To Load Pax or not

BobDDuck

BobDDuck

Island Bus Driver
Seems to be working now Doug... thanks!

Alrighty, here's one from the right seat (a sort of "you're the FO") that a err... "friend" was asking about.

You are showing for day 3 of a 4 day trip. You are coming of a 16 hour overnight where your captain left just after arrival the day before to go spend the layover at a friends house. You show up at your show time (45 prior to departure) with the FA and head to the gate. No captain. You go ahead and get all the preflight work done while the FA does her cabin checks. It is now 20 minutes prior to pushback and still no captain. The gate agent comes down the jetway to ask about boarding the PAX. The FA says she is good to go. They both look at you. What's your call?

Stuff to keep in mind... You don't have the captain's phone number. The airport you are at is a hub, but your airline doesn't keep reserve crews there nor is it a domicile.
 
I would say that you do not board the pax. If you had a 45 min show time and it's now 20 prior you should probably let crew scheduling know. Maybe you don't do that until departure time. My fear would be you don't board, the captain shows at departure time, and gets upset you are not ready to go.

I guess the lesson here wuold be make sure one has the captains number and the captain has your number.
 
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JEP said:
I guess the lesson here wuold be make sure one has the captains number and the captain has your number.
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Something i always forget to do, but a real good idea. Especially if you want to keep everyone out of trouble with scheds and cheif pilots...
I just did a 19+ hr O/N at an outstation which was my capts home.
He went home and i didnt get a number:(
But it all worked out OK:)
this time...

To answer, yeah call scheduling, dont board. I would be worried something serious happened to prevent someone from making show time plus 15 or 20. And if you know how to do the other side set up, i do it. I dont make a habit out of it, but cooperate and graduate right? Just in case, every little bit helps.

Cheers!
 
In 30 years of this I had plenty of late crewmember situations. Including a captain that came running into the airplane (10 minutes after departure time) still wearing his golf spikes.

But we always boarded. And it always worked out. To not board meant adding another delay, since you had no way to know when the crewmember would show up.

The challenge was coming up with creative PAs after departure time. And if you do have to cancel/deplane, you stand at the door and apologize ie take the heat.
 
Board. Get all the paperwork done, no, get everything done! Have the weather outlined, have the paper work torn, etc... That way the capt gets there and can sign the release, can, and get to work.

A call to crew scehduling, while it sucks for the CA, is a must in this case to cover your end. If you wait until departure time to make the call its going to come down on you as well.
 
Yup,
Board them up, get everything done that you can...Check the release for required fuel loaded, Alternates/3585 issues, get the ATIS/Clearance, Walkaround, etc...And, if you can use the cellphone to try and get a hold of the Captain. I don't know that I would ahve waited till 20 mins prior to push-back before callin screw scheduling. 1/2 hour is my limit if their is a no-show.
 
Is this a 30-50 seat airplane or a 767/777 kind of plane? It takes a WHOLE lot less time to board up 35 people than 200!

The more people, the more inclined I would be to go ahead and start the boarding process. When the CA has been found, with 30 people there's doubtful to be a delay. But if you wait to board 200 people and the CA does show up, it's going to take a while to get all those folks boarded up.

Bottom line: Always always always always always have a contact # of ANY crewmember that is not going to be staying at the hotel. Bill had a sim instructor at TWA get arrested for solicitation of prostitution while in MIA for a sim session. Thankfully there were no pax involved in this situation, but the instructor was a no show for the sim session, and calls were made to hospitals, police stations etc before he was finally located in a local lock-up! Had this been a show for a flight, it probably would have ended up cancelled because of the time involved.
 
This may be a "Your the captain" forum but since I am a gate agent (on selected days) I wll try to answer this "from the other side of the frence"

I say hub or outstation, with no reserves the answer is about the same. In a hub you may have the option of moving some crews around to cover for the delay, but that might be too much.

I am an agent at a out station that does not have the resources of some of the hubs. We do have some crews that live here that stay at home. I personally would not board if all 3 crewmembers were in the vicinity of the plane. I should not say "ON" because one of the pilots may be doing a walkaround. I would go up and thell the pax like it is. I am all for honesty and telling the entire story about delays, so I am not going to say it is something else. It will come back to hurt you.

