Fly

This thread has run it's course as far as I'm concerned. I'm glad you all had your fun slamming the flight attendants (which seems to be a regular pasttime here) and diminishing what the established protocol at United. It's too bad that you have decided to bash me instead of considering the safety violations that occured. Perhaps you could all set up a little trust fund for the Captain and his Boy Wonder to get them through the winter now that they are unemployed. United cannot afford to have anything go wrong at this point in time and there are still many MANY pilots still out on furlough who would love to get back into that airplane. A couple of us already looked up the crew and sent copies of this thread to supervisors and station managers. (fyi - Did the Captain say to the f/a, "this is a direct order"? NO??? Then the flight attendant was responsible for that door and everything pertaining to it. Anything less, and he'd be up for termination.)

I do find it disturbing though that you find such pleasure in attacking employees who come here to provide information on how things really work behind the scenes at United. I don't see much of a reason to come here on my days off to be belittled and made fun of anymore. I do hope it was good for you though. I'll have to speak with a few of my flight attendant buddies who post here also. Perhaps it's time for us to cool it a while and let you ask questions and then answer them yourselves since you all seem to know everything (in your minds) anyway, you should be fine blowing hot air up each others noses. Adios!

tom911

How nice of you.

JS

Like what? I asked for specifics (seeing as how many flight attendants just love to thump the rule book, especially the one about obeying crewmember instructions), and what did I get? Non-answers like "All of them", and "safety in general".

So, you're a narc. Nice.

There are other UA employees that post here who have some brains. Those we don't attack. It's only the robotic and illogical posts that don't go unnoticed.

Liz

I didn't find anything illogical about it. What he (allegedly) did was a violation of MANY safety procedures. I have no doubt UA will look at this very seriously. I could go through our "rule book" and cite one thing after another but it wouldn't matter!! If this was in any way ok it would happen more often. Not ok and definitely not ok with me.

Bear96

I am not sure if you understand what is included in the excluded in the FOM and FARs, and what their purpose is.

There is not a huge list of every possible thing anyone can do -- but shouldn't -- in it. Are you picturing something like this:

I would wager you are correct -- # 3 probably is not directly addressed in the FOM or in the FARs. Neither are an infinite number of other things that are too obvious or ridiculous to include because you think people would have a degree of common sense.


So if the FOM does not have a section clearly stating, hmmm let's see ... that murder is bad, the Captain is therefore allowed to commit murder and claim "Captain's authority"? (I don't think the FARs address murder either.)

OK, too extreme. How about this. You are settled in your F seat. Can the Captain claim "Captain's authority" and make you change seats with his buddy who happens to be back in E- in a middle seat? Is there a FOM section addressing this?

Or -- perhaps best yet, and a perennial favorite topic here on FT -- Channel 9! I love all the support here for "Captain's authority." Y'all are all for it -- unless it leads to Channel 9 being turned off. Then we hear the wails from some about how a Captain who doesn't have Channel 9 on shows poor judgment and is unfit for duty. But it's OK to jump from an aircraft door???

Bear96

I thought I gave you one -- the issue that one door is now unuseable for an emergency evacuation since the slide is useless once the door has been opened in the unarmed position.

Your response was something like, "That rarely happens." By that logic, ALL safety regulations should be tossed. But in any case, you wanted specifics; there was one.

squeakr

and not individual posters..

thanks

squeakr
MOD UAL

SFFlyman

So I am to assume from your post that accidents do not happen on the ground? Plenty of trucks and other aircraft have had ground collisions. IMHO, your post suggests that rules for safety should be disregarded based on probability of an accident occurring? Unless you can prove your statistical analysis in some form based on scientific evidence, please do not call my analysis ludicrous.

flyinbob

Why Liz? Ignoring the name calling some of this thread has become, I would ask why this would be serious enough for someone to "report" the pilot? I hope you can see this from the passenger point of view, that it gets incredibly frustrating every time we sit and wait and wait and wait for someone to open the door. Whatever the reason - cutbacks, unfair executives, whatever - this pilot did what most of us can only dream of. He said screw the regulations, I'm going to do something for the passengers. To some of us, who too often face the "by the book" matrons, this type of act was long overdue and too rarely seen, and the pilot should be awarded and complimented.

So a simple question. Do you really think the "safety" violations were so outrageous versus that actual risk to passengers as to warrant reporting this pilot?

Liz

I'm not sure why you are asking me, I didn't say anything about reporting him. Besides, if the f/a was doing his/her job, they had to file a report as it is required by our FAOM. Not doing that can get the f/a in serious trouble. I suppose we should just throw out all the rules, after all, it gets us to the gate quicker!!

fastair

Amen SFFly. A little Spanish Island in the Canary's called Tenerife answers the question of what can go wrong with aircraft on the ground. This ranks as the all time worst comercial aviation disaster prior to Sept 11. 555 passengers and 30 crew lost 27 Mar 1977.

Aircraft are extremely vulnerable while on the ground, where 1000's of feet do not separate them. Viable working emergency exists are needed to be functioning at all times. I have worked 2 different 747 flights where the upstairs slide had been made inop (using it to replace another aircraft's deployed chute) causing the entire upstairs of the aircraft to be rendered off limits to all except the flight crew.

No slide, no passengers. It doesn't matter that they were near a jetway, and close to deboarding, the fact of the matter is that one does not make an exit inoperative until the jetbridge/airstairs are ready to be used as a replacement exit.

JAaronT

While I don't disagree with your sentiment, using Tenerife as an example is being over-dramatic. The Tenerife accident occured on an active runway, not while parked at the gate.

TTT

JAaronT beat me to it.

Tiojelly

I think the FA was right to question the FO. This was surely a good CYA move.

Although probably against the spirit of many safety rules, I think it is pretty amusing given the outcome, and I certainly would have applauded the action... again given the outcome. I certainly also would blame the action had something gone terribly wrong.

This should not about people thinking FA's are power hungry, I think they have procedures they need to follow, and managing a plane load of people sometimes requires a stern approach and lines to follow. May not be all FA's methods of crowd control, but you use what has worked for you.

Just like after a football game -- if 1 person runs onto the field, maybe some other idiot would also go -- then the stands empty. I don't think it would be a good thing to see 30 people jumping from the doors onto a secured area.

If they guy did something wrong -- this should be pointed out. I would hate to think someone would be fired for this.

SFFlyman

A final thought(s) on this. I did not intend for anyone to get fired because of this incident. However, whether it's UA or any other airline I might fly, I want to know that the people in charge of the plane err on the side of caution. Also, an earlier flight had been cancelled, and there were other UA personnel on the flight from the cancelled flight. So if this went unreported, I believe that was a breakdown in their system. A little error in judgment could be the difference in a safe flight or one we don't want to think about.