DCP2016

Holy moly, that person was not right in the head and shouldn't be working a "safety" role like a flight attendant.

freshairborne

wxguy

Thank you FAB! Pilots are human beings too. I appreciate your personality coming through.
A few of my favs over the years:

• "I promise the number of good landings will equal the number of good take-offs today."
• "The next time your travel plans are up-in-the-air, I hope you'll think of us."
• (and from a LONG time ago) "We know you have a choice of bankrupt airlines, and we thank you for choosing ours."

Miles Ahead

That was you! I was on that flight!

DenverBrian

No worries. Tone of voice carries most of the message. Here at FT, we can only see the quotes as words. There are a million ways to include humor in the message without freaking out anyone.

PHLGovFlyer

I agree that it's a poor choice of wording when talking to the flying public. However, since the lifespan of commercial aircraft tires is measured in the low hundreds of landings, having "a few more landings" remaining is a fairly typical condition. Given that pilots encounter this condition frequently it's not entirely surprising that they would state things in that context without really thinking about how the public might interpret their statement.

TominLazybrook

My favorite was when the FLL staff at UA following a cancelled flight (they said mx...it could have been anything) simply refused to announce that there were empty seats on a subsequent flight. We were told the flight was full by the Gate agent. Upon talking to the UA agent on the phone, I discovered there were 14 seats available on the next flight leaving FLL. After getting my seat on the flight, I walked back to the gate agent at the gate (who was sloooooowly processing hotel rooms and flights for the hundred cancelled pax) and asked him "why don't you make an announcement about the empty seats on the next flight, there are seats available. Some of these people can go home tonight". He decided to not do so. That subsequent flight took off with me on it, and a dozen empty seats. A dozen people that could have made it home. A dozen people that UA didn't have to put up in hotels. All because it appeared as though the gate agent didn't want to deal with sorting out who had the priority to get on the plane. To be clear after a large number of "15 minute more" delay announcements and "they're getting us a new plane" or "they're sending out a mechanic",and then the inevitable cancellation, the crowd was a bit rowdy. That FLL station was an absolute mess. No idea if its the same today. I don't fly UA on that route very much anymore.

lincolnjkc

You're the type of pilot that makes it fun to fly...really wish there were more of you. On a hub-to-hub flight last week-ish we had some great ones:

"I'm not even going to venture a guess as to our arrival time until we're off the gate and the nose is pointing toward our destination... shouldn't be more than 10 or 15 minutes...."

About 30 minutes later

"Weelllllllllllll foliks. Let's face it. I'm a captain and I lie. We'll not so much lied but misstated some facts...anyway we're of the gate and in the system so ATC knows about us now buttttt we're still going to sit here for a while. Once we're airborne it should go pretty quick unless ATC decides tonight is a fine night for an aerial tour of Hershey, Pennsylvania"

Meanwhile while we were sitting on the gate there was a maintenance guy juggling (not literally) like 6 oxygen bottles and I couldn't figure out what the heck he was accomplishing -- he'd put one in a padded box, move the box open a different one, take that bottle out open put it in a different (but visually identical) box and repeat until just before the parking break was released.

KansasMike

A UX flight from ORD-ICT being delayed due to "weather" when the real reason was the crews' late arrival from Calgary. I wrote a blog post about the "airline lie" here: Mike Smith Enterprises Blog: The Airline Lie

freshairborne

In2ishn

alexperi

On the phone with an agent the other day trying to get an RPU that didn't clear redeposited. She kept referring to it as a CRU. I said "You mean RPU, right?" She responded: "Well, it's really a CRU, but they're also called RPUs."

jsloan

Confirmed Regionone Upgrade?

alexperi

I guess the reason they changed the name was because they never get confirmed these days...

seenitall