MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

Blumie has it right. At 1AM at a non hub airport for AA there aren't going be many employees and in this case it seems like none because flights for the evening for AA were probably done. Getting help from another airline, in the same situation with no staff around (likely USAir) or staffed with minimal people (likely UA) may not be an option. Also, we don't know what the communication was like on onboard and were there any provisions left (beverages-albeit maybe on the warm side, and the BYOB crap) to serve to customers.

PresRDC

LOL. Keep thinking it's irrelevant if you want, but it just shows your complete and utter ignorance of airline and airport operations. The point of my post, to exposure your ignorance of these things, has been accomplished.

But, that said, let's have some fun deconstructing the "insights" in your response:

1. "If a pilot makes a call to divert a plane, then extraordinary circumstances apply in the air and on the ground."

And how does that, exactly, translate into having everything in place to handle an off hours unscheduled arrival?

2. "You can have UA or US employees help out with or without corporate agreements."

Oh really? How would this work? Are the UA or US employees just standing around waiting for an AA diversion? Who is going to tell them to unload the AA diversion? What type of compensation agreement should be arranged? Who is authorized to enter into this agreement off hours? What about liability for UA and US -- if I were UA's or US' attorney, I'd expect AA to indemnify my company for this work. What if the UA ans US people onsite are busy doing other tasks, or are you assuming that they are just sitting around waiting for an AA diversion? Or maybe you just haven't thought through all of these considerations?

3. "You only need one person to get the aircraft door opened and one to ensure that pax go into the right door."

Okay, so are these same two people going to unload the luggage and drive it to baggage claim? What if they aren't qualified to do that? Who is in place to tell these two people to unload the flight? Where did they come from (oh yeah, UA and US, I forgot)?

4. "The production we are used to is not necessary and it clearly can be done with a skeleton staff."

Okay, let's role play. You are the duty manager for AA at IAD and you have two staff plus yourself to work the arrival of this flight (and this amy be more AA staff than were actually present last night). How are you going to allocate your labor to unlaod the plane and bags in a timely fashion, especially considering that the plane parked remotely? Surely, you've thought about this because you state that it is clear that it can be done with a skeleton staff.

The bottom line, as I've said many times before, just as going to the doctor on a regular basis does not qualify one to opine on the practice of medicine, flying frequently does not qualify one to opine on airline and airport operations.

Blumie

It's easy, but completely unfair, for us to sit here and judge the competency of airline and airport management. No question the system's broken. No question every time something like this happens -- and it certainly appears to happen with increasing frequency -- there's no conclusion one can reach other than that there's gotta be a better way. But I don't think any of us is in the position to conclude what that better way is or that the mess we're in is the result of airline or airport mismanagement. Certainly many on this board will disagree and opine that the airlines are run by a collective group of morons and idiots. I don't buy that.

Blumie

An all time great FT post. Not as much fun as uninformed speculation and conjecture, but fun (and, as a bonus, accurate) nonentheless. ^^^

formeraa

GUWonder --

This is not 1978! Airlines simply can't afford to have employees standing around doing NOTHING, waiting for the remote possibility that a plane might divert. If fares go up 50% tonight, then we can talk about this tomorrow.

I remember one time when AA had three planes divert to DEN (2 MD-11's and 1 MD-80). DEN isn't a very big station for AA. So, it took a while to get everyone processed (only had 2 agents available). But they did it. The good news was that our airplane was fixed shortly after the last passenger was processed.

greggwiggins

To quote Gen. Chuck Yeager; "There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. There are few old, bold pilots."

GUWonder

The point was that weather is not the explanation for the ground handling situation.

I don't know anyone here suggesting -- even in 1978 or even today -- that airlines have employees standing around doing nothing. There are better ways to handle circumstances like this (that don't involve having employees standing around doing nothing), but that has not been a priority even when the money was there and it is no greater a priority when the money isn't there.

MDSD

IIRC, the quote was E. Hamilton Lee's when he retired from flying in 1949: There are old pilots and bold pilots, but NO old, bold pilots.

