and 3 ground crew. That
crew is paired with an Instructor and a Tow Pilot. There are separate Field
Maintenance and Aircraft Maintenance crews.
The FOO and the ground crew have a duty day every 7 wks. Instructors and
Tow Pilots have duty days a little more frequently--maybe every 5 or 6
weeks.
About 5 kids in the club also hire themselve out if you can't make your duty
day at rates around $50/day.
On Weekday's it's more of a scramble--"hey we've got a tow pilot for
Friday--who can come out and play?"
We're lucky in that we have close to 150 members with a lot of CFIG's and
tail-dragger power pilots.
We've worked hard to move pilots from PPG to Commercial to Instructor.

Dave,

Funny, I've been trying to get our club to schedule more like
CISS does. Currently at Albuquerque we schedule 2 ops people per day,
and an all day tow pilot. (#2 is usually a volunteer) And an
instructor only shows up if someone calls them and says they want an
instructor. It works, but would run much more smoothley if one or two
more people were added...

-Mitch



For Example John Smith wrote:
When you join the club you're assigned to a crew.
The crew is made up of a Flight Operations Officer and 3 ground crew. That
crew is paired with an Instructor and a Tow Pilot. There are separate Field
Maintenance and Aircraft Maintenance crews.
The FOO and the ground crew have a duty day every 7 wks. Instructors and
Tow Pilots have duty days a little more frequently--maybe every 5 or 6
weeks.
About 5 kids in the club also hire themselve out if you can't make your duty
day at rates around $50/day.
On Weekday's it's more of a scramble--"hey we've got a tow pilot for
Friday--who can come out and play?"
We're lucky in that we have close to 150 members with a lot of CFIG's and
tail-dragger power pilots.
We've worked hard to move pilots from PPG to Commercial to Instructor.

Our club consists of about 40 members. We operate
from a public use airfield which is operated by one
individual who has a contract with the county.

We schedule three positions: Tow pilot, instructor,
and 'operations officer.' We operate only on weekends
year round, weather permitting.

All positions are scheduled for each quarter of the
year.

We have five or six tow pilots. One tow pilot will
be scheduled for an entire weekend day. Before the
start of each quarter, the chief tow pilot will request
days when the tow pilots can and can't fly for the
upcoming quarter and then prepare a schedule.

The similar situation occurs for instructor pilots.
We try to have one instructor on the field for each
and every weekend day. Before the start of a quarter,
the chief instructor will ask the other instructors
when they can and can't serve during the upcoming quarter.

Lastly, we have our 'Operations Officer' who really
is there to log takeoff and landing times and collect
flight fees from the pilots. They are members who
aren't tow pilots or instructors. New members have
a 'grace period' of undetermined time period. Once
the chief Operations Officer, called the Director of
Operations, thinks the newbie has been around enough
to understand 'the system', then that person joins
the pool of available manpower. And as with tow pilots
and instructors, the chief asks the pool of workers
when they can and can't serve a full day shift as Ops
officer and fills out the schedule. This is the one
position we have trouble filling, from time to time.

Tuggies and instructors are pretty darned reliable,
but the 'Ops Officer' position will, time to time,
go unfilled. Our not-too-efficient operation really
suffers without the Ops Officer. Not only do they
write down times and collect money, but the ones with
a bit of savvy will sort of keep the launch que figured
out and work expediently on retrieving gliders that
have landed and get them turned around for a launch.
Sort of. Hey, we're club members, not military and
getting us to do things in an orderly manner is like
herding cats. Almost impossible.

But, that's how we do it.

And we're always looking for a better way.

Ray Lovinggood
Carrboro, North Carolina, USA
North Carolina Soaring Association



At 04:18 31 August 2005, Dnewill wrote:
Our club is considering changing the way we schedule
the ground and flight
support crews ( tow, instructors, recorder, crew chief,
assistant, etc.)
Would like to find out how your club schedules the
volunteers who make it
work.
Some clubs have only the Director of Ops, Tow Pilot
and IP scheduled -- all
others are volunteers/day flyers. Others have every
position scheduled every
weekend day. Finally some do it all by a reservation
system - with those who
volunteer a specific number of hours paying less in
monthly dues than the
those who do not volunteer.

I would like to gather some details on this before
we change our system.

While answers from European and UK clubs are appreciated
- I am focused on
USA clubs - Thanks!

Our club has about 70 members, 9 CFIGs, 8 or so towpilots. The OPS officer
publishes a schedule for a quarter. The duty crew consists of a Duty
Officer and 2 assistants. Duty Officer must be a rated glider pilot, ADOs
are students or the new rated pilots. Tow duty is assigned (1 per day). If
it gets busy another tow pilot will usually relieve the primary for a break
or crank up the second tow plane to get things moving. Instructors do not
stand duty. There is usually at least one available all the time.


"DNewill" wrote in message
. ..
Our club is considering changing the way we schedule the ground and flight
support crews ( tow, instructors, recorder, crew chief, assistant, etc.)
Would like to find out how your club schedules the volunteers who make it
work.
Some clubs have only the Director of Ops, Tow Pilot and IP scheduled --
all others are volunteers/day flyers. Others have every position scheduled
every weekend day. Finally some do it all by a reservation system - with
those who volunteer a specific number of hours paying less in monthly dues
than the those who do not volunteer.

I would like to gather some details on this before we change our system.

While answers from European and UK clubs are appreciated - I am focused on
USA clubs - Thanks!