Originally Posted by framer
I agree, congratulations to the crew on getting everyone home.
All you guys giving them a hard time for the walk around are hopefully retired or PPL's who don't understand the pace and pressure that the esteemed leaders have created. For all you know the walk around was done 45 minutes prior to push back and the cowls were fully open with Engineers working on the engines.
If that turns out to be the case what do you say then?
I say aircrew should act neither like sheep nor lemmings. Nor conversely should they behave as immovable objects, save for when insisting on standards. Some clearly need to get out more.
Commercial Pilots are paid to use the privileges of their civil licences to conduct public transport operations safely, not just to prostitute themselves up front in their chosen cigar tube, reluctantly or otherwise, as small-time Commercial Warriors about whom no beancounter actually gives a damn.
MBWA is a pnemonic from management training going back a few decades also much neglected in other industries now too.
It's going to be
your aircraft when doors are closed. If you've been planted in your seat 45 minutes since you last had a look outside then manage the bloody thing by getting out and looking at it whilst you still have the chance so you know no other bugger fiddles with it again before you depart. If you don't know that the ground crew talking to you on pushback or their mate giving you the thumbs up and wave have done their own dligent external check on your aircraft too, and are competent to do it, then why are you leaving the apron? ... because everyone else does without a second thought ... or because it isn't clear anymore who is supposed to do what ??
If you think the beancounters are endangering safe operations by pressuring you or anyone else to take shortcuts then CHIRP or scream blue murder or both. Sometimes you have to risk your job to make it plain what isn't right. That's life. If you are not up to it then find another job where it is less of a risk to people in your care when you kowtow to beancounters.
We don't count on pilots for amazing cheap fares, or for marvelous fire-eating or sword-swallowing feats of recovery. We count on them to stamp their standards on everything and make operations safe and uneventful.
Rant off.