Long-term crew demand is calculated based on the best information currently available. When pairings are not available, the flight schedule or fleet composition is used to estimate the demand. Pairings can be generated early in order to support the manpower process long before any production pairings are produced and imported to Carmen Manpower. In addition to production, stipulated days off and vacation, standbys and estimated training demands are added to obtain overall crew demand.
In some cabin situations, production may have to be split among production groups. For example, if 747 purser production can be combined with either 737 or 320 duty, the user can define how much of the 747 production should be allocated to each qualification group.
Crew supply is based on current crew availability plus known recruits and retirements, together with forecast sick leave, part-time or other reasons for absence and for crew leaving the company. The result is presented graphically with crew surplus and deficit clearly visualized.
Promotion programs and related training activities are produced to correct imbalances in the crew supply. For the next season, actual bids are used, while forecast bids are used to build the promotion paths necessary to fill gaps. The resulting promotions respect airline seniority requirements while minimizing training costs.
The system can automatically define and allocate vacation blocks. Vacation blocks are created to match the desired vacation volumes for the focus period, usually one season. Crew members enter their requests for vacation via Carmen InterBids. This is the same interface as used in rostering. Vacations are assigned based on seniority and company regulations.
The user can define course templates consisting of classroom sessions, simulator sessions and route instructions. Separate templates are created for different types of training, e.g. promoting a first officer from 737 to 747. At the same time as the course blocks are assigned to a crew member, additional requirements for simulators and instructors are added. This creates estimated simulator and instructor capacity requirements for the season.
The user can balance training activities over the season in order to better utilize simulators and instructors. If too few instructors are available for training, the user can backtrack in the process to educate more instructors. Training blocks can also be assigned with Carmen Crew Rostering and imported back to Carmen Manpower.
Carmen Manpower comes with a set of standard reports for analyzing key properties of solutions, scenarios or input data. Reports can be detailed, presenting training requirements for individual crew members or, more generally, presenting key performance indicators for a given scenario. It is also easy to set up communication links with external systems.
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