Air Force or Marines?

What Branch?

  • Air Force

    Votes: 21 84.0%

  • Marines

    Votes: 4 16.0%
  • Total voters
    25
ShortField said:
Think this kind of tomfoolery doesn’t happen at our shop? I’m pretty sure it does.
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My first time on AS, the Captain spent 2-3 minutes talking about his flying background as an Alaskan bush pilot and then the Air Force service history of his FO. He also made 3 or 4 multi-minute PA announcements about points of interest (2 of which were well after dark) and actually said "Thanks to superior airmanship, we asked for the right short cuts to erase that 15-minute delay thanks to our local knowledge of this route after the dozens, if not hundreds, of times we've both flown to the Bay Area from 'Sea Tac'". To be fair, that was once (2014) and since then I've never heard anything like that, on any carrier. But a 1st flight leaves an impression LOL.

Kingairer said:
No one cares they’re on flight “fifty two ninety eight”. You can delete the flight number and keep on trucking.
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That has actually stopped people from being on the wrong plane last second more than once just that I've personally witnessed. Both as an employee and more than once seeing pax on board a flight jump up and get off for this reason (Northwest had a 0600 and 0700 SFO-MSP flights and the agents loved to just take any MSP boarding pass LOL). Especially during IROPS, there can be planes to the same city leaving around the same time or people missing gate changes and settling into empty seats in some not very rare "perfect storm" scenarios. I often (and I mean OFTEN) saw YYZ-bound pax try to board ONT flights (because, you know, "Ontario"). That sounds stupid, and it is even more stupid because most of said pax were ticketed on Air Canada and not United\SkyWest, but it is much less surprising when you've asked hundreds of people what city they're flying to only to get the name of a state in return. I get a little triggered when people who travel often are still absolutely clueless about rudimentary domestic geography, so that was fun. Shortly before Mexicana went under, a PA on a MRY-bound Brasilia revealed a Mexicana passenger flying SFO-GDL-MTY was seated fat dumb and happy, but paying enough attention to hear a totally different flight number and then ask the FA (that was not my screw up lol). Better late than never.

But in line with your thinking, many people check their brain at the door. Like when I sent a YYC-bound passenger to MFR sitting in the only unoccupied seat, belonging to the only misconnect, with the scanners down. That person was Star Alliance Gold (100+ segments or 100k+ miles on *A carriers), spoke perfect English, missed every cue until landing in MFR. Signs, announcements, F/A doing 3 headcounts (basically anytime she saw open seats for a few seconds and second-guessed herself) announcing it as a precaution due to our computer outage and reminding everyone excessively that the flight was MFR bound, 3/4 of the plane in MFR college gear, 1 hour flight instead of 3 hours, ect. Nope, who would ever notice? Not this chick. Yet I've seen people who barely speak English get off a plane realizing they are on 5834 and the pilot just said 5877 or whatever and they were on the wrong Brasilia.

I'm glad I got to work in every department except inflight and mx for all the tips and tricks before flying commercially. Half of life is knowing what to ask for, or something.
 
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ChasenSFO said:
My first time on AS, the Captain spent 2-3 minutes talking about his flying background as an Alaskan bush pilot and then the Air Force service history of his FO. He also made 3 or 4 multi-minute PA announcements about points of interest (2 of which were well after dark) and actually said "Thanks to superior airmanship, we asked for the right short cuts to erase that 15-minute delay thanks to our local knowledge of this route after the dozens, if not hundreds, of times we've both flown to the Bay Area from 'Sea Tac'". To be fair, that was once (2014) and since then I've never heard anything like that, on any carrier. But a 1st flight leaves an impression LOL.
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There is actually a sample greeting/PA that involves discussing both crewmember’s piloting careers, and there is also this document (I forget the name) that is a visual sightseeing tour, designed to be also regurgitated via PA. Have never heard anyone use either, but it sounds like you got both in one flight. Did you buy a lottery ticket afterwards? You should have :)
 
///AMG said:
There is actually a sample greeting/PA that involves discussing both crewmember’s piloting careers, and there is also this document (I forget the name) that is a visual sightseeing tour, designed to be also regurgitated via PA. Have never heard anyone use either, but it sounds like you got both in one flight. Did you buy a lottery ticket afterwards? You should have :)
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I was on a @SurferLucas buddy pass getting my 1st AS ride back in his peak bow-tie days, it was quite an experience. I recall the pilots being ANC-based. But not because they slipped it in the normal way, but because he made some kind of comment about how we are riding with ANC-based pilots today so they're "ready for anything" or something similar. At that point I thought he was funny and kidding around. But...it never stopped.
 
