Originally Posted by
AerialPerspective
All the talk on here of people like GT not knowing what the hell they're talking about put me in mind of a story I once heard at a major Australian airline (no, not QF).
At a meeting, two managers who's aviation experience between them consisted of stints at Bunnings or McDonalds or something asked of a ground person "What was the reason for the engineering delay on such and such flight?".
I've always been amused by non-aviation, non-engineering managers asking this question. My response was always, "I'm not an engineer, it was an engineering related matter".
Anyway, on this occasion, one of the ground people who was known to be a stirrer replied "It was a problem with the flux capacitor".
Yes. Sit down if you aren't already. The two managers wrote it down on their notepads. Fully prepared to go into a high level Ops Review meeting with executives on the line and say that a delay that morning was caused by a faulty 'flux capacitor'.
At the end of the meeting, the ground handler apparently said to the managers "Ah, I was just pulling your leg, there's no such thing as a flux capacitor, it's from a movie".
Both managers got visibly angry and berated the person for it.
My point is, how bloody stupid does someone have to be to fall for that? When I was told the story, I was asked "You know what a flux capacitor is" and I responded immediately "Yes. Marty my boy, it's the thing that makes time travel possible".
Reminds me of another incident many years before where an Ansett flight was delayed due to dupe seating on board. A newly minted manager fresh from Uni with his MBA butted in and said "Wait a minute. That aircraft came out of the hangar this morning, why weren't the dupe seats picked up before it left the hangar".
A brief but excruciating silence ensued after which someone was heard to mumble "I think we'll take that offline".
Depending on my mood, like/dislike for those management types, and desire for continued employment, I would have let those managers go into the Ops Review with the "flux capacitor" issue at the top of their notepads. Just to see how far it would go. I'm guessing there'd be committees formed and teams deployed to conduct a full on flux capacitor review, looking for patterns of flux capacitor failures, reading flux capacitor reliabilty reports, and conducting investigations into alternate flux capacitor suppliers...