JDiver

I suspect you are right - for one thing, Yeager is an old, bold pilot (and was known as a young, bold (not to mention unruly) pilot as well - October 29 1947, flying the Bell X-1 "Glamorous Glennis" on its first supersonic flight with two broken ribs taped by a veterinarian friend, and a sawed-off broomstick to secure the cockpit hatch, is for hotshots, not airline pilots.)

One very readable (albeit with lousy grammatical construction and spelling) report is this one.

Thank goodness commercial pilots in the USA are well trained and disciplined, challenged regularly in simulators and reviewed with checkrides (and that they practice CRM) these days, and that the passengers don't get to second guess them.

mvoight

How does this incident demonstrate this being "broken"?
The AA people had gone home, as there were no more flights scheduled.
The diversion wasn't known early enough to keep employees at the airport.

Blumie

Perhaps in your excitement about posting you missed this part of my post:

I agree that keeping AA personnel at every airport all night is not the solution. But I don't think it would be unreasonable for airlines and airport authorities to have procedures in place to better deal with situations like this, at least to get passengers off airplanes and access to food and water.

MJonTravel

For what it's worth, aircraft can land at DCA at just about all hours, they just can't takeoff. I wish I could find the curfew rule, but my search has proved fruitless so far. Certain aircraft types can takeoff before 7am....others such as the MD80 cannot. Takeoff weight is also factored in the equation. Frequent DCA to DFW Customers on the 6am flight will note that if their equipment is ever changed from the usual 737-823 to an MD-80, their flight will be delayed until 6:55am... 5 minute taxi and 7am blast off.

I can't say what happened here, but I can say pretty certainly that if all of AA's Dulles flights were in for the night, there were no AA customer service employees on the airfield when this aircraft landed. AA used to do overnight aircraft maintenance at IAD, but I believe this is no longer the case. So... the airport authority probably called the AA general manager who called one of their managers who had to try and get some people in early to unload the airplane.

As for getting the people off the airplane, the airport authority may very well operate the "moon buggies" 24/7, but rest assured they are on a limited schedule. And getting one routed out to an unscheduled arrival can take a bit of time. And while they might not admit this, I would be that the airport authority did not want to take the passengers off the airplane without an airline representative there to deal with the aftermath.

While using the services of another airline sounds good in theory, the reality is that they are likely in the same staffing situation, and right or wrong, they probably wouldn't help if they had plenty of people. Getting something in place to address these issues is a worthy goal.

The weather around here was pretty sucktackular last night. The captain decided to divert. It's his/her call. Unfortunately, the diversion was to a station that apparently had no AA employees working at the hour they landed.

JIMCHI

Does anyone EVER think of holding the FAA and Congress accountable for these outrageous delays and diversions, due to a poorly operated and funded air traffic control system ?? It's only going to get worse. I don't understand why these threads go on and on with the minutiae of every conceivable event being analyzed by novices, except the obvious: the ATC system in the U.S. is broken. Demand it be fixed, and soon, rather than wasting your time analyzing every delay or diversion.

Sagy

Is the following a possibility (pure speculation):

1. Plane attempts to land at DCA and brakes it off due to weather conditions
2. Plane is diverted to IAD (plan is to fly back to DCA as soon as weather clears)
3. Delay is longer than expected and the crew becomes "illegal"

If that is what happened, then it would make sense that after landing the passengers were told they that can't go to the toilets or have any water (the expectation is that "we want to be ready for a takeoff at any time"). At that point there is also the thought (hope) that there is no need for ground crew at IAD.

Once the crew becomes illegal (let's say about an hour after landing). A ground crew is ordered to the airport and plans for deplaning are set in motion. This could explain the delays and the reported restriction put on the passengers.

If that is what happened, and teh reports are correct, then only thing missing is communication. The passengers should have been told about the plans to continue the flight to DCA and the crew turning illegal (or maybe they hav eand it just wasn't reported).

AEpilot76

This is what happened:

Plane attempts landing at DCA
Plane diverts to IAD
Plane lands at IAD
Crew calls in fatigued after waiting out the wx and scheduling wants them to fly back to DCA