121 guys, how does this happen? (AKA,Oh Delta)

I find this pretty shocking as it goes against all the norms for what I've seen\heard of happening in these situations. One time on a rare 100F*+ day at SFO, we had Air Force One in town and really bad flow when a Virgin Atlantic A340-600 arrived to find out all 3 of the A346 capable gates we had would be occupied for at least 1.5 hours (and 2 of the 3 gates were taken up by an A380 as the adjacent gate couldn't be used by A346s with an A380 next door...). The pilots advised they'd have to shut down as they were low on fuel from holding and penalty vectors. About 30 mins in, there was an issue with the AC system and the cabin rapidly heated up. They then started up engines but the cabin still wasn't cooling properly. After several anxious messages from the crew demanding a gate, the captain finally said "If you lot can't find a place to park us soon, I will evacuate the aircraft on this ramp which can result in passenger injuries. This is becoming an emergency situation". He also advised they'd run critical on fuel with engines running that long. Airport management said "do anything to get them parked". They never, ever, ever say stuff like that. Obviously, it sunk in that this was a very serious situation. So since there was no way I was going to get Emirates off the gate and opening the adjacent gate wouldn't help due to the A346/A388 restriction there, I did one of the weirdest things I ever did in terminal ops and told Air Belin to stop boarding, that a Delta super tug (Delta handled Virgin so they were standing by to help but had no business touching an Air Berlin jet) was going to push them off the gate, hold them so VS could park, and then the passengers would all have to move to one of 2 other gates, whichever would open first. The manager went ballistic but as it was an emergency and airport management was down at the gate to coax things, in a record 15 minutes, we had Air Berlin shoving off partially loaded, with a gate full of confused pax with no idea where to go mixed in with all the Virgin outbound pax arriving, and we got the A340-600 parked. Air Berlin ended up pulling into a new gate about 20 mins later but took a 1+ hour delay due to moving all the ramp equipment and pax then loading up again.

That is how seriously an airport treats that stuff, so this seems outrageous and outright shocking to me. Especially since when I worked as a DL manager for a vendor, the airline had an extremely low tolerance for any nonsense when compared to other carriers I'm familiar with.
 
ChasenSFO said:
I find this pretty shocking as it goes against all the norms for what I've seen\heard of happening in these situations. One time on a rare 100F*+ day at SFO, we had Air Force One in town and really bad flow when a Virgin Atlantic A340-600 arrived to find out all 3 of the A346 capable gates we had would be occupied for at least 1.5 hours (and 2 of the 3 gates were taken up by an A380 as the adjacent gate couldn't be used by A346s with an A380 next door...). The pilots advised they'd have to shut down as they were low on fuel from holding and penalty vectors. About 30 mins in, there was an issue with the AC system and the cabin rapidly heated up. They then started up engines but the cabin still wasn't cooling properly. After several anxious messages from the crew demanding a gate, the captain finally said "If you lot can't find a place to park us soon, I will evacuate the aircraft on this ramp which can result in passenger injuries. This is becoming an emergency situation". He also advised they'd run critical on fuel with engines running that long. Airport management said "do anything to get them parked". They never, ever, ever say stuff like that. Obviously, it sunk in that this was a very serious situation. So since there was no way I was going to get Emirates off the gate and opening the adjacent gate wouldn't help due to the A346/A388 restriction there, I did one of the weirdest things I ever did in terminal ops and told Air Belin to stop boarding, that a Delta super tug (Delta handled Virgin so they were standing by to help but had no business touching an Air Berlin jet) was going to push them off the gate, hold them so VS could park, and then the passengers would all have to move to one of 2 other gates, whichever would open first. The manager went ballistic but as it was an emergency and airport management was down at the gate to coax things, in a record 15 minutes, we had Air Berlin shoving off partially loaded, with a gate full of confused pax with no idea where to go mixed in with all the Virgin outbound pax arriving, and we got the A340-600 parked. Air Berlin ended up pulling into a new gate about 20 mins later but took a 1+ hour delay due to moving all the ramp equipment and pax then loading up again.

That is how seriously an airport treats that stuff, so this seems outrageous and outright shocking to me. Especially since when I worked as a DL manager for a vendor, the airline had an extremely low tolerance for any nonsense when compared to other carriers I'm familiar with.
Click to expand...

That captain displayed one of the most important qualities in being a captain: leadership. It is what I think is missing from most 121 cockpits, CPO's, training centers and management pilots.
 
