Disruption on Wightlink’s Fishbourne-Portsmouth car ferry service – which has resulted in delays to Royal Mail deliveries – looks set to continue into Thursday.
The cross-Solent operator says that due to sickness of an essential member of crew, the 06:20 and 08:30 sailings from Portsmouth tomorrow morning have been cancelled. The 07:25 and 10:30 sailings from Fishbourne have also been pulled.
This week the cross-Solent service has been disrupted due to technical issues with flagship Victoria of Wight.
Wightlink apologises for any changes to your travel plans.
UPDATE @ 09:41 – Due to adverse weather conditions and the vessel on reduced power, the 10:00 sailing from Portsmouth and the 11:00 from Fishbourne have both been cancelled this morning.
more staff sickness in recent weeks than historical norms – well there must be something going on. I wonder if the crews are working to rule and not doing any overtime at all.Perhaps there is a dispute simmering to the surface slowly, that we are not aware of yet.
Whilst I accept staff sickness is not foreseeable, to suddenly have this much, usually means something else is afoot.
Seasickness is still illness
But when you thin the crews down to absolute minimums, and have no contingencies for what could be a long term sickness with a single crew member then perhaps, rather than blaming ‘work to rule’ or other issues, one should be asking the company why they ‘forgot’ to make plans for such an eventuality?
@Davimel
because no one ever employs on the basis that someone might go long term sick. They didn’t forget – it is intentional. They will work out their minimum staffing levels and their optimal staffing levels. If someone goes sick, that is not their fault in their view.
It used to be that boats crews were also the berthing staff, so if they were short due to sickness, someone from the harbour or pier head went onboard to ensure the boats still ran. Now they employ people shoreside, who cannot crew and are never going to be crew due to varying reasons. Add in the minimum rest periods between shifts, which is a legal requirement and you have very few options, apart from calling round to see if someone will work overtime on a day off.
It is not new, I know someone that worked the fastcats a few years ago and they said it was constant ringing round trying to get someone in due to sickness etc.
remember what happened at southern trains three years ago….
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36544896
excerpt..
The RMT says it has evidence of 33 trains cancelled when staff were available and ready to work.
Southern said sickness among train drivers had risen at certain depots.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the conductor said his sickness was for “a genuine reason”.
He told BBC South East that if the sickness rate had gone up, it was due to the “initial impact of the consequences” of the strike action.
“The levels they’re talking about does not affect the cancellation of trains… they relied on people working rest days previously and now because
people are not working rest days then that’s why they’re cancelling trains,” he said.
Up your bloody staff then cause your making plenty of money
In English please.
Business as usual then
Here we go, a barrage of moaning!!
Just enjoy life
You lot make laugh
Moan moan bloody moan
The number of people who have had their travel plans disrupted by Shitelink over the past year runs to several thousands. A great many of those people had travel connections to make or appointments to keep. Have a bit of sympathy for all those affected and all those many thousands who will be affected in future. Unless, of course, you are one of the Shitelink management in which case I have just wasted my time writing this.
I take it you don’t need to use these services. Some of us rely on them on a daily basis
That’s ok if you do not rely on ferry travel, hope you need to get to mainland for hospital appointments & ferry cancelled, then your selfish attitude might change!
Obviously you never use the ferries regularly, have one of your ferries cancelled and you have to wait two hours till the next; then again the following week, finality you will understand instead of a puerile comment about moaning
Sicknote strikes again and Shitelinks management are floundering in the water like a, well, like a broken down ferry.
The reason there is always staff shortness according to an employee is that the staff that worked on the dockside were also trained to work on the ferries. Unfortunately they cut the dock side staff resulting in no back up staff when staff are ill.
If they had not cut staff to the bone this would not have happened. This employee has no axe to grind except moral is at an all time low with the cuts and constant customer complaints.
exactly ron
the front line staff get fed up of listening to whinging customers, when they are not the ones who fix the ferries or decide on policy.
They are then reluctant to do overtime as they know they will have a shite day at work again and they would rather be at home.
Are Wightlink really saying that their service depends on one member of staff?!
This is getting beyond belief, all the travelling public that are missing the sailings.
Must be the Solent trots again, or just plain bad management!
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.
I’ve gone over to Red Funnel car ferries. They seem to be a little better and reasonably on time. Wightlink have lost my custom I’m afraid.
It’s about time senior management got off there backsides and sorted out this mess
The public are fed up with the same excuses
Please tell me why it is that, when an airline cancels a flight everyone jumps up and down for compensation and are supported by legistation yet when a ferry company, who are there to provide a service, simply get away with it with some lame excuse. Sickness of ‘an essential crew member’ is NOT an excuse; they must have back-up staff to provide a SERVICE. Simple. No arguement.
they will, if you are willing to pay higher ticket prices, to pay the staff wages.