Southwest lands at wrong airport?

A Life Aloft said:
CEOs and other management make decisions all the time which negatively affect the public image of the carriers and do not properly address customer service, on time issues and a host of other problems. I don't see any of them being canned. Half the crap they pull on their employees, the public is not even aware of and management sure as hell doesn't care how their own employees perceive them.
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Well... they bloody well should be.
 
amorris311 said:
They could, and they very well might. The thing is there is a process in which this needs to be investigated. With most ALPA contracts it's known as Section 19. Or they could do just as you say and use the negative image as there way to separate. It's a sloppy slope if they go down that road just as it was for A&E. Not saying it's right or wrong but I think we in the aviation community should see what potentially led up to this mistake. I for one would love to read the finding. Same goes with the Atlas plane a few weeks ago. I know when I was still involved with CJC there were a ton of mitigating factors that people wouldn't think of on their best day!
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With no intent to come off as condescending, let me explain the entertainment biz to y'all. There is no such thing as bad or good publicity. It's ALL PUBLICITY. And publicity is GOOD. I'm pretty sure A&E milked that "controversy" for all it was worth and then some. Gays & Gun-nuts, PhDs & Pedophiles, Holistics & Home-Schoolers, Homos & Hunters, Foie Gras & Ford 250, Barristers & Boors, Sixteen year olds & Sixty year olds... they're ALL watching A&E's ads now.
And for all y'all who are about to come thundering back that my categorizations are too superficial, generalized and stereotypic... well, that's just how you and I are measured by the media-industrial complex. Don't like it? Turn off your damned TV and read a book or rototill a garden!
 
DE727UPS said:
"I reject that solution. Eliminating visuals would probably bring as much success as the new 1500hr rule."

I like the 1500 hour rule. It generally increases the experience required to be an airline pilot. That's a good thing. If we quit doing visuals the ATC system would initially have some trouble with capacity. Some delays. Then they would hire more controllers to make it work. This is actually good for the controllers hiring situation. Really, there is nothing easier for an airline pilot than vectors to an ILS. I got no problem with making life easier for airline pilots. Or expecting them to have at least 1500 hours to sit in the right seat of an airline jet. Airline management wants you to cut corners cause it saves them money. Visuals save them money....most of the time. I say we stop it now.
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Generally, I agree with your posts, but I’m gonna have to push back on this one. You seem to be arguing both sides of the coin in your post above. You say you want to make life "easier for airline" pilots, yet you want them to suffer through 1500 hrs of tedium to get to that easy life. Those strike me as at least moderately contradictory positions. If you want to make it easier on pilots, why impose upon them onerous, useless time requirements?
Whatever your answer to that question, I disagree with both those positions.
Like you, I would like to see pilots have more experience. However, it needs to be the right kind of experience. Consider the 10,000 hr pilot. For too many pilots that’s 500 hours of diverse experience plus one additional hour repeated 9500 times. I'd rather see a guy with 500-1500 hours who has flown a wide variety of mission profiles in a wide variety of aircraft in a wide variety of geographies and environments. That's the guy who can learn quickly, adapt quickly, and make it happen. The old-time, honest, nothing-to-lose-or-gain airline guys themselves will tell you this; a modern day airliner pilot job is for many a desk job at FL360.
I'm a generally a big supporter of labor, but not so blindly that I put support of labor ahead of improving the industry in which that labor works. The 1500 hour rule does little or nothing to improve pilot proficiency or knowledge. It does a lot to create barriers to entry. So if you are worried about protecting jobs, the 1500 hour rule rocks. If you are worried about improving pilot quality, not so much. The 1500 hr rule, as it stands, would change nothing in the Buffalo outcome.
Want to improve pilots? Give them more honest training and testing from PPL onward. As soon as they get their commercial ticket, immediately get the new guys on the line flying with the best captains. Why waste time having someone skulk around at a schlocky 135 with all it's bad habits and low time captains? All that is going to do is reinforce bad habits. Then when the nuggets get to the airlines, if the airlines are good, the new hires are going to have to unlearn all the accrued crap and relearn the good stuff. If the airlines are not so good, who knows what happens. But my bet is it won’t augur well.
Want to improve job security? Stop worrying about your job and worry about making your colleagues as professional and proficient and pro-solidarity as possible.
Bottom line, our pilot development and intake process is pretty flawed. It’s a poor apprenticeship and good ‘ol boy at best and adversarial at worst with new hires generally seen as threats to senior’s job security; younger, prettier, better short-term, quicker reflexes, etc.
Hours don’t equate to valuable experience. In fact, too many of that same hour repeated too many times generally works against pilot proficiency.
As for saving money... well, sorry, but I'm always for that. It represents a tangible manifestation of one of my primary guiding principles, to wit, EFFICIENCY. Why try to stick it to your company? Your company is you. If it's not, you should work to make it so, because it is whether you like it or not. Note the possessive pronoun, "your". "We" are in this together. Everything you or I or our manager does affects everyone else. We all live downwind and downstream of everone else. We are all hitched. Act accordingly.
 
13 pages of back and forth, finger pointing, etc...this should distract some of y'all long enough:

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DE727UPS said:
If we quit doing visuals the ATC system would initially have some trouble with capacity. Some delays. Then they would hire more controllers to make it work. This is actually good for the controllers hiring situation.
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Trouble with capacity? It would be same as now, but with significant delays. If we can't get more controllers hired after already being twenty percent understaffed (soon to be close to forty), spending over three million in overtime to cover shifts in a year, you guys doing instrument only approaches is not going to improve our staffing numbers, but just make your flight experience aka delays worse. The above is only referring to the facility where I work.
 
mastermags said:
I cringe every time I hear "You know, that's not a bad idea. I'm just too lazy to do it," in the cockpit. You know what I'm talking about.
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Yup, I hate that. The only thing I'd agree with is transferring the controls during an approach briefing because you're basically saying "here, why don't you not pay attention to anything I'm going to say." Other than that, whatever name is on my paycheck is who gets to tell me how to fly the airplane.
 
amorris311 said:
Didn't they base a lot of their decision on the fact how many people attended games after Hurricane Katrina?
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Yeah I think you're right. Still, while OKC lacks MLB and NFL teams and therefore the Thunder have little competition outside of college sports, I'd bet prices were higher in Seattle meaning more earning potential. Not a knock on OKC, just seems odd to me.
 
Screaming_Emu said:
Yup, I hate that. The only thing I'd agree with is transferring the controls during an approach briefing because you're basically saying "here, why don't you not pay attention to anything I'm going to say." Other than that, whatever name is on my paycheck is who gets to tell me how to fly the airplane.
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Apparently that's going away with the new OM and checklist changes.
 
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