20-15 prior with no crewmember, there had better be a call in to scheduleing to possibly contact the person, as they should have a phone number or two to try. This would keep as many people notified of the situation as possible because if there has been a situation where that person can not fly i.e. accident and in the hospital, the wheels start turning to either cancel the flight or DH a crewmember in. Also if they can reach the person I would have a timeframe in which I would need to start rebooking connections.

I guess I have covered all of my bases, my trigger to start boarding would be once he arrived at the airport as curbside to airplane is less than 3 minutes in BGR but in the hub it would have to be once he is post checkpoint as it can be a ways to some of the regional boarding areas i.e. 5-8 minutes or so.
 
Call someone, most definately call scheduling. Always remember although you wanna be nice to your Captain you gotta save your ass first. Aviation industry is all about efficiency and on time schedule so they wion't have a problem firing you if you caused the delay by not calling the so they could do something about it.
 
What does the manual say?

If you have to call Big Bother (not a typo) within 5 minutes of show without a crew member... there's your answer.

Captain calls 5 minutes prior to show saying he'll be late and check me in, power up and board... and gets in a car accident...

The ONLY time I've done something like this is when he or she slept through the alarm and missed the van. I called the room, woke him up, told him I'd take care of it, and he waltzed on to a powered up and toasty plane with all the paperwork done except a signed release.

Free beerz that night, and a huge free coffee for the originator.

** I don't know if this is common policy, but we have to check in and out of SABRE every day. You check someone in with your employee number and they don't show up, your buttocks is hamhocks and the coals is glowin.
 
BobDDuck said:
Seems to be working now Doug... thanks!

Alrighty, here's one from the right seat (a sort of "you're the FO") that a err... "friend" was asking about.

You are showing for day 3 of a 4 day trip. You are coming of a 16 hour overnight where your captain left just after arrival the day before to go spend the layover at a friends house. You show up at your show time (45 prior to departure) with the FA and head to the gate. No captain. You go ahead and get all the preflight work done while the FA does her cabin checks. It is now 20 minutes prior to pushback and still no captain. The gate agent comes down the jetway to ask about boarding the PAX. The FA says she is good to go. They both look at you. What's your call?

Stuff to keep in mind... You don't have the captain's phone number. The airport you are at is a hub, but your airline doesn't keep reserve crews there nor is it a domicile.
Click to expand...


I thought I would bump this up to the top because I had an interesting experience last week. Normally I get everything done and I'll give the Capt 10 minutes prior to departure to call sched. If the agent and FA's are pushy I'll call at 15 minutes. I will also tell the agent to board the PAX. Every Captain that's been late has thanked me for getting everything done and loading the PAX.

Last week we loaded the PAX and I got everthing done before the Captain arrived. He was all pissed off and told me I should have waited and he likes to program the box, etc... This was day one of a four day. We had an overnight in TYS where there is no van and he was late again the next morning. I had to call the hotel to wake him up. Anyways, I didn't program the box or load the PAX and he was even more pissed the next day. Needless to say, it was a loonnnggg 4 day.
 
I would not board the passengers. People who say board them are assuming the captain will turn up shortly, but you don't have a clue where he/she is. They could have been injured in a motorcycle accident on the way to work and understandably not taken time off from bleeding to call crew scheduling.

Most people would rather be in the terminal than in the plane and they CERTAINLY would rather not have boarded, sat for 2 hours and then been told to de-plane because there is no reserve captain to be found and the flight cancelled. I have not been there, but a friend of mine has, and he's swore off boarding without a captain right there and then.

I don't call crew scheduling if there's no captain at show time, but at some point you have to make the call because if the captain isn't going to show you need somebody working on a replacement. When you call is a tricky timing issue.

On the other hand I did have a captain call me and "he was on the airport property - get it all fired up he'd be there in 10 minutes" - so I boarded and got us setup, because I was pretty sure he was going to make it. For whatever reason (let's say the captain was optimistic about his time to get through security) he didn't get to the gate until 10 minutes after pushback time. I had about reached my last PA announcement about "just a last bit of paperwork we have to sort out" while telling the gate agents the captain was "just inside talking to the company" when he made his appearance at the jetway. Yeh, that was fun!
 
EDUC8-or said:
I thought I would bump this up to the top because I had an interesting experience last week. Normally I get everything done and I'll give the Capt 10 minutes prior to departure to call sched. If the agent and FA's are pushy I'll call at 15 minutes. I will also tell the agent to board the PAX. Every Captain that's been late has thanked me for getting everything done and loading the PAX.

