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NEWS The Not So Friendly Skies....
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
Randy, JoBoy, does this (alleged) eyewitness account fit your theories?
http://m.imgur.com/YPt5MHu?r
http://m.imgur.com/YPt5MHu?r
D
Deleted member 24525
Guest
Of course it doesn't.
It doesn't fit their narrative of "big bad airlines force people to buy their tickets"
This is why we shouldn't entertain these stupid tabloid fake news stories where the source is Twitter or YouTube.
I never argued who was at fault. I was merely pointing out that the hand-wringing was about the woman and the issue wasn't the dude who may have only seen part of the scenario play out and misguidedly got involved for the right reasons. Far be it from me to defend entitled idiots in airline tubes.
The "dude" should have kept his seat and STFU. There was no "right reason" for his involvement. He made a threat, escalated an already bad situation and should have been removed from the aircraft.
Because on the ground, it is not his job to get involved unless it directly affects the flight safety of his aircraft (i.e. he wants someone removed before going flying). As I said earlier in this thread, airline policy specifically say before the door is shut and the jetway pulled, it is the ground staff and FAs who handle these incidents with the ground staff being the ones in charge and making the decisions. When it looked like the male pax was threatening the airline staff, he did get involved enough to break it up and then backed off.
I think the Captain acted correctly. He monitored the situation while blocking access to the cockpit. He got involved when he had to to protect someone and he let the approprtiate personal handle the issue. The Captain getting more involved would have just muddied the waters more since he has no legal, regulatory or airline authority on the ground except for direct flight safety issues.
Once the aircraft door is closed and the jetway pulled back, it's a whole different ball game. But while the Captain would be making the decisions and hard calls, you still wouldn't have seen him because the regulations require the cockpit door to be closed and locked whenever the aircraft door is closed.
It's not the military with a clear rank structure and chain of command.
I did not propose any theories. Like I said, twice, I simply saw the Youtube video on international news and asked if anyone had any information that was not circulating around the world (saw it in British and India newspapers).
Regardless of whether you think they are fake or stupid is irrelevant, Youtube videos have an effect. The airlines have all responded positively to try and counteract the negative publicity. In the end, the customer won the only thing they were asking for - a more equitable and reasonable system of bumping passengers when the airline oversells and/or has to get crew somewhere. Delta increasing the amount the gate agent can use as incentive will work wonders, similarly United tying some executive pay to customer satisfaction is welcomed.
You speculated that contract negotiations precipitated the incident. So yeah, you did.
These "incidents" gaining notoriety is more of symptom of our societies short attention span and love of victimhood. The supposed problem affected less than one in 10,000 passengers, and those that aren't praying for a lawsuit or are generally sane handled it like rational adults. Your ongoing celebration of this is a little baffling.
In and of itself, it did not cause it; however it could have been a small piece of the puzzle, a link in the chain as they say in CRM class.
It was a relatively small problem that highly upset the paying passengers it impacted. It appears the executives have reached the same conclusion that 99% of the public has and is an easy, inexpensive way to improve customer satisfaction. I don't know why so many are against it as I think it is both a better business decision and better for customer satisfaction.
I get that Hal. But once you do your walk around, and sign off on the aircraft (if you guys do that), it should be yours............with all that comes with that. The PIC should be able to boot anyone they want, for whatever reason they want, and answer for it after they get to their destination.
The PIC can boot anyone off at any time in the name of flight safety. But this wasn't a flight safety incident until the "dude" threatened the employee. I would have booted him as soon as he made the threat. But I still wouldn't have done it personally, I would have told the gate agent to get him off.
The aircraft becomes the Captain's when the cabin door shuts until then it's the company's. It becomes the company's once again when the cabin door is opened.
The only exception to this is if you take the aircraft somewhere where there is no company. Then the Captain becomes the senior company official around and assumes all those responsibilities. But that is from company policy not government regulation.
And don't take me wrong, the Captain is still in charge of the crew at the gate as it pertains to getting the aircraft ready to fly. But gate agents are not his to command and passenger decisions (other than demanding removal) are not yet his to make.
I have also made decisions at the gate as the Captain that have not made the ground staff happy. I recently had a divert shortly after takeoff. Between takeoff and landing the FAs cooked but did not serve the pax meals, once cooked it's trash if not served. After the divert while we were preparing to takeoff again the station manager informed me they were not going to put new catering on the plane. While we were trying to get everything ready to get back in the air the pax stayed on the plane. I told her I would not leave the gate until the pax (who had been on the plane for 3 1/2 hours at this point and had another 6 1/2 to go before getting off in Honolulu) were informed of this and given the option to either continue or rebook to another flight. The station manager said it wasn't my call. I told her it was because flying with 296 disgruntled and hungry pax was an inflight incident just waiting to happen. In the end, the plane was re-catered.
The Captain walks a narrow line of the ground. I probably overstepped my ground authority but was able to justify it by making it a preemptive safety issue.
Last edited:
exNavyOffRec
Well-Known Member
If I had been on that flight you would have made me very happy by doing that.
What caused the divert after takeoff?