Baze, tarheelnj, emanon256, 1KPath, last2board, njcommodore, morelgroom, ULMFlyer, sgbani, et al

Thank you all for your votes of confidence. I understand that there are those of you whom do trust us, some who have the Reagan-Gorbachev style of "trust but verify", and then the rest whom have no trust whatsoever. I understand that because I'm a cynic myself. When I get an answer that I suspect, I get a second opinion. It's the way of the world. It was not my intention to get your reassurances, but thanks just the same.

My frustration comes from reading these posts and seeing examples that have no basis in fact, from my professional point of view.

Examples are, someone suspected that a pilot was lying about flying a flight at 18,000', or lying about the airplane being overfueled, or the creeping delay syndrome. I have said almost countless times to myself, "How am I going to say this; they'll never believe it!". The latest one was when we had a minor mechanical issue, and I wanted the gate agents to keep the door open in case a mechanic had to come up to the cockpit. A few minutes pass, and a United pilot, in uniform, who had just landed from his last flight of a trip, sees our plane still at the gate. Our destination is his home, so he takes a chance and asks the gate agent to let him on the jumpseat since we're still there. On he gets, and shortly thereafter, the mechanics fix the problem and don't need to come up to the cockpit. Agent shuts the door, we get our paperwork over the cockpit printer, and we're on our way.

This requires no explanation to the passengers beyond the mechanical issue, but now everyone on the plane suspects that the jumpseater called me on the radio and asked me to fake a mechanical issue so he could get on the plane. I'm not going to lower myself to explaining to my passengers that we really had an issue, and the pilot getting on the jumpseat was purely circumstantial.

I suppose I just need to quit worrying about what my passengers think, but I'd have to quit worrying about both the negative and positive aspects. So how am I going to explain it? Nobody was going to believe that one. I'd like to say that I'd have a hard time believing it, but then, I have seen some crazy stuff over the past years.

FAB