Flight licence cut
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DRIVERS' HOURS convictions last July led to Flight Coach Travel having four of its 24 vehicles suspended for three months by the West Midlands Traffic Commissioners.
The company, of Handsworth, Brimingham, and 35 of its drivers were fined £6,900 with £2,730 costs by Birmingham city magistrates in July after admitting a series of offences on journeys to the South of France and Spain in September 1982 (CM, July 16).
Suspending the vehicles, Commissioners' chairman Ronald Jackson said they were not prepared to put the safety of passengers in coaches in jeopardy and they would do all in their power to make sure that passenger safety was looked after. The hours regulations were there for a purpose and a tired driver was a dangerous driver.
Kenneth Flight, the company's chairman and managing director, said that in the past 12 months the company had carried 174,000 passengers over 1,484,426 miles with only three very minor accidents.
The 103 convictions in July arose because drivers who were to drive the coaches on the Continent were travelling down to Dover in the same coach because of pride in their vehicles and a wish to remain with their passengers.
Steps had been taken to put .matters right even before traffic examiners started an investigation. The system now was that two drivers travelled down the day before and joined the coach in Dover while the driver who had driven down remained in Dover until the coach returned from the Continent.
He agreed the company had previously been convicted of hours offences. Mr Flight said that occurred when the company's Heathrow Airport service was extended to Gatwick and traffic delays meant that drivers did not get the required breaks on about 11 per cent of the occasions. Since then, the service had been operated by two drivers which had put up the cost of drivers' wages by about £30,000.
Mr Jackson commented that in July 1982 the company had been warned about the previous offences yet within two to three months other offences were being committed.
Mr Flight said it had been a result of drivers twisting the traffic managers arm. The traffic manager had been replaced.
Announcing the Commissioners' decision, Mr Jackson said they were not prepared on this occasion to say that the company was no longer of good repute. However, the commissioners hoped that Mr Flight would now review all the company's operations to ensure that all the regulations were complied with religiously.