47 trapped on 'nightmare' flight to the Twin Cities

Just for the record we had a union blast mail that went out today that has some interesting verbage in it that is changing my opinion of the matter in defense of the crew (for the better). Apparently the company is in agreement with the union's statement. I'm being vague on purpose by the way since I'm not going to post the email. Bottom line, I'm starting to think there was A LOT more to this than meets the eye....much of which is in line with FlyChicaga's statement about company culture.
 
Ralgha said:
Yes, it is that easy.

See those unused airstairs over there? Go get them. That door? Unlock it. What part of being a captain do you not understand? All you need is one person with a key (fire department) and things will happen. I'll go get the damn airstairs if nobody else will. Hell you don't even need a key at most terminals, just open the door, F' the alarm, nobody pays attention to them anyway.

Hotel is not your problem, transportation is not your problem. Getting them out of that smelly POS metal tube is. Get them out of the airplane and things will happen. Make things happen. Don't see a solution, create one. That's what the captain signed up for and if he or she can't hack it, throw them out with the bath water.

Like I said, I can't give you specifics because I've never been there. If I were there, I'd tell you what would happen.

Also, if you enlist FBO services, have them bill the company, that's what it's there for.
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how can you go get the airstairs if you can't get off the plane? What are you going to do with all the people once they're off the plane? Now you just have 50 people in the middle of an airport - still no bathroom (since you don't have a key into the building), still no food, etc. Your problem is not solved simply by getting people off of the plane.
 
TheShortOne said:
how can you go get the airstairs if you can't get off the plane? What are you going to do with all the people once they're off the plane? Now you just have 50 people in the middle of an airport - still no bathroom (since you don't have a key into the building), still no food, etc. Your problem is not solved simply by getting people off of the plane.
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If people voluntarily get off the plane I would think the company would not be responsible for them anymore. Just make sure they know what they are getting into before letting them deplane.
 
Ralgha said:
Yes, it is that easy.
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Not quite.

Ralgha said:
See those unused airstairs over there? Go get them. That door? Unlock it. What part of being a captain do you not understand? All you need is one person with a key (fire department) and things will happen. I'll go get the damn airstairs if nobody else will. Hell you don't even need a key at most terminals, just open the door, F' the alarm, nobody pays attention to them anyway.
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If you injure yourself while trying to move the air stairs (which may or may not be there in the first place), then you will not be covered by OJI. Plus, you can't just say, "F' the alarm," because you possibly could go to prison by "breaking" into the airport.

Ralgha said:
Hotel is not your problem, transportation is not your problem. Getting them out of that smelly POS metal tube is.
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Wrong. The passengers are my problem, because as a Captain, they are your responsibility. Letting them jump six feet down to the ramp, possibly injuring themselves, only to still be without lodging or food is a major problem.
 
I don't get it-47 souls on board and you would think one of them would call 911 after the first few hours. Too bad the pax should also take half the blame for their inability to act!
 
n77j said:
I don't get it-47 souls on board and you would think one of them would call 911 after the first few hours. Too bad the pax should also take half the blame for their inability to act!
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I don't know. When you are being told something different (because the crew is told something different) every hour or so, you try to be as patient as possible. Especially when you recognize that any outburst could potentially land you in the clink. I tend to think the pax were innocent bystanders.
 
I think another valuable lesson that we can take away from this is decision-making and taking ownership.

I'll bet you a steak dinner that the crew didn't go to work and think that America would be armchair quarterbacking that leg.

I'm certainly thinking about what I'd do if I ever run into a similar situation, perhaps the rest of us should too.

I'd love to get my hands on whatever company communication is being distributed about the event.
 
Doug Taylor said:
I think another valuable lesson that we can take away from this is decision-making and taking ownership.

I'll bet you a steak dinner that the crew didn't go to work and think that America would be armchair quarterbacking that leg.

I'm certainly thinking about what I'd do if I ever run into a similar situation, perhaps the rest of us should too.

I'd love to get my hands on whatever company communication is being distributed about the event.
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I'm sure both the FO and CA will be filing ASAP's and all the pilots that work at this carrier will be able to read them eventually. It'll probably be incoroporated to the following quarter's recurrent CRM course as well. It's often very amusing to observe the differences betwen the FO and CA asap's. I'm not really going to make any more judgements or do any more second guessing until I read those, although the facts do not look too good for them at this point.

As far as company communication about the event: aside from what's public, from what I understand there's been none so far, other than an ALPA blastmail which was pretty vague but supportive of the pilots. ALPA is paid to do that though, so that's no surprise. CAL has a written policy (that also applies to express carriers) which clearly and concisely describes the course of action to take in the event of lengthy dealys, granted RST at 2AM on a saturday morning is a bit different than EWR at 3PM on a monday afternoon.
 
Alchemy said:
As far as company communication about the event: aside from what's public, from what I understand there's been none so far, other than an ALPA blastmail which was pretty vague but supportive of the pilots. ALPA is paid to do that though, so that's no surprise.
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Read it a bit closer it said more than that.
 
Alchemy said:
I just re-read it and couldn't really gleam anything useful out of it. It's a 4 sentence pragraprah that basically said "good job crew".
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You mentioned that ALPA was paid to say that...might be true but it also mentioned the company's stance on the matter. That's all I was getting at.
 
What was so good about holding the passangers on a plane for 9 hrs? Trying to find out the other side of the story.
 
pullup said:
What was so good about holding the passangers on a plane for 9 hrs? Trying to find out the other side of the story.
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What it says is that the company is standing behind the pilots. So it would seem as if Continental is to blame not Expressjet. Continental is responsible for all IROP issues as is Delta with Delta Connection flights. Mainline has the ball when a flight become IROP.
 
This is a very good thread (with a few bumps along the road).

I was speaking to my captain yesterday about this situation. He told me last Thanksgiving they landed at an outstation (here in the Midwest) and all the lights were off - nobody was home (due to a mis-communication between marketing and dispatch.)

His heart sank, he looked at the release again, and sure enough they were supposed to fly to K---. What did he do? He threw down the airstairs (I know the ERJ145 doesn't have them), chalked himself, removed all the bags from cargo himself, and called local police to have the folks let through the terminal. It wasn't a big deal at all. This crew probably didn't know it (but a quick call to 411 would have told them) that there is a hotel about 1/2 mile - walking distance - from the terminal. Obviously these pax didn't intend on terminating at RST, but a hotel WAS NOT a 20 minute drive away as someone said.

What would Sully do? Do you think he would have just sat in the flight deck idly observing the tennis ball being hit back and forth between ExpressJet and Continental? Absolutely not.

Which brings another great point: A NW mainline flight was diverted to RST at about the same time that night (http://flightaware.com/live/flight/NWA120/history) What happened there? While ExpressJet's pax watched out their windows, the A320's pax somehow deplaned (does the A320 have airstairs?) and GOT BUSSED to MSP. It was possible to deplane without airstairs that night, and get a bus for the folks - IT WAS DONE BY NW! And don't give me the whole "NW has a base in MSP" baloney.

To all those people who say it isn't possible / there's liability in it (same excuse I heard a CA say when a PAX pleaded for a crew member to get his stranded bag on the ramp "If I throw out my back lifting the bag it's not covered by worker's comp!" - shameful!) / where would the people go...don't listen to any of it. I'm intimately familiar with RST and its ops and it could have been done.
 

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pullup said:
That's fine. By that time the court of public opinion will have shifted back against pilots and airlines.
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The court only shifts one way.

The story is that 47 people were trapped on a plane overnight. That's it. No one (except us) gives a crap as to why.

There will be ZERO follow up stories outside of our own industry chat.
 
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