Keeping your crew based exclusively on full-time employees can have a number of benefits, but in reality, many operators are forced to look for quick fixes during the shortage of personnel. Fluctuations in demand and unforeseen changes to the schedule make the process of hiring freelancers a frequently used solution to the aforementioned issues.
Let us take a look at several key features implemented in Leon over the last few months that enhance the management of the on-demand crew, as well as improve the planning of your interim crew members.
Freelancers and their contracts
To begin with, there are some limitations involving the freelance crew that are not included in the functionality, at least not at this point. Taking into account all possible contracts outside of the organisation each freelancer may undertake, Leon won’t be able to track and calculate the currency for those temporarily hired crew members. Similarly, endorsements won’t be monitored when assigning such crew to the flight.
Defining a timeframe of the freelancer's contract.
That being said, after tagging a crew member as a freelancer, in order to start planning their activities in Crew Calendar, it is required to define the timeframe for their contract alongside with aircraft they would be flying on. On the Crew Calendar page, when grouped by aircraft, newly added freelancers will appear at the end of the list of crew for each machine they have been assigned to.
Having a growing base of potential ad-hoc crew within Leon is obviously a huge perk for crew planners, but also freelancers themselves can use Leon and our Crew App as standard crew members do (albeit with a slightly limited access).
Interim crew & crew replacements
Hiring freelance contractors on a regular basis can be as useful as it can be crippling to the company’s financial condition. In many cases it is simply much more cost-effective to look for replacements within your direct reach, namely for crew members who are not flying on a particular machine regularly, but still have all the necessary ratings and endorsements to be eligible for a given flight.
We have designed the functionality of provisional crew assignments in a similar manner as we did with freelancers. Using the same view in Crew Calendar, users can designate interim crew members to a particular aircraft within a period of time for the assignment. The temporary crew will become available during that time window, with an option of having duties assigned to them likewise as with a regular crew member.
To increase the flexibility of crew management we have also extended the functionality of the Crew Timeline panel, adding an option for crew replacements. This specific feature provides a fast, ad-hoc substitution of the already assigned crew with different crew members. It is worth noting that the available pool of the replacements only includes crew with appropriate ratings for a given aircraft.
A more detailed guide for managing freelancers and the interim crew can be found on our Wiki in the Crew Calendar section.
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