7 thoughts on “The elegance of airline travel”

  1. If a server goes down they call the admin at home and have him come in. How can a plane full of passengers not be more important than a server?

  2. Why didn’t someone just open one of the doors? Can they really be locked from the outside? What if there were a fire?

    If they had rolled the stairs away, just close the door, arm it, open it, and slide down the chute. Surely everyone has always wished they had an excuse for that anyway, right?

    This seems like kidnapping to me. I’m sure the air crew didn’t spend the night on the plane.

  3. The airport released a statement that the passengers could have been kept in a secured area of the terminal without needing security screeners.

    The real reason behind this insanity? The airline probably didn’t have a passenger contract at that airport. If the passengers deplaned, the airline would have had to pay the passenger fees at “list price,” and regional carriers like ExpressJet don’t really have cash to spare. Keeping them on the plane meant they only had to pay the retail landing and parking fees.

  4. Jess – I wondered the same thing, but decided that taking things into your own hands as you describe would likely result in arrest followed by life-changing expense (attorney fees, whether you were convicted or not). The arrest would then become part of your permanent Internet profile, available to anyone who uses Google. You would then become a risky hire in the eyes of future employers.

    Probably better to get someone else to open the door. Still, a fun idea.

  5. Jess: There are a couple of doors on the CRJ, but they are up at the front and don’t provide enough ventilation. Probably the crew kept the auxiliary power unit running so that the “packs” would bring fresh air and A/C into the cabin (sadly the CRJ tends to be undersupplied with A/C if most of the 50 seats are occupied). No need to deploy a ‘chute on a CRJ door because the plane sits quite low to the ground and the inside of the door becomes a short stairway.

  6. My story, from a trip between KJFK and KBTV tonight. Plane was scheduled
    to depart at 8:12 PM. Scheduled loading time was 7:40, so when 8 pm
    came and went without loading the passengers, we knew something was
    up. As usual, the employees (Jetblue) knew nothing, or just weren’t telling.
    Turns out the flight crew was stuck in a weather delay somewhere else
    in the system, and we were told we would depart 1 hr late (or 2 hrs, or…).
    As a pilot, I certainly understand weather delays. But purely from the
    standpoint of logistics planning, you would expect an experienced operator
    (especially Jetblue given their widely publicized problems at KJFK) would
    have a standby crew or would have moved a crew from another jet that
    was delayed for WX. Took them about an hour, then they implemented
    the latter solution. When we arrived at KBTV, we ended up sitting on the
    tarmac for 25 minutes waiting for the one staffed ramp. It’s easy to see how
    these problems cascade throughout the system. Also, minor quibble,
    the motivation level within the ranks at Jetblue left a definite negative
    impression – the people seemed detached and dispirited from their
    work. Watched them trigger the door alarms no less than 5 times (causing
    a security response to each event) by simply forgetting to swipe their
    badges and/or close the security doors properly. Overall, door to door,
    the flight took about as much clock time as driving would have. Phils
    previous comments about the role reversal in quality between US carriers and
    the international carriers who were formerly poorly managed and operated
    was front and center in my mind as we stood waiting. I normally fly
    Southwest whenever possible, and I have to say after tonight I’m motivated
    to write Southwest an atta-boy letter thanking them for running a well
    managed operation.

  7. Whenever an operational issue arises, I always say to myself “would this happen on Southwest”? Early to the gate, but no jetway operator? Not on Southwest. Waiting for a light bulb to be changed, so flight delayed? Not on Southwest. They know how to do the blocking and tackling of running an airline that so many others (yes, you, United) miss.

    If only they flew to HKG.

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