Pilot walks off plane for wrong meal

 
Old Jul 28, 2011, 6:42 am
  #61  
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Originally Posted by SFO777
And union members wonder they get no sympathy from the general public. Moron.
^

I would send in a complaint to United, hopefully the time was made up in the air and you weren't delayed.

A Northwest pilot got suspended in 99 and I believe ended up getting fired in 1999 over something similar. He didn't like the meal tray he was given and walked off the plane and couldn't find anything in the concourse that looked appealing so he took a cab and went to McDonalds and the flight was delayed over an hour because of his actions. I know Northwest ended up giving all the PAX in first a voucher and miles and may have done it for those in Y as well.

It was a LAS to DTW and IIRC someone higher up in Michigan state government official was on that flight The pilot got suspended and had over 20 years experience for it and I think they ended up deciding to fire him.

Last edited by iluv2fly; Jul 28, 2011 at 9:22 am Reason: merge
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 8:20 am
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 8:46 am
  #63  
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What is really absurd is the passengers having to offer to buy the pilots meal!!! Do pilots on United get a different meal choice outside the first class passenger meal choices???
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 8:47 am
  #64  
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Originally Posted by jamesteroh
What is really absurd is the passengers having to offer to buy the pilots meal!!! Do pilots on United get a different meal choice outside the first class passenger meal choices???
Yes - are you just realizing that?
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 8:49 am
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Originally Posted by PWMRamper
I remember taking an in range call once and the pilot said he had one special...to have someone grab him a Mountain Dew from the vending machine!

It was a pilot we regularly see and are good friends with, so of course we obliged.


And once in a great while we get an in range call asking for lobsters. That one doesn't work out, no lobster vendors at PWM (shocking! They could make good money!)
Gotta have the Dew!!!

As far as lobsters, just call the lobster shack at two lights....a little bit of a drive for them....but gotta have the "lobsta"
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 9:29 am
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That is a bizarre perspective. Where do you think UA gets the money to pay your salary? Thin air?

I'm curious if this is the new UA. Perhaps an email to SMI/J might help clear things (since he reads every mail).

Originally Posted by fastair

Maguldi, no, no passenger pays any UA employee. One may tip a contracted employee such as a skycap/wheelchair pusher, but the money to UA employees is laundered and paid by UA, not any passenger. I also pay taxes, does that mean that I get to pass judgement on the president (I do, as I get to vote for/against him) or the militaryy (nope, I get zero say in their benefits.) That arguement holds no affermative weight, it's just extranious info that has no argumentitive value except in the bumper sticker category of catch phrases with little no no actual worth.
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 9:48 am
  #67  
 
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Originally Posted by mobilebucky
Wow, rightly or wrongly, that just looked bad displaying in front of the customers.
THIS.
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 10:13 am
  #68  
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Originally Posted by GoAmtrak
You're missing the contractual obligation part. The pilot may have been childish for demanding that the contract be precisely met. But he and ALPA could and would absolutely sue for breach of contract and wrongful termination.
What's wrong with this country?? to unions

Last edited by enviroian; Jul 28, 2011 at 10:24 am
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 10:16 am
  #69  
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Originally Posted by enviroian
What's wrong with the country. to unions
+1
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 10:21 am
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Originally Posted by malgudi
That is a bizarre perspective. Where do you think UA gets the money to pay your salary? Thin air?

I'm curious if this is the new UA. Perhaps an email to SMI/J might help clear things (since he reads every mail).
Trickle down effect. Depending on how far you want to go removed from my hourly wage negotiated by my union and agreed to by my company, you partially fund the accounts that pay my salary, but have no say into my pay, now whose money goes to me and how much of it. In turn, freight forwarders also pay some of it and I have nothing to do with freight. The USPS pays some...again, I ahve nothing to do with that. Where did the USPS, the freight forwarders and you get your $$ from that you pay to UA? Since you want to go up the trickle down ladder a few steps, why does the buck magically stop with you? As long as we have gone numerous rungs from the direct source of the payroll account to you, let's go further, and say your employeer, their customers, their employeers...all the way to the US mint and those that determine fiscal policy.

