Ok somebody must have pushed a button as I’m on a roll here.
All of the above people have partners, spouses, children, mortgages and a slew of general life issues.
Add Monday mornings and Friday afternoons and the simple human trait that not everybody involved is always on their A- game all of the time all day every day. Except in Japan.
Now let’s assume everybody is on their A- game today.
Allow me to entertain you with some examples.
Station A, first flight of the day:
- Fiona the Flight Attendent left home with plenty of time to spare but somebody couldn’t drive in the rain and two lanes of the motorway are closed.
Not every airport has a can of spare flight attendants, mostly because they don’t come in cans.
Since flight attendants are mandatory we’ll need to wait for Fiona. 10 min delay on a 1hr flight so we can’t make that up.
Station B:
Simone at security considers Cory the Captain’s attempt to cover up last nights curry with mouthwash suspicious, having broken a bottle of after shave doesn’t help his situation any and our intrepid aviator is carted off for an breathalyzer rest.
He blows 0.0 and makes it to the flight deck with a 5min delay.
Station C:
Tommy the tug driver discovers that his vehicle has a brake fluid leak. Off he goes in search of a tug he can use. He calls the Ramp coordinator and can use the tug from 8 gates over after they’re done with pushing back their flight.
10 min delay
Station D:
Harry the Holidaymaker mentally clocked out a couple of hours ago ‘cause he’s on vacation right?
So he’s at the bar loading up while his bag is being off loaded for security reasons as he didnt board.
Unfortunately he checked in early and his bag is loaded in the front of the aft luggage compartment of a 737. They can’t use containers so Ronny the Ramper heads inside to dig it out.
As Harry shows up at the gate the plane pushes back and heads off to destination with now a total of 40 min delay.
During the descent they’ve been told to hold for 10 min as an air ambulance flight with a beating heart in an ice chest is given priority.
Here’s your 50 min delay and everybody did their job to the best of their ability.
I now fly freight but I have flown passengers.
if it were up to me you’d all be sedated and loaded on board in a box with a forklift.
All luggage in the hold as we don’t need carry on.
Heres a number to ponder:
A Boeing 787 Dreamliner costs about $200 million.
If we write this off over 20 years and they manage to sell it to some third world operator for $20million
180/20 is $9million depreciation a year.
That’s $750,000 a month or $25,000 a day or $1,041/hr or $17.36 a minute.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...aft-by-type/#0
So all of the above delays cost this airline $868 that they need to recoup.
So....next time you hear about a delay for operational reasons don’t go yelling at the gate agent but simply say you understand.