Last week we loaded the PAX and I got everthing done before the Captain arrived. He was all pissed off and told me I should have waited and he likes to program the box, etc... This was day one of a four day. We had an overnight in TYS where there is no van and he was late again the next morning. I had to call the hotel to wake him up. Anyways, I didn't program the box or load the PAX and he was even more pissed the next day. Needless to say, it was a loonnnggg 4 day.
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Yeah, so how is flying with MB going? Oh the stories I could tell....

Actually, it probably was a different captain as I doubt his FO for the month would be able to get out of two trips in a row.
 
BobDDuck said:
Seems to be working now Doug... thanks!

Alrighty, here's one from the right seat (a sort of "you're the FO") that a err... "friend" was asking about.

You are showing for day 3 of a 4 day trip. You are coming of a 16 hour overnight where your captain left just after arrival the day before to go spend the layover at a friends house. You show up at your show time (45 prior to departure) with the FA and head to the gate. No captain. You go ahead and get all the preflight work done while the FA does her cabin checks. It is now 20 minutes prior to pushback and still no captain. The gate agent comes down the jetway to ask about boarding the PAX. The FA says she is good to go. They both look at you. What's your call?

Stuff to keep in mind... You don't have the captain's phone number. The airport you are at is a hub, but your airline doesn't keep reserve crews there nor is it a domicile.
Click to expand...

I'd pull out my 4 bar epaulets and say "I am the captain now beeotch! Board 'em.. we gettin' out of this hole!" :nana2:
 
This is one of those conundrums (sp?). Of course we all should try to look out for one another, but you also have to draw the line when covering someone elses ass gets yours in the sling. Also, the repeated cover ups don't fix the underlying problem. Sure, on day 4 after a 16 hour, 8 leg, crappy wx day, someone over sleeps on min crew rest, you help each other out. But when these guys are not where they are supposed to be, in the hotel on RONs, etc, you start walking a thin line.

My captain this month is bent on making sure we call the times in such a way that it makes our ground crews look good (not padding times mind you, but things like load complete at 1100 when we are scheduled to depart at 1115, etc). This kind of thinking, while can help out when the ground crew is busting hump but has things out of their control make them late, doesn't fix the problem if other people are slacking.

I'm all for being a nice guy, but don't be so quick to compromise SOPs and yourself, just to cover someone elses arse.
 
Ya know what? This exact thing happened to me two weeks ago. 15 to push, pax coming down the jetway, no CA. I called the crew tracker; it's company policy, so it's CYA at that point. They were aware of the situation, said the CA had a family emergency and would be there in an hour. And no, they would not send out an ARC reserve. I couldn't really blame them, since the WX was forecast to go to crap, and EWR needs all the ARC dudes it can on those days, but I could have used that information about 20 minutes ago. By this time the pax were already on board. I got the paper work, set up the cockpit, checked all my crap and his crap, got the fuel, catering, lav service-- the whole shebang. Then I made an announcment to the peeps, told them the whole deal, who long it would take, and the reason for it. No bullsh't. I told them the main cabin door would remain open with the jetway attached, and if anyone decided to leave they were welcome to do so on their own recognizance, and the CA could be here at any time. It was an early morning flight, so I asked the FA if she didn't mind doing a coffee and OJ service to help keep the morning cranky at bay. It did the trick. The CA showed up when he said, the flight went out (I flew the leg since I set it all up and the CA was harried) and one of the Pax even congratulated me on how I handled the situation.
So my opinion? Board 'em, coffee 'em, and tell 'em whats up. Give them the option to leave or take a later flight, but also give them enough information to make the right decision. Bottom line: golden rule. I'd rather be sitting in a comfortable seat drinking free coffee and juice in a quiet plane than sitting in those uncomfortable gate area seats with all the announcements, television screens, and $3 coffee. I gave my pax that option, and it worked.
 
BobDDuck said:
Yeah, so how is flying with MB going? Oh the stories I could tell....

Actually, it probably was a different captain as I doubt his FO for the month would be able to get out of two trips in a row.
Click to expand...

Yeah, different captain than who you saw me with the other day. I've been bidding reserve so I only had 3 legs with MB. He did things pretty much by the book so I was relieved. He did piss off about 75% of the contollers during my legs.

The funny thing is, my sim partner was the one who called in sick. Small world.
 
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