Envoy DFW-TYR

Our new EFBs have all kinds of nifty stuff these days. They just added all the recurrent training materials.
Having the information is one thing. Having it well-organized is quite another.

It's really great that I can carry around a complete library of Operations Specifications (and charts for the entire American continent, or at least the places thereon to which we operate), but it doesn't help if it's just wall-o-text after wall-o-text. Like I said, a good manual author is underappreciated.

edit: note: I considered FM-1, when I worked there, to be very well-organized, along with AOM-1.
 
They're getting better. The PDFs now have hyperlinked text in checklists and TOCs so you can move around the different pages and sections much easier.
 
At American, we cant operate into an un-towered airport unless that airport is specifically authorized in the Ops Specs for ops without a control tower. I found that out the hard way when TUL had its tower out of service last year.

At Envoy, I worked the midnight shift in dispatch for over half a year. Almost every night there were issues as at many stations where we had late ops without a control tower, Ops would be under manned and the agents working the flights would be on the ramp waiting for the flight and not near Ops. High turnover among the ground staff and poor training were key problem. I was calling station GMs at all hours of the night almost every night. The station GMs had access to who was working and could call people on cell phones whereas I had no access to who was on duty at a station so all I had was station ops numbers.

It really is a worthless requirement. Most the Ops agents have little or no training. Many dont even check the runways and taxiways when giving the airport advisories. It really is a bit of a joke. With all the diversions it causes and all the extra fuel burnt in holding patterns waiting for contact to be made with someone at the airport, Im surprised that Envoy doesnt push hard to get rid of it. I mean at an airline there are so many Ops Specs exemptions and authorizations for things that can compromise safety far more than a pilot landing at an airport with just an ASOS and CTAF. It is definitely a case of both the airline and Feds not trusting their pilots.

A little background on the Envoy requirement. This is not confirmed in any way and I cannot verify it is completely true or not. I was never told in training nor was able to really find out why we had the airport advisory requirement. I asked one of my crew what they were told and they said there was some incident with an Envoy aircraft and a ground vehicle at an untowered airport. It would make sense as many of the strange and bizarre Ops Spec and company policies come from single incidents.

One somewhat related example is when I worked for Endeavor, then called Pinnacle, we were not allowed to land on a contaminated runway at a designated special winter ops airport without an updated field condition report from the station ops. Just like the Envoy airport advisories, these were of questionable value. Often times the overworked agents simply just updated the time on a previous field condition report and did nothing to actually survey the conditions at the airport. The runway could have been plowed long ago and by bare and dry but because the previous report had contamination or there was some frozen precip in the metars it necessitated having an hourly updated report for landing at those airports. Other airlines could be landing all day there all day with no issues but we would need to divert without that updated field condition report.

Every airline has some strange requirements that other airlines dont have. Every airline also has some strange authorizations and exemptions that other airlines dont have.
 
IF WE EVOLVED FROM APES WHY ARE THERE STILL APES?

:sarcasm:

Well, not everything always evolves. Let's say that there was one rodent species on an island. This particular rodent had black fur, and the ground was was a dusty brown color. The black fur made the rodent stick out, for airborne predators. now lets say that somewhere along the lines, one of those black furred rodents evolved to have a brown coat. Matching closely to brown colored earth, making it less visible to apex flying predators. It would mate with other black furred rodents, but it's offspring. The ones gifted with the dominant allele of brown fur. They would survive, and then reproduce in larger numbers, making them more dominant rodent species on the island then their black furred cousins. While the black furred rodent would be hunted in higher numbers, and either decline in numbers, or be hunted to extinction.

;) :biggrin:
 
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