Let's chat maintenance, shall we?
Worked a flight with Mike today. Everything was going swimmingly. We had 30 open seats, all non-revs got on, boarded early and shut the door 12 minutes prior to departure. Life is good...
5 minutes go by, still no out time. 10 minutes, nothing. All 12 of my precious early minutes are exhausted and the plane is still at the freakin' gate. I look at Mike, "I'm not reattaching the jetway. I refuse. Did you already do the final closeout?" Mike nods. This is going to suck.
Finally the call comes from operations. Apparently one of the wing exit doors isn't arming. Fuck. Trust me, with my background, I know we're screwed. Ops calls again, "We need to bring the jetway back." Mike looks at me; I shake my head, "I already told you, I refuse."
Maintenance comes on board. Quick digression, the maintenance guy that shows up is decidedly not the image of airworthiness I would want to show passengers. Don't get me wrong, he knows his shit and I literally trust thousands of lives to him every week, but he looks worthless. Anyway, an hour goes by and we're no closer to a solution than we were before.
I head up to the gate (we've been in the jetway) and start shotgunning commands into the particularly archaic system. It's been a while since I've needed a downline connection list and I'm one of four people who know anything about this system (it really is just that old). I finally get it and the result is just as bad as I expected. The first connection is within 20 minutes of our new arrival time. Check the schedule for backups, nothing. Let's try the next connection city... nothing. Third time's a charm? Nothing. Yep, it's a typical day flying east where we will be one of the last flights to arrive.
I head back down and the flight attendants start getting in my face about what am I going to tell the passengers about their connections. Coldly, I reply, "Nothing. [beat] I have no projections from maintenance yet and there are no backups anyway. If you feel compelled to tell them something, I'd recommend 'run'?" They are less than amused, but so am I. I'm supposed to be helping with the turnaround on another aircraft, missed that. I am supposed to be working checkin for our partner airline, missing that.
But I'm rambling. Maintenance finally comes back and says we're fixed. The flight attendants decide now would be a great time to pull a stunt. They bring up 3 passengers to the door. "We were checking with passengers and these three are afraid they won't make their connection, so they'd like to get off." (love how they took the initiative to solicit volunteers after I told them no)
"Um, no? If you wanted to do that, 30 minutes ago would have been a good time. All passengers are still holding positive connect times. I'm signed off by maintenance and this flight has been closed out for nearly 90 minutes. Do you realize it would take an act of God to reopen at this point?"
"Well they want to get off." These hardly look like the assertive passenger type; I know the passenger profile that will refuse to fly at this point. These look more confused than anything now and it becomes clear that the flight attendants have told them they should get off. Nice.
"I'm sorry, it's not happening. You're talking another 40 minutes before this plane leaves by the time I call ops control, authorize the re-open, rebook them, re-close the flight and push you back. I asked you 90 minutes ago if the cabin was secure, you said yes, we're done. And Laura, I used to be a crew manager. I know exactly when you time out* and you're not the first flight attendant to leverage a passenger. Watch your hands." I shut the door in the faces of two pissed off flight attendants and three perplexed passengers.
To the general flying public, I apologize for flight attendants like these. Here is a focal point of where unions end up hurting customer service and pit work groups against each other when we should be working towards a common success.
*-Pilots and flight attendants have federally mandated and contractual hour limitations on how long they can be on duty, etc. When a group "times out", they are immediately illegal to fly and the flight will delay for a new crew or cancel entirely. The timed out flight attendants then just get to sit back and watch.
5 minutes go by, still no out time. 10 minutes, nothing. All 12 of my precious early minutes are exhausted and the plane is still at the freakin' gate. I look at Mike, "I'm not reattaching the jetway. I refuse. Did you already do the final closeout?" Mike nods. This is going to suck.
Finally the call comes from operations. Apparently one of the wing exit doors isn't arming. Fuck. Trust me, with my background, I know we're screwed. Ops calls again, "We need to bring the jetway back." Mike looks at me; I shake my head, "I already told you, I refuse."
Maintenance comes on board. Quick digression, the maintenance guy that shows up is decidedly not the image of airworthiness I would want to show passengers. Don't get me wrong, he knows his shit and I literally trust thousands of lives to him every week, but he looks worthless. Anyway, an hour goes by and we're no closer to a solution than we were before.
I head up to the gate (we've been in the jetway) and start shotgunning commands into the particularly archaic system. It's been a while since I've needed a downline connection list and I'm one of four people who know anything about this system (it really is just that old). I finally get it and the result is just as bad as I expected. The first connection is within 20 minutes of our new arrival time. Check the schedule for backups, nothing. Let's try the next connection city... nothing. Third time's a charm? Nothing. Yep, it's a typical day flying east where we will be one of the last flights to arrive.
I head back down and the flight attendants start getting in my face about what am I going to tell the passengers about their connections. Coldly, I reply, "Nothing. [beat] I have no projections from maintenance yet and there are no backups anyway. If you feel compelled to tell them something, I'd recommend 'run'?" They are less than amused, but so am I. I'm supposed to be helping with the turnaround on another aircraft, missed that. I am supposed to be working checkin for our partner airline, missing that.
But I'm rambling. Maintenance finally comes back and says we're fixed. The flight attendants decide now would be a great time to pull a stunt. They bring up 3 passengers to the door. "We were checking with passengers and these three are afraid they won't make their connection, so they'd like to get off." (love how they took the initiative to solicit volunteers after I told them no)
"Um, no? If you wanted to do that, 30 minutes ago would have been a good time. All passengers are still holding positive connect times. I'm signed off by maintenance and this flight has been closed out for nearly 90 minutes. Do you realize it would take an act of God to reopen at this point?"
"Well they want to get off." These hardly look like the assertive passenger type; I know the passenger profile that will refuse to fly at this point. These look more confused than anything now and it becomes clear that the flight attendants have told them they should get off. Nice.
"I'm sorry, it's not happening. You're talking another 40 minutes before this plane leaves by the time I call ops control, authorize the re-open, rebook them, re-close the flight and push you back. I asked you 90 minutes ago if the cabin was secure, you said yes, we're done. And Laura, I used to be a crew manager. I know exactly when you time out* and you're not the first flight attendant to leverage a passenger. Watch your hands." I shut the door in the faces of two pissed off flight attendants and three perplexed passengers.
To the general flying public, I apologize for flight attendants like these. Here is a focal point of where unions end up hurting customer service and pit work groups against each other when we should be working towards a common success.
*-Pilots and flight attendants have federally mandated and contractual hour limitations on how long they can be on duty, etc. When a group "times out", they are immediately illegal to fly and the flight will delay for a new crew or cancel entirely. The timed out flight attendants then just get to sit back and watch.