Had a situation like this recently. Captain wanted to delay over night and refused to fly the flight because the weather in Hunstville was bad and he thought it was unsafe. Turns out he was looking at a different Hunstville that was getting rocked by thunderstorms. After somebody in flight ops got him to check on WSI he sent me an ACARS saying "looks like the weather improved we are boarding now".Because it's 100x easier to pull up weather on your default phone app than it is to log into WSI, pull up radar, bring up the area they are in, and look at the future cast. I think I have only had 1 pilot actually mention they had WSI up when they called asking about the weather. Most of the time it is "The TAF says this," or "It looks bad on my phone," or "it looks bad out there."
All of this one.“What remark?”
The most frustrating part of working as a Dispatcher (and now currently as an Ops Agent) is that a lot of crews will not keep Ops/Dispatch updated.
Time and time again it’s time to push off the gate, but there’s no movement. Why aren’t we pushing? Is there MX? Still need fuel? Why don’t you guys answer the radio? Pax service has closed the flight but where the hell is the gate agent? Oh, now you want to hold boarding or deplane? Does anyone know WTF is going on?
I know everyone is busy but I can’t help/coordinate if I don’t know what is going on.
Not to mention I’ve got to be accountable to my boss so they can code the delay (the biggest airline pissingmatch) but in order to do that I need information about what’s going on.
First let me preface this by saying 5% of the coatings are 95% of the issues. I have minimal to no issues with most crews I’ve ever worked with.
That being said:
Ask for more fuel to hold (note, we aren’t shy with holding fuel in our office when known or anticipated) .. then when actually put in a hold try to go to alternate without holding,,,,
"Returning to gate like company said."This.
All of this!
I learned a valuable lesson by “Your company wants you to return to the gate” doesn’t necessarily mean “Everyone in operations has come together and decided that you need to return”, it’s sometimes someone pretty far down the food chain that made the call, told no one else except ground control and it’s always best to contact dispatch and ask “WTF Mate?!” because it may be the first time he’s heard anything.
"Returning to gate like company said.x
You wot mate? Which company said to return? It wasn't ours.
Capitan: I'm adding 3000lbs because of weather
Dispatcher: No need for it, the weather won't impact until hours after you arrive.
Capitan: Well I'm still adding it, that's why I'm here and you're there.
Dispatcher pulls the strip and involves the Chief Pilot.
View attachment 47890
Capitan: I'm adding 3000lbs because of weather
Dispatcher: No need for it, the weather won't impact until hours after you arrive.
Capitan: Well I'm still adding it, that's why I'm here and you're there.
Dispatcher pulls the strip and involves the Chief Pilot.
If I'm not mistaken, you couldn't get weight and balance numbers at my old place unless the fuel was over by less than that which required a new release. So if the captain added 2000lbs on a regional jet, the weight and balances numbers would return a message saying to contact dispatch instead of the actual numbers.It would probably take more than this for me to involve a chief pilot - although the captain definitely could use an attitude adjustment. I have been known to prevent load planning from sending final weights if the crew adds fuel without contacting me first - mainly it's to verify the fuel on board. Conversation will sometimes go like "We have the fuel already!" "Yes, but load planning won't be sending your final weights until I verify the amount directly with you." "Oh..."
All you people and your fuel. At Every Day is the First Day Air, we just add what the Captain wants and tell no one. You'll get it in the ACARS block out.
I don't think I've ever flown a flight here where we weren't 1-5% over the dispatch release.
Every time I've ever queried this ingrained company culture to always take more fuel all I get back is OMFG you want to run out of GAS!!!!
Honestly, I don't mind the fuel adds - I do find some of them to be a bit of overkill but they don't really bother me. Up to a certain amount, crews can now add fuel from their iPads without having to call us, which is just fine with me - we automatically get a notification when they do this. There is one part of the world, though, where they seem to think it's fine just to tell station ops about it without contacting us in any way - why they prefer this to using their iPad or sending us an ACARS message, I have no idea. As these particular stations do not have agents that speak English as their first language, I don't think it's unreasonable to verify directly with the crew how much fuel they would like or have on board already. I will say, it does seem to have improved from a few years ago (being able to add via iPad probably has helped.)