ChasenSFO said:
My first time on AS, the Captain spent 2-3 minutes talking about his flying background as an Alaskan bush pilot and then the Air Force service history of his FO. He also made 3 or 4 multi-minute PA announcements about points of interest (2 of which were well after dark) and actually said "Thanks to superior airmanship, we asked for the right short cuts to erase that 15-minute delay thanks to our local knowledge of this route after the dozens, if not hundreds, of times we've both flown to the Bay Area from 'Sea Tac'". To be fair, that was once (2014) and since then I've never heard anything like that, on any carrier. But a 1st flight leaves an impression LOL.
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This is so embarrassing. Such a boomer move to think people who fly AS out of SEA need an announcement to look at Mt. Rainer out of the left window, but we had plenty make the announcement.

We had an SFO CA (still do) who is former Air Force and he has many nicknames, but one of them is Captain Communicator. He would take about 32 minutes to brief the SID out of SFO (the SID we do 13 times a month or more) and would do things like brief the STAR for JFK, in the climbout, 5 hours before we needed to brief it, then he would spend about 40 minutes briefing it AGAIN an hour prior to TOD.

But that wasn't his best trait...

He had this uncanny nack for waiting to make the welcome aboard PA, once I was in the lav before departure. He did it to me several times. As soon as I locked the door I would hear a couple of footsteps then DINNNG, and just knew I was going to be stuck in there for 7 minutes while he did his BS. I am not kidding when I say this, but he would start with, "Good morning ladies and gentlemen! Show of hands, how many people have flown in an airplane before? Ahh come on, don't be shy, show of hands! OK I see a couple of hands, that's it? This is everyone's first time? That can't be! Come on, show of hands! Ok a few more, that is great, isn't flying amazing?" And would barf out minutes and minutes of worthless dribble while blocking the lav door so I can't get out.

Every SFO VXer knows exactly who I am talking about...
 
///AMG said:
There is actually a sample greeting/PA that involves discussing both crewmember’s piloting careers, and there is also this document (I forget the name) that is a visual sightseeing tour, designed to be also regurgitated via PA. Have never heard anyone use either, but it sounds like you got both in one flight. Did you buy a lottery ticket afterwards? You should have :)
Click to expand...

They changed the FA briefing a few years back to include the pilot's first and last names, as well as their flight hours. That was changed very quickly lol. The PA visual points of interest are in the FOM and I have been in the back on flights where they made every-single-one of those announcements lol.
 
Inverted said:
This is so embarrassing. Such a boomer move to think people who fly AS out of SEA need an announcement to look at Mt. Rainer out of the left window, but we had plenty make the announcement.

We had an SFO CA (still do) who is former Air Force and he has many nicknames, but one of them is Captain Communicator. He would take about 32 minutes to brief the SID out of SFO (the SID we do 13 times a month or more) and would do things like brief the STAR for JFK, in the climbout, 5 hours before we needed to brief it, then he would spend about 40 minutes briefing it AGAIN an hour prior to TOD.

But that wasn't his best trait...

He had this uncanny nack for waiting to make the welcome aboard PA, once I was in the lav before departure. He did it to me several times. As soon as I locked the door I would hear a couple of footsteps then DINNNG, and just knew I was going to be stuck in there for 7 minutes while he did his BS. I am not kidding when I say this, but he would start with, "Good morning ladies and gentlemen! Show of hands, how many people have flown in an airplane before? Ahh come on, don't be shy, show of hands! OK I see a couple of hands, that's it? This is everyone's first time? That can't be! Come on, show of hands! Ok a few more, that is great, isn't flying amazing?" And would barf out minutes and minutes of worthless dribble while blocking the lav door so I can't get out.

Every SFO VXer knows exactly who I am talking about...
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Does the name rhyme with the word rendition?
 
ChasenSFO said:
My first time on AS, the Captain spent 2-3 minutes talking about his flying background as an Alaskan bush pilot and then the Air Force service history of his FO. He also made 3 or 4 multi-minute PA announcements about points of interest (2 of which were well after dark) and actually said "Thanks to superior airmanship, we asked for the right short cuts to erase that 15-minute delay thanks to our local knowledge of this route after the dozens, if not hundreds, of times we've both flown to the Bay Area from 'Sea Tac'". To be fair, that was once (2014) and since then I've never heard anything like that, on any carrier. But a 1st flight leaves an impression LOL.


