Coastal Trade Message
Dear Partner
A lot has been going on in our business since the last time I wrote to you! Thank you to those that attended our recent Trade webinar; should you have any comments or feedback for us, please do drop us a line at [email protected]
Behind the scenes at Coastal, there has been much going on and I would like to share some highlights below:
IMPROVING SAFETY CULTURE
We have been working very hard on reinforcing our safety culture within Coastal and are seeing great improvements. Here are some examples of the initiatives that we have rolled out:
- We have established a rigorous recruitment and selection process for our pilots – in fact 17 steps, in an attempt to employ the right calibre of individuals – the right attitude and aptitude.
- We have bolstered our ongoing training and assessment process for pilots flying the line.
- We have reinvigorated our engineering workforce, with catch-all defect logging and thorough trouble shooting.
- Throughout our organisation, we are heavily promoting our just culture safety reporting disposition.
This journey can only be the right one and makes us all very proud to be at the forefront of resetting the standards of the "flying safari" in Tanzania.
MCC – GO LIVE 01 DECEMBER 2018
We have taken the decision to delay the roll-out of our Multi-Crew Coordination (MCC, ie 2 pilots working as a team in the cockpit) to Saturday 1st December 2018.
Whilst all the training required for roll-out has been completed, we have supplementary training requirements for our newly joined pilots that will create undue pressure on our operations. Our whole intent for MCC implementation is to enhance safety and thus a more responsible approach was to delay and allow everyone to be ready in their time. The assessment phase is a pass-fail test, so you will appreciate there is considerable pressure on each of the individual pilots to achieve.
That said, once we go live, all of our pilots will have been trained to operate as a team – almost 80 pilots through 8 training sessions and 4 implementation phases over 8 months – all with the intent to bolster our teamwork approach and reinforce safe flight operations. I hope you will and your customers will be pleased to hear that there will be 2 pilots in the cockpit, working together as a team to promote safer operations.
NEW EXPERIENCED LEADERS AT COASTAL
At the Trade webinar, we also announced the arrival of several new faces.
Julie-Ann Walmsley has been with us for a few months now, leading the Ground Operations department. Whilst safety features on all of our deliverables, the Ground Operations unit are pushing hard for better efficiencies. Over the period of time, you will see Operational Planning, Delivery and Communications become much more seamless.
Tommy Andino has joined us as Director of Maintenance, with the remit to bring about good teamworking and thus better managed aircraft maintenance inputs – both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. The ultimate goal is to keep our fleet flying during working hours.
Our Director of Safety & Quality, Matt Adamson has the task to embed our safety driven culture into our way of working at Coastal. Expect to engage and hear from him, as we make this our #1 Priority in all that we do. Always.
COMMERCIAL UPDATE
We are keenly focussed on improving our commercial outlook and have a priority list:
A. Contact Centre
B. Payment Channels
C. Field Sales
D. Agency Agreements
(A) We are looking to have implemented our single consolidated contact centre from 01st December 2018. With all of our staff co-located and the technology in place, we should be able to be responsive and more available to all our customers.
(B) We are looking to expand our payment channels to open up at least 150 different shops around Tanzania! We are finalising arrangements with banks to be able to have presence everywhere across the country. Essentially, our customers will not need to come to us – they can simply pay at the bank closest to them. In fact, we are also working on smartphone capability as well, so literally, it will be in the hands of our customers.
(C) Much of our commercial strategy is about making ourselves accessible to our customers. Our field sales unit will reach out to our Trade customers to engage with agents directly.
(D) Underpinning all of our Trade relationships, we are rolling out 2019 agency agreements to mutually promote business.
A busy mantra, but one that will get us back closer with all of you.
Take care,
Shaf
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