I'm thinking about the optics of this.
You already divert the flight, making people late into ORD. OK, fine.
But now you taxi out, are on the runway, and the captain suddenly says
"Oops! 2 minutes over some arbitrary rule, so instead of just pretending we forgot to look at our watches and take care of passengers, we're taking you back to spend the night sleeping on hard terminal floors and hopefully getting you to your destination someday! Good luck!"
Seriously, if they had taken off 5 minutes earlier everything would be fine? So they basically abandon passengers because they went 60 in a 55 zone? THOSE kinds of rules? Given the problems of the past week, and knowing how the media was going to play this? It's like some at United are deliberately trying to sabotage the airline.
Originally Posted by
JOSECONLSCREW28
Given the media problems of this week, and that this story already was playing out on NBC, I thought it deserved its own thread.
Originally Posted by
LarryJ
Unfortunately, no.
We receive a cutoff time on every flight, which is updated every time a flight is delayed, which is the most restrictive time for any member of the crew. We must apply takeoff power at, or before, this time. If we ignore this restriction the FAA would treat it as a willful disregard for the regulation, not an inadvertent mistake, so a license suspension would be likely.
So who would know about this 2 minutes? The same people who know you go 10 miles over the speed limit? Same answer here. Serve your passengers and DON'T GET CAUGHT!
(mods - didn't mean to add another post, but I don't know how to merge it with the one above. sorry)