blondedawn

My boyfriend had the misfortune of having to fly tonight -- DCA-CMH. After watching the departure time fluctuate from 40 minutes late to 2 hours late, the delay was finally scaled back to 1 hour. Not bad, given the weather situation today. The plane boards, all looks well, but they sit....and sit...and sit, waiting for baggage handlers to load the luggage into the plane. Crew tries to figure out where the handlers are, but can't. Finally, the FA and the pilot (or first officer, he wasn't sure) leave the plane and load the luggage themselves. The plane finally took off 2 hours and 10 minutes late.

The MIA status of the ground crew is irritating, but given the weather today I guess some degree of disorganization is understandable. But I was quite impressed that the cabin crew got out there and took care of the problem -- it seems like that was probably above and beyond their job descriptions, and they could have easily just shrugged their shoulders and let the delay continue to stack up. ^

joshua-bwi

I am impressed that the flight crew did this. It's always nice to know that some people are willing to take responsibility for a situation regardless of who is responsible (or to blame).

Now, I do have one question... I'm sure someone will know the answer... Were there union violations committed by the flight crew by "stepping" on the toes of theground crew?

seanthepilot

I guess getting paid provides enought encentive...

beautiful!

usa18dca

Ohh yeahh....big time...say the baggage handlers go on strike...the company will start making flight crews do the bags but its a SCOPE violation of the crew's contract...they are paid to handle the aircrafts not baggage.

Definitely Above and Beyond!

CAL PHL FLYER

If the plane had passengers on it and the FA stepped off..that is a direct violation of Federal Air Regulations (FAR) for which the FA could loose his/her job..FAR 121.393

kjeil

I'm a little confused myself. It sounds like this was flight #3417 (late night and matches the time delay) which shows to be an Embraer 170 so their should have been two FAs (one per 50 pax) but yes, based on what I remember about FARs I'm pretty sure they would have been in violation unless they happened to have three for some reason. Although I do seem to remember something about minimum staffing while parked at the gate, maybe one stayed on while the other left?

Also, if the ground crew was missing how did they retract the jetbridge and push back from the gate? Or do they board out on the ramp in DCA? DCA doesn't seem like the type of place you would be able to leave without spotters

#10

If the pilot were late, would the ground crew fly the plane?

blondedawn

Hmm. I asked my boyfriend about this, and he said he thought two FAs stayed on the plane, so I guess either there was a 3rd FA (maybe heading home or something?) or he confused the GA with an FA? However, he said that one of the guys from the cockpit definitely did leave and go help load -- he saw him lifting the bags off the luggage trolley (or whatever its technical name is) from his window.

You make a good point though -- I'm assuming that the GA could work the jetbridge, but probably not pushback. I imagine what happened is that they loaded the luggage so that they could leave as soon as the ground crew showed up, rather than have to wait for them to load the luggage on top of everything else, but that's a guess. Maybe they were close to timing out and wanted to maximize the chances the flight would get off the ground?

uva185

I have a friend that works for ground crew at DCA, I'll have to ask him what was going on!

jfunk138

Groundcrew certainly seems to be a problem for US.

Had an interesting experience where the ground crew could not get the jet bridge in PIT lined up with a CRJ. This goes on for about 10 minutes, then the pilot comes of the cockpit and starts yelling at the groundcrew and says he is going to come over there and do it himself. The actions of the pilot got the issue resolved very quickly

Had another experience in CLT where the groundcrew was trying to line the jet bridge up with 1L on the 757, naturally it wasn't going to work despite her 10 minutes of trying. Meanwhile the passengers myself include were pointing to 2L trying to signal the groundcrew...