The new airline thread

[Guardian]

What airline if you don’t mind me asking

[ViperStud]

I’ll shoot you a DM with more details. Bottom line, there is no real guidance for how you handle a dude curtailing orders and working/flying somewhere else over a long period of leave at the end. The onus is on us to prove to the bobs it isn’t illegal, and the CCs have a lot of wiggle room to decide what they’re comfortable with. Across different units I’ve heard anything from “it’s their leave, they’ve earned it and can use it as they see fit” to “dudes can only use leave on any set of orders if it was earned on that set of orders.” 
 

How each individual airline looks at it, that’s another story entirely. 

[Guardian]

Gotcha. Yeah there is paper work to transfer your earned not taken leave from one set of orders to the other. I’m just trying to see if I can curtail and use my leave at the end. I’ve heard there are some airlines that require you to prove you are on terminal with the type of leave and I’m trying to figure out how I can get around it.

[nsplayr]

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/delta-pilots-ratify-new-contract-union-2023-03-01/
 

Looks like the new Delta contract is done. Congrats!

[SocialD]

2 hours ago, nsplayr said:

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/delta-pilots-ratify-new-contract-union-2023-03-01/
 

Looks like the new Delta contract is done. Congrats!

 

 

Get ready for drill this weekend....

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CpVNsWBD080/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

[slc]

Till that next deployment comes rearing its ugly head.....it's gonna get real interesting the next few years

[uhhello]

We're running out of strikes

 

[FourFans]

Weird.  It's almost as if having your transportation department focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, social sensitivity, skin color, gender, and other such things instead of focusing on proper procedures in the operations of aircraft, trains, trucks, and ships...they end up focusing on diversity, equity, inclusion, social sensitivity, skin color, gender, and other such things instead of focusing on proper procedures in the operations of aircraft, trains, trucks, and ships.

There's only so much bandwidth in the human focus.  DEI and other wokeness is distracting technicians from focusing on their technical skills, and is further severely cluttering the CRM on flight decks, in ATC centers, and other technical environments.  When you're more worried about offending someone's delicate sensibilities than you are about making sure the job is done correctly, safety gets easily compromised.  It's a slippery slope, I've experienced it first hand, and it needs to stop.  Immediately.

Is DEI and woke garbage the root cause in these cases?  Nope, in one case it's a tower controller issuing, and the crews accepting, a landing clearance without sufficient spacing (6 miles dude).  In the other...without the flight deck tapes, who knows...but obviously distractions.

Any professional in technical employment or the heavy machinery industries knows that you don't simply ignore distractions.  You actively eliminate as many as possible because there will be more than enough that you can't eliminate.  So no, these accidents are not the fault of DEI, but that garbage is definitely a loud background distractor that is being forced into the system by our administrators, and one that is low hanging fruit that could be easily culled.

Beyond that, it's an analysis of correlation vs causation.  We have administrators who were clearly picked for their political reliability, their diversity, gender, etc...INSTEAD of their expertise.  Our current transportation secretary is a political appointee, not an expert in transportation.  He is responsible to set the policy and priority for the transportation department...and now we're experiencing lots of mishaps in that department.  Correlation? Definitely.  Causation?  Not easily proven, but not to be ruled out either.

Why is he still employed in that job?

[TheNewGazmo]

We're running out of strikes
[/url]  

This is the risk you take clearing a heavy aircraft for takeoff while a heavy aircraft is on a 2-mile final. You have a 45 second window to get a jet off the ground and it takes 30+ seconds to get from the hold short line and around the horn to line up on center line before pushing the throttles up. They went around because they knew they were too close. This is a foul on ATC's part, but knowing that this has become a trend, we, the pilots, need to be more cognizant about this stuff. It isn't the tower controller is going to die in a collision.

[Danger41]

Looking at those videos it seems to me that both are the result of buffoonery on the pilots part. Assuming the animation and radio call timing is accurate (big assumption), UPS 2992 was cleared onto the runway to line up and wait before UPS 2974 is 6 NM away over POWLZ. They’re given a takeoff clearance with instructions, they read them back and are told the aircraft is on 2 mile final aka “move your slow ass” by ATC. After the go around, 2992 is given taxi instructions back to try again and doesn’t read back clearance to cross a runway and 2974 asks what the delayed departure was about. Once again, who knows how accurate the timing is and animations but for a UPS crew, I don’t see how that couldn’t have worked. 
 

And the Boston one, the biz jet just takes off with zero comms and clearance (at least that made it in the video) so that’s just extreme buffoonery. I think he was given departure instructions but not takeoff clearance in a call that was omitted from video because he checks in 3.5 climbing 5.0 on a SID. Maybe he just was executing his clearance with zero other calls. I find the animations on this one suspect because it would lead you to believe Jet Blue would’ve straight up landed on the biz jet and went around at 75-100 feet because of ATC direction. I find it hard to believe the deck angle on the 737 is that severe that they couldn’t see that. Additionally, with the weather shown they easily could have seen the runway and the whole airport from FAF. Regardless, buffoonery for sure happened.

