Pointless Delays
 

Sitting on an AA1067 trying to eventually get to DTW. Plane is delayed due to mechanical issue, which is understandable - these things happen. However, it is a low hydraulic oil level issue which was apparently identified by the last flight crew that used this aircraft.

Per flightaware that flight landed at 9PM yesterday, and AA waited until after all of the passengers were on board for the 12:55 PM flight to DTW today to begin working on the issue.

Anybody else have problems with this “why the (bleep) did you wait till now to fix this” type of delay?

Last month I was sitting in the terminal at DFW and out the window I could see big orange tag hanging off of what (I believe) to be an air speed pitot tube. Sure enough, it wasn’t until the pilot did his pre-flight walkthrough that it was identified that they needed a different aircraft, causing a 2 hour delay to be announced last second. This was a plane that had landed 12 hours beforehand and was known to be in bad enough shape to hang a maintenance tag on a piece of equipment.

I understand the oncoming captain has to inspect the aircraft prior to putting their own life on the line, but why wait for the last minute to begin addressing known issues?

There are a million and one reasons as to why it might happen. Maybe they worked it the previous night and the check flight was good, but the issue resurfaced at the gate.

But my favorite reason is that the mechanical issue is all an elaborate ruse and Doug Parker personally instructed the crew to make sure mdkowals' flight was delayed.

Nice strawman.

Since AA consistently ranks as the worst of the majors in on-time performance, OP is raising an entirely reasonable concern. Sure, maybe there's nothing AA could have done better, but maybe they screwed up and could have fixed the problem overnight without incurring a delay as well. Obviously none of us has complete information, but looking at the overall stats this is an area where AA is far from perfect.

Strawman? Huh? Certainly you can understand a joke such as what you're quoting.

I understand that kb9522 was trying to make OP's original complaint sound silly by saying something ridiculous and analogizing it to the original point.

Getting back on topic: if Doug Parker wants to cut costs to the bone, it certainly makes sense to scan logbooks and recorded issues the moment the plane arrives, rather than a few moments before it tries to take off.

Normally I don't throw my power around, but this seems like a worthy cause, so here goes: As Multi-Year EXP, Lifetime Plat, 3.6 million miler ... I hereby command AA to inspect the aircraft logbook upon arrival, and to fix anything that's broken, ASAP. Make it so.

Lighten up. I addressed OPs point in the first paragraph, which you selectively ignored. The second part was a joke.

The OP was going DFW to DTW, which makes even less sense, if AA had a mechanic available 24/7 it would be at DFW. Pulling into AUS on the last flight the plane was running for the day, at least 2 maintenance trucks were pulling up, one with tanks (presumably of the various fluids needed) on the truck. AUS overnights a good number of planes, generally every AA gate + 5-8 more away from the terminal. Can't see why DFW doesn't do the same, well I can, but don't know why, cascading delays would seem to time out crews eventually.

The bit of odd humor, flying through CLT, had some part needed for a CR700, and they didn't have it in CLT. Really, with as many CRs through there, they don't have a full spares kit, and had to get it shipped in from DFW? It was something inside, as maintenance was on the inside working when they announced the 5 hour delay, and based on the pilot it was an easy/quick fix, he expected to be going with about a 30 minute delay, if they only had the part.

I had few delays like OP said, it was first flight of the day at DFW, ORD, LAX, after passenger boarded a pilot told us that they found mechanical and mechanics need to look at it. I thought same as OP that why they could not take care of this overnight? It was not at out post, it was at major hub. How I knew aircraft did not just flew in on red eye flight? I tend to check incoming aircraft to see if my flight is on time or not, I do not trust "On Time" display on flight status. ;) I knew aircraft flew in night before and parked at an airport.

I think my experience with "Pointless Delay" was at DFW. Arrived at the gate, pilots and FAs were at the gate also but there was no aircraft at the gate. Closer to departure time a pilot made an announcement at the gate and told us the situation. Our aircraft was at DFW, aircraft flew into DFW evening before and was parked at a maintenance area. But they forgot to assign a ground crew to tow aircraft to the gate, they could not find anybody to tow our plane to the gate. Ended up an hour plus delay.