this isnlt a problem confined to Inverness, Ryanair have been banging on about it in other countries in Europe for a couple of years and it happens in the USA as well. From this I'm guessing that the rules are international and aren't easy to scale down for small airports. We are not talking about meal breaks, these are concentration and eye breaks and from what I can gather to have to be taken every 2 hours, with the staffing level being something like 3 people to cover 2 seats. If it's a big airport you can add a spare person to the team and carry the cost, but if you only need 2 seats filled going from 50% cover to 100% would be a big cost.
Now it would be very simple to arrange breaks around flight times, as long as all the scheduled airlines were punctual, as long as your access for private flights was advertised in tight slots and as long as the Scottish Ambulance Service didn't need to be able to fly their aircraft at a moments notice.......
Given that this problem is not limited to Inverness or even the UK I feel there is (or has been) an element of not keeping staff levels up (ie not watching for those who are nearing retirement age and finding replacements in time to train them). Stuart will recall how certain train companies fell down on this during Covid and when they tried to restart normal timetables it all went wrong.
