roundout
VNAV monitor
I think Dacuj started off with the best of intentions, but the persona kind of took over and turned in to this meme, almost. You can't take what he or she wrote with any seriousness. The only reason to respond is for the lulz.
What is your greatest piece of advice
- Thread starter JDean3204
- Start date
Autothrust Blue
"Well, on the Brasilia..."
Pretty sure you’d flunk a reading comprehension test, which isn’t a terrible surprise. Even correcting for the nature of this written, toneless medium, that’s pretty damned clueless of you, and woefully ignorant of what happened to the industry—including your own airline!—during your time there.
None of us are going to know that until we set the parking brake on our fini flights, possibly even at age 65, but:
It is not obvious to me that @woodreau or any other similarly-situated pilot, myself included, has made the “wrong” choice or that they’ve got anything to regret.
Both F9 and especially NK were able to work out far more agreeable furlough mitigation arrangements than the AAssholes in DFW were able to last year, just saying.
Lmao k.
🦈💜
All dragon~
I tried to get a tournament team together with SkyWest, but we were all just too spread out, then COVID happened. I might try at some point in the future, though I don't know if I can stay at OO much longer with the QOL issues.
Maximilian_Jenius
Super User
F9, NK and AS are all hiring. Plus a lot more
Cherokee_Cruiser
Bronteroc
Just curious what kind of QOL issues? I thought OO had some of the best pay & work rules in the industry. Everyone I’ve flown with that was ex-Skywest spoke pretty well of them.
roundout
VNAV monitor
This is a valid observation. Everyone who was looking to move on had to stay where they were for 18 months, but things are moving again. ULCCs are kicking butt. Even if it isn't where you want to end up, or what you want to do, it's better than fogging the window at a regional.
Or, listen to @Dacuj. Burn your life to the ground, apply at a flight school so you can flow to Envoy via the cadet program. It's pretty much the golden ticket to a career with no patina, if you will.
Maximilian_Jenius
Super User
Have you guys been hiring a lot?
roundout
VNAV monitor
I think we're doing 20 or 30 a month.
ASpilot2be
Qbicle seat warmer
Do you know if we started one this month yet? I know our first class started last month.
Cherokee_Cruiser
Bronteroc
Isn’t ATPs doing CFI straight to some ULCCs?
Frontier at one point. Not sure if that program is still in place or not.
roundout
VNAV monitor
No clue, I live under a rock. I would assume no, since it was a holiday week.
Minuteman
“Dongola”
Maximilian_Jenius
Super User
Save room
pljenkins
Resident Knucklehead
Super late to the party here, but here's a couple from the dispatch office....
Perhaps the most poignant one: You are incredibly important to us. But so are the 35 other guys currently on the move on the desk and the additional 10 to 15 leaving within the hour. I would never want you to avoid talking to me if you have a problem, but please keep this in mind when you're calling. I might take a moment to spool up to your problem, especially when things are falling apart at one of the hubs. I might also sound like I want to get you off the phone. Don't let me. Get the answer you need and are satisfied with. There are days where admittedly I can lose focus on the fact that you are sitting in a little room staring out of a little window and have no idea what the heck is going on 1000 miles away in a direction you're not going. My problems aren't your problem, to be sure. Have a heart, but don't let me blow you off.
The NOTAM system is screwed up. Always ALWAYS double check your dispatcher's work on NOTAMS. ALWAYS. I cannot count the number of times airports have done stupid sh** and snuck a NOTAM in between the time I looked and the time your weather packet printed that screws us.
NOWcasting is a popular sport for the NOAA office. Most dispatchers that have been in the game a while have a pretty good idea what is REALLY going to happen at any given place, regardless of what the TAF says (DEN, anyone?). Others really are just horoscopes with numbers (Florida, anyone?). I'm convinced the guy writing TAFs, especially the early morning ones, are the guys who did not do well in MET school and got relegated to the job. We do our best to keep up with the changes, but when the weather gets funky, especially in a large area, trying to keep up can be...umm... challenging. If your Spidy senses start tingling about weather, ask the question.
Go/No-Go. Okay, so this one really is a tough one. Go/No-Go is a TEAM decision. Either one of us has veto power. Never forget that. Don't EVER let a dispatcher talk you into something you don't believe is smart. You fly the thing every day. I ride in it once a year. That's not to say I don't understand the airplane and I am not studied on it, but I have probably never sat in that seat and flown that airplane. A good dispatcher will pick up on your hesitation and lock arms with you on the no-go decision, but if he starts to try to talk you into something, get VERY SUSPICIOUS that it's someone else talking in his other ear and dig your heels in. Management shopping for a dispatcher who will do what management wants is a practice that has largely gone away thanks to the FAA taking a very dim view of it and ASAP being a thing, but there are some shops that might still try to pull that crap, and don't think those shops are only regionals or smaller operations. I admit I was a victim of this once when I still had hair on my head, and I will never, ever forget it. If it wasn't for an ace pilot, we might have made the news. That airplane should never have left the ground. Legal isn't always smart, but I was young, dumb, and full of.... ideals... and I was handed the flight with half the story and a junior captain who just got off the phone with the chief pilot. Half the NTSB report was already written.
