Airline restrictions

[A1TAPE]

What strange or obscure ops restrictions or requirements do you have in your manuals that help or hinders your flights? Such as self imposed operational restrictions or requirements from flight ops. To go a step further what is the strangest thing you saw in your MEL books? The MELs come standard from the manufacturer however this does not restrict the airline from making MELs more restrictive. Has flight ops put into the books MEL restrictions that made your job harder/easier or self-limited the airline? Be as vague and generic as you wish, we don't need to point fingers about flight ops.

 

[OttoPilot13]

Volcanic ash avoidance procedures. I understand first and foremost dont mess with VA, but some shops are let's say much less restrictive than others.

 

[A1TAPE]

Volcanic ash avoidance procedures. I understand first and foremost dont mess with VA, but some shops are let's say much less restrictive than others.

I wonder what flight crews would have to say about the routing then if VA is involved. That is if they even read that far into the release before signing it and throwing it on the glareshield or worse, the makeshift trashbag bin.

 

[Pancake]

I worked for a shop that required you to use the most restrictive weather product (TAF) you had available. Rumor was they’d gotten caught shopping for TAFs in the past and this had been the FSDO’s way of correcting that behavior.

There was also a bunch of other goofy issues with their OpSpecs.

 

[GoingTurbo]

Airbus 320 family can have the wingtip fences on CDL. Causes close to a 15% burn increase and 18,000 lbs weight penalty per missing side. Only found it in the book because a catering truck hit one at an out station. Was easier to remove it and fly to a hub instead of getting parts out there

 

[StuckInRedDirt]

One of my previous airlines required flight followers (supplimental) to print our entire release. Some of them were very long in the 70 to 100 page count. We also had to save them as PDFs to email to the crews.

Once the flights had landed and parked, another department would come pick up the paper releases and scan them into a drive.

We already had the saved as PDF. Why did we waste so much paper and time? The flight planning software had the ability to amend release so that could easily be attached at the end of the flight.

It's been a couple years. Hopefully that procedure has changed.

 

[DaWolf85]

We finally changed this recently, but for a while, a single GPS on MEL required us to plan non-RNAV but file RNAV codes in the flight plan, which of course confused the heck out of ATC and required manual coordination for every flight with it applied.

 

[MacJohn92]

I hate when Flight Attendants forget their EFB (Electronic Flight Bags), i.e. their iPads and we're required to have stations to print over 1259 pages. The FAs barely look at the documents before tossing them.

Per regulation, Each FA will have a current Flight Attendant Manual available on an EFB or in printed form available on the aircraft, that is accessible (ex. FA's bag) to the Flight Attendants in the cabin when performing assigned duties.- If one EFB becomes inoperative, or is missing during flight: -- Notify the Captain and the other Flight Attendant. -- Ensure an approved EFB or current paper FAM is easily accessible to each Flight Attendant.

 

[flygirl142]

I hate when Flight Attendants forget their EFB (Electronic Flight Bags), i.e. their iPads and we're required to have stations to print over 1259 pages. The FAs barely look at the documents before tossing them.

Per regulation, Each FA will have a current Flight Attendant Manual available on an EFB or in printed form available on the aircraft, that is accessible (ex. FA's bag) to the Flight Attendants in the cabin when performing assigned duties.- If one EFB becomes inoperative, or is missing during flight: -- Notify the Captain and the other Flight Attendant. -- Ensure an approved EFB or current paper FAM is easily accessible to each Flight Attendant.

Thankfully we now have a provision for them to download it to another electronic device for one flight leg only into a hub. Better clear that memory on your phone.