Wightlink have been forced to cancel yet more sailings due to crew sickness, this time on their Fishbourne-Portsmouth Harbour car ferry service.
The 06:20 and 08:30 sailings from Portsmouth Harbour and the 07:25 and 10:30 sailings from Fishbourne have been cancelled tomorrow morning (Wednesday 13th November 2019).
All booked customers will travel on the next available sailing.
The news comes after cancellations on Wightlink’s catamaran service yesterday.
Wightlink apologises for any changes to your travel plans.
UPDATE WEDNESDAY – The 06:20 and 08:30 sailings from Portsmouth and the 07:25 and 10:30 sailings from Fishbourne have been cancelled for Thursday (14th November), it has been announced.
It’s a joke I pay a lot of money for my boat tickets so I can get to work
no, it is no laughing matter – they do not do this on purpose – staff call in sick and cannot be expected to work.
The issue sits with the management and HR that do not cross train staff – meaning someone working at the ports, is also capable of being crew aboard the boats.
Years ago, this never happened – ever. They had more than the minimum number of crew on board at all times. If someone when sick they used to rope off part of the seating on the fastcat as they couldn’t carry quite as many passengers with one less crew.
Now the cats are smaller, they do not have this option anymore. I expect they run the car ferries the same now, just enough to run it, no slack at all.
If you ever use the Hovercraft you will notice that some of the crew members occasionally work in the terminals, selling tickets or on the ticket barriers. They appear to be trying to cover the possibility of crew sickness by training others to be crew as well instead of cutting services or trying to get someone in on overtime – not sure if it is working for them though.
at one time management were trained at all jobs so they step in to any job whitin the company
ahh joe, that was in the days when management worked their way up through the ranks, knew the jobs and kept their hands in at the ground level.
now you get some imbecile from a university, that doesn’t know jack all about the company, its way of working and cannot do any of the other jobs.
It only needs two words to describe this.
Poor Management. Doesn’t matter how many excuses they use. Should have people on standby , to cover sickness.
to have people on standby you must pay them. Those people must also commit to being at a minimum notice to arrive at work.
The only people that can be on standby, are those on rostered days off.
The only way to ensure this doesn’t occur, is to ensure that you have more than the bare minimum of crew trained staff on each shift – wightlink aren’t going to do that, as they aren’t willing to pay for staff to sit around doing nothing, when not required.