Originally Posted by
tom911
Brings up an interesting issue. I know Alaska got rid of their JFK pilot base, so assuming they don't have one at BOS with even with less volume there. Could it be the only way to get a new flight BOS-LAX to accommodate the stranded passengers would be to cancel a flight from BOS to somewhere else? Just not sure Alaska is going to have spare planes or extra crew available at BOS.
As an ex AA Ops Agent, my speculation is that crew duty limits played heavily into decisions that FT Armchair Analysts are calling "odd".
From my veiwpoint, AS did s decent job here, given the fact that their options "out east" are limited.
The diverted flight landed in BUF, an off-line station. This is going to hurt. But passenger safety is
#1 . Thumbs down to all who suggested they should've landed at a "better" (on-line) airport.
In a reasonable amount of time, AS had decided to take a hit and cancel the BNA-SFO flight, the SFO-BNA plane becoming the rescue plane.
Given daily crew duty limits, neither the original crew nor the rescue plane's crew are going to be able to fly BUF-LAX that night.
By the time AS could get either crew into a BUF hotel, the required rest period means that the BUF-LAX continuation won't depart until (let's guess) Noon the next day.
Thus the decision was made to fly the rescue plane from BUF to some on-line, eastern airport where there is another crew asleep in their hotel beds, and legal (actually scheduled) to fly an early morning departure.
Of course this requires yet another hit to the resting crew's scheduled flight. And maybe an additional mid-morning departure, until the diversion or rescue crew can fly the last (of a potential chain of) delayed departures. Such crew/aircraft "move ups" are common in airline ops. FT Airline Analysts can like or hate this, it is a fact of life in the industry.
Of the eastern airports with a "resting" crew that can take over the rescue on an early departure to LAX, all other things being equal, BOS would be the best choice. Some pax will elect to go home for the night / defer to a later flight / cancel as a "trip in vain" /etc.
Operating the BUF to LAX with a "noon" departure the next day presents its own operation challenges.
Despite AS' dwindling domestic airline partnerships, they no doubt still have "emergency" agreements in place for handling their planes/passengers at off-line airports. Every airline, no matter how big or small, needs such agreements so they are commonplace. But given the late hour, did the contracted airline still have agents on duty at BUF to handle hotel arrangements ? Then the departure the next day ... AS can say "we'll be ready to leave at noon" and the contracting airline can say "we have 3 departures around then, we'll start handling your passengers at 1:30 pm your plane must be off our gate by 2:05pm". Or we can fly back to BOS tonight and hope pray everything goes as planned, thus we have a BOS-LAX departure at 7:00am.