On the DEI comments, thankfully one diversity hire female made it up to Boston to prevent that crash since the white male pilots couldn’t see it or be bothered to wait to take off when told /s. 

[uhhello]

Wasn't assigning blame in any of them.  Just stating that we've been getting very lucky lately and are bound to have 3 parties not paying attention at some point at this rate.  

[nsplayr]

5 hours ago, FourFans130 said:

Our current transportation secretary is a political appointee, not an expert in transportation.  He is responsible to set the policy and priority for the transportation department...and now we're experiencing lots of mishaps in that department.  Correlation? Definitely.  Causation?  Not easily proven, but not to be ruled out either.

Why is he still employed in that job?

I don’t buy your argument at all.

The last DOT Secretary who was an “expert in transportation” was probably Mary Peters 2006-2009 under GWB, and I am 99.69% sure you have no idea who she is or what, if anything, she accomplished leading the department.

It’s a cabinet position, they are political appointments to oversee bureaucracies. Some folks do better than others but domain expertise actually isn’t really necessary IMHO.

Hell, Rick Perry said in a presidential debate he would eliminate the Department of Energy as President, had zero idea the department’s primary function is dealing with nuclear weapons and managing research labs shortly before being nominated to lead it…and I still happen to think he ended up doing a pretty ok job!

I also just don’t buy for a second that “wokeness” is crowding out so much valuable time to focus on your job. Haven’t seen that in the military (active or guard), not in my civilian job. Certainly can’t correlate DOT HR training policies with private company freight train derailments.

Executing primary duties at least decently and masterfully slobbing the right Bobs’ knobs has always been the primary vector onward and upward 😅

Edited March 5, 2023 by nsplayr

[FourFans]

21 hours ago, nsplayr said:

I don’t buy your argument at all.

The last DOT Secretary who was an “expert in transportation” was probably Mary Peters 2006-2009 under GWB, and I am 99.69% sure you have no idea who she is or what, if anything, she accomplished leading the department.

It’s a cabinet position, they are political appointments to oversee bureaucracies. Some folks do better than others but domain expertise actually isn’t really necessary IMHO.

Hell, Rick Perry said in a presidential debate he would eliminate the Department of Energy as President, had zero idea the department’s primary function is dealing with nuclear weapons and managing research labs shortly before being nominated to lead it…and I still happen to think he ended up doing a pretty ok job!

I also just don’t buy for a second that “wokeness” is crowding out so much valuable time to focus on your job. Haven’t seen that in the military (active or guard), not in my civilian job. Certainly can’t correlate DOT HR training policies with private company freight train derailments.

Executing primary duties at least decently and masterfully slobbing the right Bobs’ knobs has always been the primary vector onward and upward 😅

That's fair enough.  I will point out that past failures are neither acceptable nor an excuse for future incompetence.  We need competence in the FAA and in transportation right now.  An administrative leader with some vague experience would definitely help with prioritizing some things in that realm.

I'll agree that mastery is not a necessity for administration.  However a basic familiarization is probably a good idea.  When's the last time an AMC guy led ACC, for example.  Your point is fair, and open to opinion.  Not mandatory, but again, familiarity is probably good.  So, I'm assuming you're ok with this:

Reminder, Phil Washington has managed two major airports.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Washington#:~:text=Phillip A. Washington (born 1958,Joe Biden's transportation transition team.

Should he be able to answer all those questions? Absolutely not.  Should he be able to answer at least one of those questions?  DEFINITELY.  Any pilot, dispatcher, or certified airfield manager would have gotten at least two of those questions.  This guy's been a CEO of Denver and LA Metro, and can't even talk about at least ONE of these topics...especially considering the most recent history of air traffic close calls? 

That's not lack of expertise, that's just doing your homework before getting interviewed by Senate of the United State.  It's simply lazy.  We don't need any more lazy.

But by your logic, that's ok.  The predecessors were ignorant of the specifics, so the next guy can be ignorant.  Experience entirely gained by OJT for a federal administrator is cool.  But bear in mind that a Senator, who's job is even more general than this guy's would be at the FAA, did some homework and was able to talk with even a fake level of expertise.  Again.  Lazy.  FFS, this guy was an Army CSM.  He should know better.  This kind of political appointee laziness needs to stop.  I don't give a shit how bad they were in the past.  I am very concerned about our future.

Considering the fact that you have adamantly reinforced that you agree with this administration and all it's been doing: the disastrous and treacherous withdrawal from Afghanistan, our completely opaque and apparently open ended involvement in Ukraine, the suppression of a free investigation into hunter biden's dealing, dismissal of President Biden's own mishandling of classified documents while vilifying Trump doing the same exact thing, a suppression of fossil fuels production in the US for no obvious reason...except...the uplifting of green renewables despite overwhelming science to counter their sustainability, the affirmation of providing gender transition surgeries to minors without parental consent, and in general endorsing an agenda over and over that gender and skin color make a difference in one's ability to do their job, the intentional increase of inflation through endless spending of money we don't have, and on, and on, and on...I'm not surprised.

