Originally Posted by
AS Flyer
They could easily send a crew to BOS from ORD to work a BOS flight, as an example.
Alaska is at a disadvantage here as they only have bases on the west coast. In order to get a flight duty period (FDP) that would allow a deadhead to BOS and fly back to the west coast the crew's duty day would have to start no earlier than 6:00 AM (13hrs), possible 7:00 AM (14hrs), pacific time.
Originally Posted by
WebTraveler
But the Captain is the senior Alaska employee on site, and he, with his flight crew are the ONLY Alaska employees on site, period. So yes, he has a responsibility to deal with it, until some relief can be brought forward.
Pilots can pass information on to the passengers but have no ability to answer anything but the most superficial questions or help the passengers with their reroute options. The airline will contract with an airline with staff at the airport to handle the customer service and ground handling duties. The crew will also likely be part of the recovery plan so they need to get into crew rest as quickly as possible to that they can start their next flight duty period sooner. In this case, the crew could have been reassigned to fly the BOS departure from which the recovery crew was appropriated.