Don't get annoyed if we speak in vague terms about enroute weather. Our tools for real-time weather have improved drastically over the last decade, but at the end of the day, our stuff is far less detailed than what you guys might find out there, especially over the drink. Clearly, obvious weather is obvious, like a solid line of storms from Sheboygan to Columbia doesn't leave much room for interpretation, but when you get to places like Florida or the crap that is floating around the Bayou on any given summer day, expect a lot of "well, it LOOKS like...".
It really is unfortunate that the days of the face to face briefing are all but gone. I am required to spend time with you guys up front every year, and I learn valuable things every time I'm up there, even now, 20 years into the gig. I understand that logistics make it more difficult, but I really wish more upgrading captains would come into the dispatch office and sit with us for a couple of hours. I guarantee you it would be an eye-opening experience. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend visiting.
Perhaps the most poignant one: You are incredibly important to us. But so are the 35 other guys currently on the move on the desk and the additional 10 to 15 leaving within the hour. I would never want you to avoid talking to me if you have a problem, but please keep this in mind when you're calling. I might take a moment to spool up to your problem, especially when things are falling apart at one of the hubs. I might also sound like I want to get you off the phone. Don't let me. Get the answer you need and are satisfied with. There are days where admittedly I can lose focus on the fact that you are sitting in a little room staring out of a little window and have no idea what the heck is going on 1000 miles away in a direction you're not going. My problems aren't your problem, to be sure. Have a heart, but don't let me blow you off.
The NOTAM system is screwed up. Always ALWAYS double check your dispatcher's work on NOTAMS. ALWAYS. I cannot count the number of times airports have done stupid sh** and snuck a NOTAM in between the time I looked and the time your weather packet printed that screws us.
NOWcasting is a popular sport for the NOAA office. Most dispatchers that have been in the game a while have a pretty good idea what is REALLY going to happen at any given place, regardless of what the TAF says (DEN, anyone?). Others really are just horoscopes with numbers (Florida, anyone?). I'm convinced the guy writing TAFs, especially the early morning ones, are the guys who did not do well in MET school and got relegated to the job. We do our best to keep up with the changes, but when the weather gets funky, especially in a large area, trying to keep up can be...umm... challenging. If your Spidy senses start tingling about weather, ask the question.
Go/No-Go. Okay, so this one really is a tough one. Go/No-Go is a TEAM decision. Either one of us has veto power. Never forget that. Don't EVER let a dispatcher talk you into something you don't believe is smart. You fly the thing every day. I ride in it once a year. That's not to say I don't understand the airplane and I am not studied on it, but I have probably never sat in that seat and flown that airplane. A good dispatcher will pick up on your hesitation and lock arms with you on the no-go decision, but if he starts to try to talk you into something, get VERY SUSPICIOUS that it's someone else talking in his other ear and dig your heels in. Management shopping for a dispatcher who will do what management wants is a practice that has largely gone away thanks to the FAA taking a very dim view of it and ASAP being a thing, but there are some shops that might still try to pull that crap, and don't think those shops are only regionals or smaller operations. I admit I was a victim of this once when I still had hair on my head, and I will never, ever forget it. If it wasn't for an ace pilot, we might have made the news. That airplane should never have left the ground. Legal isn't always smart, but I was young, dumb, and full of.... ideals... and I was handed the flight with half the story and a junior captain who just got off the phone with the chief pilot. Half the NTSB report was already written.
Don't get annoyed if we speak in vague terms about enroute weather. Our tools for real-time weather have improved drastically over the last decade, but at the end of the day, our stuff is far less detailed than what you guys might find out there, especially over the drink. Clearly, obvious weather is obvious, like a solid line of storms from Sheboygan to Columbia doesn't leave much room for interpretation, but when you get to places like Florida or the crap that is floating around the Bayou on any given summer day, expect a lot of "well, it LOOKS like...".
It really is unfortunate that the days of the face to face briefing are all but gone. I am required to spend time with you guys up front every year, and I learn valuable things every time I'm up there, even now, 20 years into the gig. I understand that logistics make it more difficult, but I really wish more upgrading captains would come into the dispatch office and sit with us for a couple of hours. I guarantee you it would be an eye-opening experience. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend visiting.
Cherokee_Cruiser
Bronteroc
Ask for more training if you have any doubts.
Something happen? Ya alright?
