Originally Posted by
Trevor the lover
….. Firstly, I don't know how many RPT guys would read the Jepp Charts for requirements rather than accepting the company's plan and reading NOTAMS.
I can assure you when I was with the “Group” every pilot read and knew the contents of the Jepp REF pages for an airport. I‘d be amazed if that has changed.
I’ve no doubt the northbound guys were aware of the published closure period and assessed they were ok. Whether their thinking extended to the return flight and its crew: well that’s lower order consideration for them and one where they may assume the “Company” has got it sorted.
The published closure is a significant factor in all of this. A significant length: 5 hours. The burning question I have is whether someone in the airline eventually decided that it wasn’t acceptable to have the jet sit on the ground for five hours. And have outbound pax sit at the airport for an extra five hours. That then begs the question (amongst the airline ops staff): “Why did we even allow the northbound to despatch?” The next question then of course being: “What do we do about it?” “And who do we attribute it to?”
I’m curious about when the DPS-MEL pax were advised there’d be no flight that night. Had they started to arrive at the airport or were they forewarned? JQ35 was < 2 hours from landing when it U-turned.
The published five hour closure is a significant factor and sure raises a bunch of questions. From everybody, even muppets.