Originally Posted by
West Coast
Gauges
No, trying to educate people like yourself to the agreements and contracts established within the 121 environment. Just as you think it's stupid a king aire isn't called on short notice, a day one 25 yr old new hire pilot flying small turboprops could trip you up by pointing out that methods of transport are established via union contract, it's not up to some station management type to call the local 135 outfit and make arrangements. It's just the same with the CVR. There are agreements that regulate how CVR data is used. That's why this is going so slow, having to educate the uneducated. No harm meant, I'm sure I'd have a steep learning curve in a technical field outside of aviation.
I'm not, of course, arguing that they should have started calling random Part 135 operators out of the phone book, or paged the airport "Anyone here got a light twin we might borrow?", and your suggestion that that's what I or anyone else with knowledge of the industry is arguing, is obnoxiously condescending.
This is a global, sophisticated carrier with nearly 5,000 flt ops per day.
- If the gate crew didn't think to offer higher compensation to entice more people off the aircraft, then that's egg on United's face.
- If the gate crew thought of offering more compensation, but weren't authorized to do so, then that's an organizational failure around the issue of staff empowerment, and it's egg on United's face.
- If the gate crew wasn't given suffiicent authority, but tried to overcome that by reach an appropriate level of management, but couldn't do so, that's an organizational failure around operational management: egg on United's face.
- If they contacted a manager with the requisite authority to increase the compensation, and the manager turned them down, then that's a failure of corporate priority-setting: egg on United's face.
- If there was no procedure in place for ops to book a charter to get this crew to their destination, then that's an organizational failure around contingency or IROPS planning; egg on United's face.
- If there was no contractual provision to let United fly these 4 via charter, then that's an organizational failure around negotiating a union contract that allows the airline to function: egg on United's face.
The people who created this problem, and those here arguing your side of this, seem to be thinking the way you'd expect a departmental bookkeeper to think rather than the way you'd expect senior management of a successful airline to think.