Wightlink has cancelled 8 sailings on its Fishbourne-Portsmouth route this coming Saturday due to staff shortages.
The cross-Solent operator says that it has tried to source staff at ‘short notice’ (2 days), but has failed. As a result, Wightlink has taken the last resort action of cancelling scheduled sailings.
The 08:40, 10:40, 12:40 and 14:40 from Portsmouth have been cancelled alongside the 09:40, 11:40, 13:40 and 15:40 sailings from Fishbourne.
It’s said the shortages relate to the absence of an essential crew member. The same reason was given for cancellations on 24th September. Last Friday the route was hit by 2-hour delays due to a mechanical issue.
All booked customers have been notified and moved to alternate sailings.
Common practice with Wight Link, I expect they couldn’t fill the boats up and cancelled them….Just wait for the winter, this will be even more common practice….
Agreed. Why do they keep taking the travelling public for fools ? It’s very insulting.
When will link realise we DONT believe there constant bs excuses too save money for shareholders!!
Disgraceful service if you can even call it that.part time islander fleece service
They have a list of excuses, and just work their way down it. Then they start again. All lies. Why don’t they just say “In an effort to cut costs we are cancelling……Have a nice day” ?
If you have fleet of expensive ferries surely it is essential to have enough staff reserve cover to operate them. It is a basic management responsibility !
What is going on
Management responsibility is to make as much profit as possible.
Staff cost money and eat into those lovely profits, so employ as few as possible.
If you can’t fill a boat, cancel it. Save expensive fuel, wear and tear on the vessel, and possibly paying a crew member overtime rates.
Passengers are only important when they can be fleeced with higher fares on fully-booked services.
They don’t give a shxt link, they couldn’t run a boating lake….aregant and disrespectful too their customers….
Your right Keith very basic management so basic wightlink can’t even get to grips with it says it all about the way they operate ,and who their looking after and it’s not the public.
It’s called the Business Continuity Plan (BCP). A business asks itself what it will do if we are denied our people, buildings, and systems. The plan will outline what staff are to do within one, two, four, six, ten, twelve and up to twenty-four hours. BCP became Worldwide following the attacks of September 11th, 2001.
The plans provide clear guidelines to everyone on what action to take. One of the main priorities is ensuring a failure, such as sickness, does not impact the customers they serve. While a ‘one-off’ event cannot be prevented, having staff on stand-by is one way to ensure their business can continue, with minimal impact on the people they serve: customers.
one of the staff shortages happens to be my partner who is seriously unwell . so i suggest you think about your comments before putting them i writing remember it works both ways.
So have contingency!
Appalling service, how can this happen? Should have back crews on standby all the time,never remember this happening a few years back. 8 sailings is alot of inconvenience for thousands of passengers who have maybe other connections ahead of them, flights, other ferries,weddings funerals etc. People are being ripped off with cost in first place so should be getting a first class service. Should be getting in Agency and train up for when needed,which seems alot at moment.
So what is our MP doing about this as wightlink have a legal duty to supply a level of service. Instead he is sat in Manchester watching the PM cancel HS2, so one can only assume that is more important.
Eating sausages
Wightlink don’t have a legal duty to do anything unfortunately!
They can’t keep the staff happy they have… they have mucked the timetable up in Yarmouth from January next year meaning I now won’t be able to get to work on time, on top of that college students have no bus to Yarmouth in the mornings for the new 7am sailing. None of us regular users are happy about losing the 0620am. Most of the staff are unhappy about starting and finishing an hour later. Spoke to 2 crew yesterday who are actively looking for another job… management and current shareholders must be lining up a sale looking at the things they are doing. Buck your ideas up, your an infrastructure company not a cruise line operator, most travelers and tourists don’t use you by choice.
Just employ more staff. Maybe use an agency.
Simple.
Liars! Why not say due to not enough bookings?
Its obvious the reason is due to Wightlinks extortionate ferry fares and
being the economic climate they are not as busy, so to save and make more
money they are running less ferries.
I wish they would just tell people the truth rather than lie.
Soon we will be stranded on the island with NO
Ferry crossings.
Build a Bridge F.F.S
Just ridiculous!! Any business has cover for key workers otherwise your whole business model has a single point failure. Agree with the other comments, they are just cancelling ferries which aren’t making as much money.
no they don’t – if the person missing is a captain, they only have so many and each are only permitted by law to work a certain number of hours – if you wan’t to employ more people who are just sat around doing nothing, in case someone goes sick, then you need to accept far higher ticket prices.
also – overtime is voluntary – if the staff on their days off say no, I am not working and that is the end of it, then no service.
Then if that wa the ase they need to say that and people would have some understanding of the issue.
The trouble is, they like the other cross Solent operators, the cry wolf so often and are so very vague that no-one believes them or has any sympathy for them
Rubbish,no reason to put fares up further,they are already making millions for share holders, not running on shoe string – poor employer now, happens to all companies when they get big and greedy and no longer there to support island community etc. No reason can’t train up agency staff for if and when needed. Soon all will be cancelled if staff work to rule. Not so long ago redundancies. What’s wrong with asking staff from other companies?
Imbecile – you do realise that you cannot simply go to an agency and get a captain to run the boat dont you – it isn’t the same as getting cover for stacking shelves at tesco – putting a new captain onboard a ferry like wightlinks takes months and months of training and familiarisation before being allowed to take the boat out unsupervised.
Mr Greenfield phone must be red hot, as the money grabbing shareholders sense a loss .. still the Wightlink reliability and performance statistics will show 99.9% to schedule .. best joke ever .. well done Wightlink ..
Are they seriously saying that a business who is intelligent enough to understand operate complex machinery, DIDNT forsee and mitigate against the ‘key man’ business risk?
££££££££££££
Force the company to re-book and pay every passenger their ticket price back plus £100 compensation, Make it more expensive to NOT run the ferry, you’d soon see a change then.
I was booked on the Fb to Po @ 11:40. We were moved to 12:20. Was on Victoria and it was not full. I asked a rating who was considered to be essential m he said captain or first officer. He knew nothing about any absence either. Does smell a bit like they were consolidating crossings to boost profits
Wightlink are an utter disgrace. What do they link exactly? They break the link, not make it. 30 minute window to reach the ferry and if you don’t make it your ticket is cancelled. If you miss the sailing and you’ve got an economy ticket (because that’s all you can afford) then expect a charge to rebook. Any way to make a quick buck. It’s not a respectable company, it’s an embarrassing, disappointment to anyone who wishes to come here. But what do they care aye? They can’t afford to get extra staff – it would eat into their 8 million net profit they made for Basalt Infrastructure and Fiera Infrastructure (the shareholders). They should be fined in the same way as the railways… and be properly regulated! Pirates of the Solent!