Flight Planning Manager

Salary: Competitive  

Hours: Monday – Friday 9am – 5.30pm 

Location: Crawley, West Sussex 

Contract: Permanent  

Closing Date: 24th January 2025

At Virgin Atlantic Airways, we believe that everyone can take on the world, and it's our vision to become the most loved travel company. As we embark on this next exciting stage of our journey, we're harnessing our spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation to challenge the status quo.

In a nutshell

Based in our Operations Control Centre (OCC) the team play an integral part in the delivery of the Virgin Atlantic flying programme, ensuring flights are planned in a safe, efficient, and regulatory compliant manner. To achieve this, the team must assess a wide range of tactical information including meteorological data, Airfield NOTAMs and airspace ATC flow restrictions.

As Flight Planning Manager, you will be responsible for leading and managing a team of Duty Managers who manager our 24/7 operation, ensuring that plans are delivered, and amended when required, and the highest standards are upheld. 

Day to day

The role of Flight Planning Manager is vital to Virgin Atlantic’s flying programme. Some of the main (and varied) duties you will undertake on a daily basis are:

To effectively manage the Flight Planning team (Duty Managers and Flight Planners), ensuring all policies, procedures and regulatory standards are met.

To deliver the flying programme safely, compliantly and on-time.

Providing leadership across the Flight Planning team, building a culture of high performance and continuous improvement, whilst maintaining team engagement and personal development opportunities.

Working collaboratively with external industry partners, national and international regulatory authorities to ensure practices and systems in the field evolve to match best practice.

Inspiring your team, at all levels, to meet and exceed the standards we set, with the end goal to provide an amazing (and safe) flying experience for our passengers. 

About you

Are you a flight planning professional, experienced managing within an operational environment. Are you a positive influence, an excellent decision maker and an inspiration to those working for and with you? If the answer is ‘yes’ and you meet the below criteria, we’d love to hear from you:

• Experience of People Managing a technical team
• Significant Flight Planning experience, ideally in a long-haul, ETOPS environment
• Experience using CAE FPM flight planning system (highly desirable)
• Creation and delivery of training material, covering technically complex subject matter
• Experience of forming and maintaining working relationships across professional and operational boundaries