That has actually stopped people from being on the wrong plane last second more than once just that I've personally witnessed. Both as an employee and more than once seeing pax on board a flight jump up and get off for this reason (Northwest had a 0600 and 0700 SFO-MSP flights and the agents loved to just take any MSP boarding pass LOL). Especially during IROPS, there can be planes to the same city leaving around the same time or people missing gate changes and settling into empty seats in some not very rare "perfect storm" scenarios. I often (and I mean OFTEN) saw YYZ-bound pax try to board ONT flights (because, you know, "Ontario"). That sounds stupid, and it is even more stupid because most of said pax were ticketed on Air Canada and not United\SkyWest, but it is much less surprising when you've asked hundreds of people what city they're flying to only to get the name of a state in return. I get a little triggered when people who travel often are still absolutely clueless about rudimentary domestic geography, so that was fun. Shortly before Mexicana went under, a PA on a MRY-bound Brasilia revealed a Mexicana passenger flying SFO-GDL-MTY was seated fat dumb and happy, but paying enough attention to hear a totally different flight number and then ask the FA (that was not my screw up lol). Better late than never.

But in line with your thinking, many people check their brain at the door. Like when I sent a YYC-bound passenger to MFR sitting in the only unoccupied seat, belonging to the only misconnect, with the scanners down. That person was Star Alliance Gold (100+ segments or 100k+ miles on *A carriers), spoke perfect English, missed every cue until landing in MFR. Signs, announcements, F/A doing 3 headcounts (basically anytime she saw open seats for a few seconds and second-guessed herself) announcing it as a precaution due to our computer outage and reminding everyone excessively that the flight was MFR bound, 3/4 of the plane in MFR college gear, 1 hour flight instead of 3 hours, ect. Nope, who would ever notice? Not this chick. Yet I've seen people who barely speak English get off a plane realizing they are on 5834 and the pilot just said 5877 or whatever and they were on the wrong Brasilia.

I'm glad I got to work in every department except inflight and mx for all the tips and tricks before flying commercially. Half of life is knowing what to ask for, or something.
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I know who that was. The first time I flew with him he started with 20 questions about my career thus far, and I thought, “hot damnit this guy is really leaning into the getting-to-know-you phase of the flight”. A few minutes later of course I heard it all regurgitated over the PA.

Nice enough guy, but a little much. He retired a few years ago.
 
Best AS pilot ever. JR…..aka Velocipede. “I will kick you right off my jumpseat if you’re some non-ALPA puke!”

Then, he gets let go at AS, goes flying an MD-80 for an operator up there. Goes to jumpseat on AS, and gets denied. :)

ends up CA of an MD-87 doing charters…..
 
MikeD said:
Best AS pilot ever. JR…..aka Velocipede. “I will kick you right off my jumpseat if you’re some non-ALPA puke!”

Then, he gets let go at AS, goes flying an MD-80 for an operator up there. Goes to jumpseat on AS, and gets denied. :)

ends up CA of an MD-87 doing charters…..
Click to expand...

I remember that whole mess some years back. Always wondered what happened to him.
 
MikeD said:
Best AS pilot ever. JR…..aka Velocipede. “I will kick you right off my jumpseat if you’re some non-ALPA puke!”

Then, he gets let go at AS, goes flying an MD-80 for an operator up there. Goes to jumpseat on AS, and gets denied. :)

ends up CA of an MD-87 doing charters…..
Click to expand...
Wow! Didn’t realize he was let go, not super surprising though. Are you at liberty to say why he was released?
 
MikeD said:
Best AS pilot ever. JR…..aka Velocipede. “I will kick you right off my jumpseat if you’re some non-ALPA puke!”

Then, he gets let go at AS, goes flying an MD-80 for an operator up there. Goes to jumpseat on AS, and gets denied. :)

ends up CA of an MD-87 doing charters…..
Click to expand...


He was one bitter, crusty guy. He also wrote anti-VX things back in the day (APC). If only he knew what was coming.
 
MikeD said:
Best AS pilot ever. JR…..aka Velocipede. “I will kick you right off my jumpseat if you’re some non-ALPA puke!”

Then, he gets let go at AS, goes flying an MD-80 for an operator up there. Goes to jumpseat on AS, and gets denied. :)

ends up CA of an MD-87 doing charters…..
Click to expand...
That’s really impressive honestly.
 
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