Again, it is a nice concept to think that somehow, you pay me directly, but I am not in a "tip" profession. I never have received $$ from a customer (although I have been offered many times) and stuck it in my pocket. One cannot argue the trickle down effect and then stop it only when the ladder reaches you, if you wish to go to 2ndary and tertiary sources, by the same logic, one must go to quaternary and even furthur. I am not a waiter, a fast food delivery guy, or someone on comission. I receive an hourly rate. Just as a pilot gets paid the same if his plane has 1 passenger on it or 300 (for the same aircraft type and block to block time.) That alone should go to show, that my pay (as well as a pilot's, who of course is what the thread is about) salary is not paid by a customer. If that were so, then the full planes should pay the pilot more, and the less full (or got forbid, ferrying an empty plane) would pay him little to no money, which just isn't how it works.
Literal factual arguements work well with me, conceptual motivational speak that has far less impact on the reality of how I get paid, and where the direct funds come from has much more of an impact on me. Both mine, as well as the pilot's contract spell out pay rules. Nowhere in them is anything at all to do with getting paid by the end consumer.

One of the reasons corporations actualy LIKE unions is that it provides them a predictable cost model of labor costs. Regardless of company performance, the labor cost is pretty much already known and determined by the company in advance. The company could do great, but the labor costs are relativly fixed. The concept of the end consumer paying those costs directly does not work as well in such a model, as that would make labor a much more variable cost. Bean counters don't like variable costs in large corporations when they can eliminate the variablility with long term contracts amking them fixed.

Last edited by fastair; Jul 28, 2011 at 10:27 am
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 10:22 am
  #71  
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Wow, how did this evolve to who is paying the salary? And why would I make this hypothetical when I was sitting right there?

I doubt this was an allergy thing... when catering first asked the FA what was wrong with it, she said there was no side, there was no dessert. Also the copilot offered to go BUY him something in the terminal, and I and another passenger offered the same to the FA (I didn't say it to the pilot, I figured he would boot me off the plane as a security risk or something).

Cali
(who is a GIRL, by the way)
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 10:26 am
  #72  
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So he got his meal, but not his desert? Why not just take a FC passenger's desert on the QT and when it comes to serving that passenger the FA could have said "terribly sorry, the caterer didn't provide enough deserts so I don't have one for you".

Piolt just should have emailed customer service and had them deposit 1,000 FF miles into his account.

On the unrelated to the OP topic that's come up; if all customers stop flying UAL, and UAL subsequently goes out of business there is no money coming in and therefore no money to pay employees. If some people want to make the argument the that the money they are being paid may have been theirs previously (by going back 5 or 6 transactions via some sort of trickle-down effect) then perhaps they shouldn't even be getting paid for their current work as they've already been paid before.

Last edited by iluv2fly; Jul 28, 2011 at 10:37 am Reason: merge
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 10:32 am
  #73  
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I'm struggling with who is showing the least maturity ... Posters on this thread or the pilot. The pilot will likely lose big time in the comparison as he has a contract he was trying to stick to, and to get his company to follow, we may not get it, like it or even understand it but there was a basis for his actions. Compare that to much of the posting here which is whiny and finger pointing without much basis other than serve the customer even if you screw yourself in the process.

I would say the fact that the suits were included in the delivery showed this to be an issue that needed to get mgmt involved, and likely the next plane to be catered will not encounter similar issues (I would hope). There was a wrong, don't lose sight of it even if you don't think a missed meal is a big deal personally. Then again, we don't know when he started his day, how long or short his next turn is, whether he has snacks in his bag, etc etc etc ... Iow, we don't know it all other than yes, passengers were inconvenienced due to a catering foul up.
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 10:44 am
  #74  
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Originally Posted by steve4031
I am assuming they fly several flights a day. Or a couple of legs. If he doesn't get what he asked for, then he is hungry the rest of the day. Den TPA is at least a 4 hour flight. Then they screw up there. Then what. I'm sure that this isn't the first time this is happened to him.
Yeah, this makes no sense unless it's part of a repeated pattern and he finally took a stand on it.
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Old Jul 28, 2011, 11:01 am
  #75  
 
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Originally Posted by travel.flier
And unions wonder why they get blamed for the downfall of this country's economics.
Originally Posted by enviroian
What's wrong with this country?? to unions
Yes, it's that awful union's fault that UA voluntarily signed a binding business contract and might be held accountable to fulfilling it. Look, capitalism fails if legally-enforceable contracts are not honored. Do we really want to go down that road? As I said, the captain was well within his right to call UA out on the failure, even if he did it in a dramatic, illogical, and passenger-unfriendly way. I'm sure this incident has already led to wagon-circling with LSG SkyChefs to gain assurances that it won't happen again. And once catering changes to Chelsea, UA would have no one to blame but themselves.
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