BEEF SUPREME said:
That captain displayed one of the most important qualities in being a captain: leadership. It is what I think is missing from most 121 cockpits, CPO's, training centers and management pilots.
Click to expand...
I agree. He came across very firm but objective, I could tell he was basically saying "I AM going to evac this airplane if you can't get the job done", not that he might. That one transmission lit a fire under people that I had never seen a fire lit under before.

GypsyPilot said:
Yep. Way too many of them at FedEx.

We have guys here that are totally cool with sleeping on the literal floor in OAK ops during a night hub turn. All because FedEx has some half ass excuse about not being able to get proper crew rest rooms because it’s too hard to get the construction done.

I can’t wait for my turn, that’s an easy fatigue call.
Click to expand...
"Too hard". Probably more like too expensive. Every airline I'm familiar with says SFO/OAK/SJC/SMF are astronomically and far and away the most expensive places to rent and construct offices. In SMF, the Hawaiian manager told me they pay more to rent their SMF facilities than LAX and LAS combined...and they have way more flights + staff at those airports too. Southwest's gate expansion at OAK years ago (gates 26-32 IIRC) apparently was the most expensive extension project they've contributed to...which says a lot. Well over $25-40/hr+ per worker and tons of extra taxes doing it in Alameda County.
 
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BEEF SUPREME said:
On my Captain OE I entered a baking hot aircraft at 5AM. The outside air heat had been hooked up overnight and the plane could only be described as extremely uncomfortable. Every flight attendant asked me to do something about the heat. Here I am the guy with four stripes and I ask the LCA sitting in the cockpit with both windows open to start the APU. "No" he says. "Lets have them hook up the outside air." So he calls ops and 20 minutes later there still isn't outside air. Meanwhile during my FA briefing I'm basically just apologizing and saying look I'm really sorry. The LCA won't let me turn the AC on. Me, the guy with 4 stripes. Completely useless and my crew is miserable. Finally I just get tired of it and insist on starting the APU. "No". I explain that all 4 flight attendants are super uncomfortable and we are about to start boarding. "Flight attendant comfort does not matter." I nearly lost it.

So then I ask. If the flight attendants are human and they are uncomfortable, does it mean the passengers who are human will also be uncomfortable? Or is there something else that I am missing?

At that point he finally let me start the APU.

This is probably my biggest pain point being a former corporate pilot and being at a 121 carrier. It doesn't help that somehow our pilot group has institutionalized making other human beings miserable. After OE it seems like it is poorly managed by the training department. It's a top down training thing. I don't get it and I never will. I'm just sorry that is all.
Click to expand...
I hate to say that something like this is rare but it does happen. Some people can fly books really, really well.

When I upgraded, I read A LOT on this site, and read some books on leadership. Sounds cliche but it's true. Maybe I'm a nerd. Whatever. One book I read was the quintessential "It's your Ship" by Captain Abrashoff of the USS Benfold. (It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy, 10th Anniversary Edition: Abrashoff, Captain D. Michael: 8601234621669: Amazon.com: Books) One of his key points is something to the effect of "if you're going to break a rule, break it in a big way." Turning on the APU in 115 degree weather with a baked cabin seems like a no-brainer. At my place, we have the discretion to do so if it's for passenger comfort and safety. I'm guessing Alaska has the same or similar verbiage. IF NOT, and using the APU is verboten because some dumb memo says it's verboten, by God, I think that that rule is one that would qualify as breaking in a big way.
 
Well thanks for the responses. It sounds like this was mostly a failure of the PIC, but only they know. I’m headed the 121 way, but luckily I have a lot of experience telling the rich, famous and powerful NO in my industry. So hopefully it’s as easy as that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
BEEF SUPREME said:
On my Captain OE I entered a baking hot aircraft at 5AM. The outside air heat had been hooked up overnight and the plane could only be described as extremely uncomfortable. Every flight attendant asked me to do something about the heat. Here I am the guy with four stripes and I ask the LCA sitting in the cockpit with both windows open to start the APU. "No" he says. "Lets have them hook up the outside air." So he calls ops and 20 minutes later there still isn't outside air. Meanwhile during my FA briefing I'm basically just apologizing and saying look I'm really sorry. The LCA won't let me turn the AC on. Me, the guy with 4 stripes. Completely useless and my crew is miserable. Finally I just get tired of it and insist on starting the APU. "No". I explain that all 4 flight attendants are super uncomfortable and we are about to start boarding. "Flight attendant comfort does not matter." I nearly lost it.