Care to share the story so we can learn from it? Did the capt use his PIC Authority to push back against dispatch? What was the end result?
pljenkins
Resident Knucklehead
Sure.. It's been almost 2 decades since this happened, so I guess I can de-identify it enough not to implicate anyone.
Some names/cities/details may be changed to protect the parties involved...This involved winter operations in the venerable CRJ-200. It was your typical east coast winter weather scenario. Everything 400 miles surrounding the departure airport is at or below minimums. Our pilot flew into Philly, and on the way down the flaps locked out somewhere between 0 and 10 degrees, leading to a sporty approach nearly to minimums to a contaminated runway (those that have ever dealt with the CRJ-200 has either had or will have this issue, and this airplane lands with no flaps at about the same speed as an F-104) and an understandingly shaken pilot. She gets to the gate and calls contract maintenance who comes out and manages to get the flaps working. As the mechanic is standing at the door to the cockpit finishing up the logbook he casually mentions that the flap track is pretty much worn out and he didn't feel at all confident that the flaps wouldn't lock out again on departure. Now our pilot, obviously concerned, calls maintenance control and says, "hey, the mechanic doesn't think this fix is gonna stick". MX Control simply states, "well, he cleared it and signed it off, obviously he fixed it. Fly the bus". Unsatisfied with this, our pilot now calls the dispatcher for the outbound flight and tells the tale. Outbound dispatcher loops in MX control and a spirited debate ensues over "fixed" vs. "pencil whipped", and how given the conditions "good enough" ain't good enough. MX control holds their ground, so they disconnect from him and the dispatchers stands up and says "no-go" to the coordinator sitting across the room. Coordinator calls MX control and after a short discussion takes the side of MX control. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the CP is calling the captain, who somehow has gotten wind of this situation. The dispatcher, who is one of the old school veterans there, is firmly holding ground.
I'm privvy to none of this as I'm busy dealing with my own 95 flights for the day, nearly all of which are flying in this crap. As an aside, I'm about 5 months on the job at this point there, so I'm green as baby •. Suddenly, I find the chief of the watch tapping on my shoulder, who presents me with the following; "I have a flight in Philly that had a flap issue going in. MX fixed it and signed it off. I need you to take care of getting him out of there."
Ummm, okay, boss. I'm already getting my ass kicked, what's one more flight? I click-monkey through it and ship it. Seconds later the phone rings. It's the captain and the chief pilot. I find this odd, but I have no time to really consider what this actually means and assume we are just doing some sort of briefing about the weather and the flap situation. In retrospect, this is where the alarm bells really should have started going off, but again, I'm an FNG, I'm solidly in the yellow, and I've just been presented with a working airplane and a legal, mission ready crew by whom I thought was a trustworthy source. In reality, I was presented with none of those things. We do a quick brief. Captain is asking a lot of questions about weather and takeoff alternates (of which there was one, at the edge of range, in the opposite direction of where she was going). She seems satisfied, declines the invitation by the CP to ask any further questions, and we end the call.
About 20 minutes later the flight blasts off. About 5 minutes after that I get a call on the radio (we had direct radios for some stations that we monitored) that the flaps have jammed at around 18 degrees, she's in icing conditions, and as she was already well on her way south she felt the safest course of action was to continue that way to get out of the precip and icing. She gets down to around Charlotte where she lands uneventfully.
Here's what I didn't know. She flew for an hour and a half, by hand, in IMC and ice, keeping the airplane in a remarkably narrow band between overspeed and stall. The passengers got off that plane never knowing how bad the situation was, because this pilot was a Steely Eyed Missile Woman. No doubt, her skills are what saved the day.
As I'm walking out the door the original dispatcher, somewhat, ummm, annoyed, accosts me in the parking lot and asks me, with many more metaphors than I will add here, what I was thinking. I'm initially confused. I tell him the story from my perspective and his attitude goes from outrage to concern. He tells me, in no uncertain terms, that the next thing I need to do with my time is fill out a NASA form spelling out EXACTLY what I told him, which I promptly did. We had no union representation there, so that wasn't an option, but our DI was a really sympathetic and the conversation I had with him ended up being mostly his apologizing to me for ever being put in that position. That was really the last I heard about it, but from what I gather the FSDO sent some suits over to the head honchos for a "come to Jesus" meeting about coercing crews into situations they were not comfortable with, and we never had that issue again going forward.
These days, there is a lot of talk about DRM and CRM. No doubt situations like this played into the FAA's increased interest in not tolerating blow back on dispatchers who stand up and say "Hell no, we won't go", and they act pretty decisively against companies that attempt to do so these days, thankfully. As for that day, we all got lucky. We all kept our licenses, we all kept our lives, and we all learned a valuable lesson... One I have been sure to instill in every dispatcher I've ever had the honor to train.
Now, back to my scotch.
Last edited:
