Of all the things that I have read in this crazy thread, this seems the most reasonable. I have a good friend who is a pilot with another airline, and he quickly found that unless the situation absolutely calls for the truth, its a lot better for everyone to use a harmless but plausible reason rather than, either the A) panic-inducing reason :eek: or B) the complicated reason that will leave everybody looking like :confused: The first year of his career drove him crazy until he figured this out, partially because he was at a regional and the FAs were really dumb (his assessment not mine).

This is where you lost me. You have no idea why the captain ordered the passengers off of the flight (and frankly, the FA at the time might not have known the exact reason either). DL902 went out 1hr 40mins late, were you on it? Was there an explanation given for the delay? If it was just an issue of a warm cabin, seems like the delay was fairly lengthily. There is always more to the story.

Very interesting how the question of why turned into a battle of wits over who was right, the Captain OR the flight attendant. I would love to hear both of their accounts of what happened, my guess is it is probably very different from most of the presumptions made here. Fact is if people don't know the facts, they invent them.

Exactly.

One thing is clear from this thread, there are a lot of people with a deep rooted hate for authority. Coupled with the fact that someone else can make a decision and doesn't have to justify it to them just because they were effected by it.

Well that's one obviously-biased spin on it ... /eyeroll

This whole thread is obviously biased spins.

Thanks for the condescending eyeroll though.

You have to put a ":" around "rolleyes"....like this :rolleyes:

;) :D
Happy Friday!

Everything humans do has a bias attached to it because that's how human cognition operates; so what's your point, exactly?

Question for everyone saying it could be an emergency, but didn't want to alarm anyone. Why did the captain "abandon" his plane? If what you say is true, he violated basic norms by leaving the plane. Also he never told anyone else including crew that there was an issue, but we're to believe it was some major issue.

Whoa, ramp agent punishing the passengers to punish the captain. That is like Egyptair 990, where a crew member in 1999 was probably mad and crashed the JFK-CAI bound plane in to the Atlantic, killing everyone.

yes, a minor spat between crew members is JUST LIKE a suicidal pilot, sure.

This has been answered. It may have been a critical issue that was not immediately dangerous on the ground, but would have been in flight. And this further aligns with the crowd saying the GA is in charge until the door closes, so the captain was potentially going to talk to the person "in charge".

Perhaps he wanted to save remaining passengers the inconvenience of getting scanned in and then stuck/turned around in the jetway, and when he came out of the cockpit the FA was stuck in the aisle doing something and he decided to just get on with it.

End of the day, nobody really knows what happened. But I will continue to maintain that the one solid thing based on OP's story is the FA was absolutely wrong for airing her disagreement in front of and directly to the pax.

I don't think the statement that I had no idea why the captain ordered everyone off the plane is correct , I had somewhat of an idea why. I know what he said the reason was, that the cabin was uncomfortable, and my impression was that he had a point to prove, but I couldn’t figure out what it could be. The speculation offered by HDQDD, that the captain was pissed off because the PCA hose wasn’t hooked up and he decided to make a point, makes the most sense to me.

Yes, I was on the flight, I would guess that the total time lost due to this issue was a little over an hour. After everyone was back on board there was an issue with the jet bridge that further delayed push back, so thats the rest of the story.

There was no further explanation given.

And? Since we're all taking shots in the dark, let's assume the above is exactly what happened. It's very possible that the captain asked the FA's/GA's to delay boarding until the PCA hose was hooked up and run long enough to cool the cabin. Being stuffed in an non-air conditioned aircraft during the summer in ATL is not a pleasant experience, so the captain was looking out for passenger comfort from the start. Against the captain's request, boarding commenced even though the PCA hose was still not connected. The captain, as a result, ordered everyone off of the plane until the cabin was air conditioned, which is what he asked for in the first place. Was the captain trying to prove a point in this specific scenario? Potentially, but I'd be pretty pissed too if I were the captain.

Two data points; three years ago I was flying back from Vegas and we were boarding without ground air and an INOP APU. About 20 mins into boarding, a passenger had a panic attack because of the heat (reason given by their partner), so boarding stopped, medical staff was called and all said and done we were delayed approx. 1hr30min (sitting in an incredibly hot cabin the whole time).

Last year, similar situation. Was flying out of Phoenix and only hot air was being blown out of the Gaspers. The cabin was nearly unbearable, but boarding continued and soon after an elderly passenger became lightheaded. Medical staff was called, passenger deplaned resulting in an hour delay.

Long story short, I would've much rather been delayed in the comfort of the gate area until both cabins were inhabitable for passengers. Sounds like your captain had the same thought process.