Edited March 5, 2023 by FourFans130

[WheelsOff]

21 hours ago, Danger41 said:

Looking at those videos it seems to me that both are the result of buffoonery on the pilots part. Assuming the animation and radio call timing is accurate (big assumption),

I think a DA-20 flying up initial at Pueblo moves about as quick as that animation of the UPS MD-11 going around, so, yeah, I’m gonna say that animation is just a bit off on the timing…

[uhhello]

I'm not in the industry, is this happening more frequently or is it just getting reported publicly more now with all these channels mining for it? 

[brabus]

I don’t know that answer, but it is insane that two people with ATPs, operating in one of the most critical phases of flight when they should be at max awareness, are told to line up and they takeoff instead. Is it a training/SOP problem, fitness for duty problem, experience problem, or something else? It sure feels like this kind of stuff is happening more often, and it concerns me. 

[TreeA10]

Yeah, what Brabus said.

[BashiChuni]

it's very easy to understand why this is happening

[brabus]

12 minutes ago, BashiChuni said:

it's very easy to understand why this is happening

Well then let’s hear it…

[hindsight2020]

I don't feel it's that as much as it's only more because we have more airplanes in the sky. I think people take off without clearance with some degree of frequency, and have done so before on a per capita basis. I did it too back the good ol day...granted it was UPT and as part of a formation takeoff lead as an added distraction, looking at the world through a soda straw at the time for sure. Granted, that was with a background of CFII with 400 civilian hours at the time. Point being, it happens, and it's not something reserved for complete neophytes.

To the point about 121, yes, a two person crew should be able to ameliorate that. Then again my IP didn't do anything either at the time (oh how my username checks in this life, lucky to be alive). Meaning he too was behind the 8-ball. It happens. 

Sure, we can point to the subtext of regional flying being intimated as a de facto single pilot operation, given the degree of outsized/remediating OJT that occurs at that level. But then AA106 enters the chat and takes a big crap on that presumption. So you can't just blame it on "those FFD carriers boi....". 

Not saying any of it is ok, just saying, this stuff happens, and it's not just the regional perma-IOE ranks doing it either. Solution? Less airplanes in the sky I guess. Cuz we sure as sheet don't have the means to tighten staffing to attrit anybody left of the mean on the bell curve. That ship sailed a decade ago. 

[brabus]

16 minutes ago, hindsight2020 said:

I think people take off without clearance with some degree of frequency, and have done so before on a per capita basis. I did it too back the good ol day...

Agreed on the general statement of the entire aviation world as a whole, and I did it once too way back in the day. BUT, such a mistake is frankly inexcusable at the professional 121 level of flying. There’s no room for some of the shit we’ve seen in the past few months. So why is it happening at all at this level of aviation? That’s an important question that needs to be answered ASAP. 

[disgruntledemployee]

Of the two takeoffs without clearance I personally know of in my time flying, both occurred during distractions taking the runway, the pilot flying asking if they were cleared to takeoff, and the other pilot saying yes.  I think the 121 world does a decent job of verifying clearances if one of the pilots is in doubt.  Captain light switch use as a backup can help, if one is disciplined in their use.  But looks like we need to do better.

[Swizzle]

6 hours ago, brabus said:

I don’t know that answer, but it is insane that two people with ATPs, operating in one of the most critical phases of flight when they should be at max awareness, are told to line up and they takeoff instead. Is it a training/SOP problem, fitness for duty problem, experience problem, or something else? It sure feels like this kind of stuff is happening more often, and it concerns me. 

Well, it may not have been two with ATPs...my thought process: Envoy is a regional airliner, Part 121 C/S, R-ATPs are allowed at lower than 1,500 total hours. I'd speculate the FO is close the minimums requirements in this climate, thus might be CRM slower (aka SA suck for the PIC). All plausible, that or the highly experienced crew was just having a bad day/SLOJ. But I lean more towards the lower experience hypothesis without any more facts about the case

Now back to a beer on the beach...while I contemplate how much thousands of flight hours are worth and what will all the majors pay for that experience in this pilot market of dwindling experience, even from their feeder-schools...and what their underwriters think about that, if that's such a thing. Certain there are risk analyzing bean counters working for the majors, yes? The likes of our stapler loving friend Milton

[BashiChuni]

3 hours ago, brabus said:

Well then let’s hear it…

why do you think? just listening to the radio call says everything

[uhhello]

5 minutes ago, BashiChuni said:

why do you think? just listening to the radio call says everything

First it was the coloreds, now it's the women....Hopefully FAA is working on bear defenses