So then I ask. If the flight attendants are human and they are uncomfortable, does it mean the passengers who are human will also be uncomfortable? Or is there something else that I am missing?

At that point he finally let me start the APU.

This is probably my biggest pain point being a former corporate pilot and being at a 121 carrier. It doesn't help that somehow our pilot group has institutionalized making other human beings miserable. After OE it seems like it is poorly managed by the training department. It's a top down training thing. I don't get it and I never will. I'm just sorry that is all.
Click to expand...

Oh, ground air....

One of my last CRJ trips at my former employer was a Medford turn with a 5 hour sit (eyeroll). We get up there and my crew decides to get a crew car and go to town but I'm going to training and I have studying to do so I get ground air and put the airplane to bed and go post up in the restaurant to have lunch and read. It's the middle of summer and it's like 108 degrees in Medford.

Three and change hours later I decide to migrate back to the airplane and catch a short nap before it's time to go.... only to find that the ground air has been pumping hot air into the airplane for 3 hours.

I get the power turned on and the apu running and I look at the cabin temp and it's showing 58 degrees C. Anyone who's flown the CRJ2 knows that air conditioning on the ground from the packs is basically a joke so I go looking for a different air cart, I tell the ramp and they go "oh yeah it hasn't been working right." So I ask for another cart and they say "we have another one but that one doesn't work either." Oh okay, have you reported this? You know, since it's 108 degrees here and all. "Oh yeah I guess we should."

Now it's about 45 minutes to push and the APU has only been able to cool it to like 50, and I don't want to kill anyone today, so I call dispatch and tell them we'll be taking a delay and why. To my surprise they don't argue for once.

We sit for another hour past departure time but the best I can do is 40 C. This was early in covid and nobody seemed to have a handle on catering in those days, so they had only catered us at SFO with 25 little tiny water bottles and there were 50 people so I go ask ramp if they have any water and ice. They have plenty of ice they can give me but no water. I walk back inside to see if the restaurant or the little shop is open but they aren't. I spy a vending machine at the other end of the terminal so I go over and start feeding it my credit card. At one point my credit card company decides its sus and shuts my card off, I call them and beg them to turn it back on and they do and I eventually buy the machine out of water.

I walk back to the gate with my load of water and make an announcement saying that the airplane was very hot and the FA will give you a glass of ice water as you're boarding and please drink it and find your seat very quickly so we can get going, because the only way this airplane is going to cool down is if we can get it to altitude and if you would like more water please just ask.

The FA does a great job and the people are very cooperative and everything turns out fine and no one had to go to the hospital, once we reach cruise the airplane has cooled down pretty nicely.

The company refuses to reimburse for the water because I didn't ask first :P
 
roundout said:
I hate to say that something like this is rare but it does happen. Some people can fly books really, really well.

When I upgraded, I read A LOT on this site, and read some books on leadership. Sounds cliche but it's true. Maybe I'm a nerd. Whatever. One book I read was the quintessential "It's your Ship" by Captain Abrashoff of the USS Benfold. (It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy, 10th Anniversary Edition: Abrashoff, Captain D. Michael: 8601234621669: Amazon.com: Books) One of his key points is something to the effect of "if you're going to break a rule, break it in a big way." Turning on the APU in 115 degree weather with a baked cabin seems like a no-brainer. At my place, we have the discretion to do so if it's for passenger comfort and safety. I'm guessing Alaska has the same or similar verbiage. IF NOT, and using the APU is verboten because some dumb memo says it's verboten, by God, I think that that rule is one that would qualify as breaking in a big way.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. I’ve found that pretty much without fail, the guy who can quote the FOM page and verse absolutely sucks balls at his job and uses that as a crutch to overcompensate.

I was shocked to read that this was a mainline aircraft. At the regional level I saw a lot of bullying from the chief pilots office to take airplanes that shouldn’t go anywhere. A specific memory was taking a CRJ-200 out of IAD when it was over 100 degrees with no APU. The captain was completely in his right to refuse the airplane, but after the chief pilot came down to the airplane (which was hooked up to ground air) and said “I don’t know, it seems comfortable to me” he agreed to take it. FOs were not allowed to make decisions, so off we went. Needless to say, everything that could have gone wrong did. Once they disconnected ground air the huffer didn’t start. Once we finally got one engine started we were blocked in by another airplane….etc. All things that we knew were going to happen. I deal pretty well with intense heat, but I was dizzy before we left, but by the time I got to that point, the quickest route to cool air was to take off.

