Originally Posted by
writerguyfl
Don't forget about staffing. You can have all the equipment in the world and procedures in place to use it, but people sometimes still call in sick or get in a car accident on the way to work.
Without proprietary information, it's impossible to know if this was a management screw-up that could be foreseen or a simple operational problem due to being unexpectedly short-handed.
Most intelligent and believable post on the thread yet. May well be what really happened. DL had 4 flights going out at the time, all to its hubs: ATL, MSP, SLC, LAX, and all did the same thing like the PHX poster pointed out----waited 2 hrs until the sun came up and the stuff melted off.
Keeping deicing trucks (plus the personnel needed to work them) available for airports like PHX, LAX, SJC, during the months of Dec--Feb is an operational decision, granted. In our case, both a frustrated pilot got on, multiple times, supplemented by a continually re-boarding gate agent, basically throwing the company under the bus saying they had 3 de-icing trucks, but none were working. Not sure anybody on the flight was willing to believe that (I didn't).
One point of comparison was that all the other carriers out of SJC (UA, WN, AA,AS) were taking off without delay right after the 6:30 curfew was lifted. Maybe forecasting and better preparedness on their part played a role for them.