A mixture of staff sickness and adverse weather has led to the cancellation of sailings on Wightlink’s Fishbourne route and the Yarmouth route this morning (Friday).
The cross-Solent ferry operator says that due to sickness of an essential member of crew, the 06:20 from Portsmouth and the 07:25 sailing from Fishbourne have been cancelled.
Meanwhile over in the West Wight, the 06:40 sailing from Lymington and the 07:50 from Yarmouth have both been cancelled due to adverse weather.
All booked customers will travel on the next available sailing.
Wightlink apologise for any changes to your travel plans.
UPDATE @ 08:23 – The 08:45 from Lymington and the 09:55 from Yarmouth have also been cancelled now.
The 08:30 from Portsmouth and 10:30 from Fishbourne have both been cancelled due to continuing staff sickness.
UPDATE @ 10:01 – The 10:50 and 12:55 from Lymington and the 12:00 and 14:05 from Yarmouth sailings have also been cancelled today.
I can understand weather problems at Lymington causing disruption, but this continuing cancellations due to ” essential member of staff being sick,”, is wearing a bit thin. Having worked for RF many years ago I know that a standby rota was implemented , should an essential person report sick, the next one on the rota would be called in, and so on. Seems a logical way to do things when running essential public services, unless they just don’t care.
Terry, it’s called, ‘Business Continuity Management (BCM)’
Following 9/11, many companies implemented such plans. A business asks itself, “What if you are denied your people, your systems, your buildings?”. In this case, their people. Their BCM ought to be robust enough to call upon other employees, Terry, as you say, a standby rota. Clearly, their ‘people’ plan is not fit for purpose otherwise they would have enough people to cover sickness.
I am surprised that they don’t have enough employees on stand-by to call upon?
It is because they do not have sufficient staff, and they are paid so well there is little incentive to for them to come in whilst off to cover unforeseen illness. Wightlink permanently operate vessel staffing levels at the cliff edge and have done for some years now. The wight class vessels out of Lymington also have exploding main engine issues so cannot operate at full power, hence operational limitations due to winds above 20 knots. They have had the engine problems for the last 10 years!!
When is this failure of essential transport going stop. When is the MP for the island going to do something about this not fit for purpose, very expensive and chaotic service.
It would seem Wightlink are under staffed, cancelled crossings are far too regular.
So if staff at fishbourne are sick stopping ferries running and the Yarmouth ferry is not running due to weather – why aren’t staff from Yarmouth, who are presumably sat about doing nothing, diverted to fishbourne to keep the cross Solent route open?
Or is that too much good business sense…
Why is it Red Funnel doesn’t have the same problems?
They don’t have the Wightlink management.
What a load of Bol@@cks this company is.
.
revoke their licence for not employing enough staff wheres the management who should be able to do most jobs
They must run on a shoestring with staff
there seems to be hardly a week goes by without a essential member of staff being sick and cancelled ferries
Come on Wightlink get your act together
Ha ha. Yet again this excuse for staff sickness .surely there are more people who can sail a ferry if not they should train some!!! I have been stuck at fishbourne
and Portsmouth waiting for delayed ferries in the last few months with this excuse..need to get your act together wightlink with busy Christmas period coming up..
They don’t even see that they are building their own gallows.
The more they keep pi$$ing people off with 1 bull%#it excuse after another, the more the public will swing towards a fixed link.
They ain’t got the brains they were born with.. ….
Just saying
Pathetic! We received a text this morning to tell us that our 12:55 sailing from Lymington had been cancelled due to adverse weather and we had been rescheduled to the 14:00 sailing. As that would have meant that we would miss our appointment on the Island, we left left the West Country earlier, to try to get the 11:55. We arrived in plenty of time and SUNSHINE but we’re put in the standby lane and didn’t get on. How can they cancel sailings BEFORE they even know what the weather is going to be? USELESS SHIGHTLINK!
Omg don’t you lot moan on !!
We are just fed up with it
Weather not effecting cross channel services.
Tad wider than the stones throw to mainland.
Let the council run the ferries
You are joking I hope.
That would be good if council tax payers could buy shares in the company, and alowe share holders to make decisions on running and pricing structures.
Let’s see how they get on with the p… Up in the brewery first.
This is why the airport needs to be expanded to enable commercial flights as they won’t be disrupted as much and will increase completion on the incredibly expensive fares too and enable you to get to many destinations so much quicker that currently possible.
Build a bridge no more bulls##t
Thanks to red funnel for their super service. With alot of islanders now having to be shipped to Southampton hospital for medical treatments, imagine the heartache and missed appointments some folk have been long awaiting for. If wightlink ran this crossing, it would be utter chaos. I am not in favour of fixed link but wightlink for the money they charge do take the biscuit. And seems dunk it rather well. Penalisations and customer refunds (other than adverse weather conditions) are in order like our railways running more than 15 minutes late. Hit em where it hurts, the pocket!! Me personally, I’d as a group sailing would refuse to disembark the ferry for a couple of hours as a boycott, tho unfortunately this would selfishly affect others. Shame tho, it would be fun to see how’d the company would react to that.