I went straight from regional FO to ACMI carrier. Lucky enough to be in the left seat, but despite this place’s flaws, I legitimately feel like they’d back me up on a safety issue such as the above story. The only caveat was during COVID times. I took a no APU plane ICN-HKG-TPE-HKG two summers ago. It was fine until we took a pretty significant loading delay in TPE. Under normal times I would have refused the plane and gone to the hotel, but that simply wasn’t an option.
 
roundout said:
Mention that in your exit interview. A buddy of mine got jobbed over less than $10 on an Uber tip the company refused to reimburse. Guess who's job seeking now.

edit - also, what a great TMAAT story
Click to expand...

I left out the reimbursement part of it :P

There wasn't an exit interview to speak of
 
trafficinsight said:
Oh, ground air....

One of my last CRJ trips at my former employer was a Medford turn with a 5 hour sit (eyeroll). We get up there and my crew decides to get a crew car and go to town but I'm going to training and I have studying to do so I get ground air and put the airplane to bed and go post up in the restaurant to have lunch and read. It's the middle of summer and it's like 108 degrees in Medford.

Three and change hours later I decide to migrate back to the airplane and catch a short nap before it's time to go.... only to find that the ground air has been pumping hot air into the airplane for 3 hours.

I get the power turned on and the apu running and I look at the cabin temp and it's showing 58 degrees C. Anyone who's flown the CRJ2 knows that air conditioning on the ground from the packs is basically a joke so I go looking for a different air cart, I tell the ramp and they go "oh yeah it hasn't been working right." So I ask for another cart and they say "we have another one but that one doesn't work either." Oh okay, have you reported this? You know, since it's 108 degrees here and all. "Oh yeah I guess we should."

Now it's about 45 minutes to push and the APU has only been able to cool it to like 50, and I don't want to kill anyone today, so I call dispatch and tell them we'll be taking a delay and why. To my surprise they don't argue for once.

We sit for another hour past departure time but the best I can do is 40 C. This was early in covid and nobody seemed to have a handle on catering in those days, so they had only catered us at SFO with 25 little tiny water bottles and there were 50 people so I go ask ramp if they have any water and ice. They have plenty of ice they can give me but no water. I walk back inside to see if the restaurant or the little shop is open but they aren't. I spy a vending machine at the other end of the terminal so I go over and start feeding it my credit card. At one point my credit card company decides its sus and shuts my card off, I call them and beg them to turn it back on and they do and I eventually buy the machine out of water.

I walk back to the gate with my load of water and make an announcement saying that the airplane was very hot and the FA will give you a glass of ice water as you're boarding and please drink it and find your seat very quickly so we can get going, because the only way this airplane is going to cool down is if we can get it to altitude and if you would like more water please just ask.

The FA does a great job and the people are very cooperative and everything turns out fine and no one had to go to the hospital, once we reach cruise the airplane has cooled down pretty nicely.

The company refuses to reimburse for the water because I didn't ask first :p
Click to expand...

I’d love to live in a world where a company supports an effort like this to get the job done, but you’ve worked at regional airlines long enough to know better.
 
T/O w/FSII said:
Well thanks for the responses. It sounds like this was mostly a failure of the PIC, but only they know. I’m headed the 121 way, but luckily I have a lot of experience telling the rich, famous and powerful NO in my industry. So hopefully it’s as easy as that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Management wants airplanes flying as that’s how they make money. However, your job as a Captain will be to say “NO” when it’s not safe to go make money.

I would imagine that responsibility is easier at the 121 level, since passenger facing tasks aren’t really your responsibility.. save for making PAs about things like “folks were going to deplane so you don’t die from heat stroke etc.”
 
juxtapilot said:
Management wants airplanes flying as that’s how they make money. However, your job as a Captain will be to say “NO” when it’s not safe to go make money.

I would imagine that responsibility is easier at the 121 level, since passenger facing tasks aren’t really your responsibility.. save for making PAs about things like “folks were going to deplane so you don’t die from heat stroke etc.”
Click to expand...
I hate to disappoint you but pilots are not heroic, just another cross section of society good and bad.
 
juxtapilot said:
Management wants airplanes flying as that’s how they make money. However, your job as a Captain will be to say “NO” when it’s not safe to go make money.

I would imagine that responsibility is easier at the 121 level, since passenger facing tasks aren’t really your responsibility.. save for making PAs about things like “folks were going to deplane so you don’t die from heat stroke etc.”
Click to expand...

Our job is to literally find and address the reasons we SHOULDN’T go flying and work through those threats to an acceptable risk level.
 
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