Drama on First Choice

[grimmrad]

Points taken but...

Rainboe and TS6: I can see your points and also tend to agree with it. I usually don't ask questions here but in the few times I did I got one friendly, brief answer that was very welcome and answered everything. Of course questions like "what are actually these little sheets of metal dangling sometimes from the wing..." do not belong here.
However, how difficult is it just to give a brief friendly possible explanation...? Some posters here are right, in my humble opinion, if they state that some arrogant comments about from professionals on non-professionals reflect not too well on a great profession. Rainboe states that "the customer has chosen to go into the 'out of limits room' " only that this forum sort of takes place in the common waiting area - and there those remarks might look out of place. As some poster said an interesting discussion might arise . However if everything is immediately either ridiculed or labeled as stupid etc I wonder who is hijacking the forum. You can always learn, even from unexpected sides!
There once was a physic student who needed a NMR for his thesis. Unfortunately he damaged it and the magnetic field collapsed. Replacement was about 1.5 Mio bucks... Now usually most of us would have given up - not his thesis adviser and this guy. They used the damn thing without magnetic field and created a whole new area with papers in Science and Nature (highest ranking scientific journals). Why I am telling this: as I said, you might get some interesting information getting out of unexpected areas.
Now I will keep quiet as I am not a professional and leave to take the hits.
Regards

edit: glad to see that the forum was moved and not deleted

[Topslide6]

grimmrad,

I wholeheartedly agree with you. Even though it's only allowed on the ground nowadays, I enjoy it when people come and have a look in the flight deck. I think we're pretty much all aware that as well as being pilots, we work in a service industry and dealing with the public is of great importance. However, there are unfortunately some people who seem to arrive an airport, deposit all normal social graces at the gate and turn into instant experts on aviation. I see it at least every other day.

how difficult is it just to give a brief friendly possible explanation...?

It isn't difficult, and like you said many people do. HOWEVER, this thread was started under the title "Drama on First Choice" which then went onto allude to what was seemingly a non event and call into question the crews professionalism.

That is something altogether different.

[strid]

I started this thread and now i wish i hadn't bothered.
It really hits home when those who you kinda idolize......yes the likes of Rainboe, crucify and belittle you for nothing more than an enquiry.
I said sorry for originally posting in the wrong forum. Some seem to think that this was a non event, well I'm sorry but i was on board and something did occur, and when a considerable amount of people gasp, grip and panic then that constitutes the word drama. Never did i ever question the airline or any pilots abilities ( i never would, I'm jealous of your profession) - in fact I would go on to state that in comparison to most of their competitors i think First Choice Airlines is well up the pecking order. My only request was to debate that on this occasion better/quicker conversation between SLF and crew would have calmed many. The whole point of air travel is to get from a-b in a safe manor priority number 1. But it helps and brings us back if it's done comfortably.

[GearDown&Locked]

You don't pay my salary. My company does.

Oh where do I start... well first of all, you professionals keep forgetting that there are people in the back that are there just because they have little or no alternative regarding travel. Most don't even like flying, but they pay for this type of transportation service because they need it.

You were hired by your company to provide a service, a transportation service to be exact. The way your company provides this service to their paying costumers is of their own responsibility. Your company surely has rules that regulate and keep the standard of the advertised quality of its services. Sales in tickets equals money to pay for fuel, plane leases, airport facilities, handling and your own salary. So, bad service means people moving on to the advertised next best thing. I'm sure you would be looking for another job if your company looses costumers due to bad service quality. So, the costumer (you know, the 'cattle' down at the back) is indeed paying your company's fuel, plane lease, and your superior skills to drive the thing.

One of the questions raised by the first poster was about how the information should or not be passed to the users of the service that they have paid in advance (the service you provide on behalf of your company for which you are paid too). Question is, do companies have written in their air crew SOPs how and when relevant information should be passed to their costumers regarding the ongoing quality of the service provided?

If so, please do it as required. If you can't do it because you're too busy working on the problem, let other crew member do it, even if the information given is scarce. I'm sure that a simple 10 secs PA from either you, the supreme being, or the CC would keep the SLF from biting their nails to the elbows. If your company SOP omits this matter, do it anyway, at least as a form of good airmanship.

Sure, SLF are not required to know how a plane works, but if they feel something is not going as usual, the least the service provider could do is to keep their costumers informed with the necessary information at the right moment.

Finally, I'm so totally fed up by these "torch the intruder" posts.
If you want to keep this all to yourself professionals lock it up and throw away the key. As long as its open to public access you have to live with it, and in this case the best advise I can offer is to try keep the good name of your profession. Some of the professionals here could have easily been mistaken by lorry drivers.

[Rainboe]

I reckon it took a good hour for the Capt to announce that the aircraft had a 'computer issue' and it thought we were still on the ground??
He said he'd spoken with centre and they agreed that a divert wasn't required and that we'd now passed Bermuda we were uk to continue with the remainder of the flight across the Atlantic.
Now, i was wondering if anyone else here was/is associated with this trip/flight company and could they verify the event/circumstances.
I also would like to enquire that whilst i fully appreciate that the crew would have been very busy particularly early on, but am i wrong to think that for perhaps an hr with no feed back when it's very apparent that there's some form of issue is not best practice??

From this little saga, it would appear the crew had a lot to handle, then called homebase and established it was OK to continue. You are vague on time, and exactly what happened. There are no guidelines on PA other than to keep passenger contact. The crew would appear to have prioritised things and waited until they had concrete information (OK to proceed). I cannot see they were wanting in anything. Did the cabin crew get queried? Did anybody ask rather than sit there white knuckled? In my oinion you have maligned the professionalism of your crew and identified that crew and the airline. If I was running these airlines and I saw my airline being publicly maligned the way people do here, I would be pursuing those people with a lawyer with big sharp teeth. O'Leary has a point.

You have chosen to come into a public pilot forum and criticise people doing the job to the best of their abilities. That you attract criticism yourself comes with the communication. But I wonder about this trend now of passengers demanding debriefing about individual and identifiable flights, invariably badly affected by misconceptions. It's happening more than every week now, and I think it should stop. I don't like it at all. This First Choice crew would be horrified at what was said, and I hope they don't see this. It's disgraceful, and I will say if anybody talks thus about one of my flights, I will find out who they are and chase them through the courts. Too many people think an anonymous forum makes them invisible and they can imply what they like. It will take a solicitor a day to get you.

[Contacttower]

I hate adding to this thread but honestly Rainboe I think you are blowing this completely out of proportion,

Most of the time it is easy to tell when someone is pretending that they are something they are not (I once heard someone claim on this forum that their landings were bad because the field elevation was misprinted on the approach chart by a few feet) and when it becomes clear the best response is simply to carry on with the discussion and ignore it (a subtle rinsing is so much better than an outright put down). I agree it is wrong to single out individual airlines when you are not in possession of the facts but at the same time good PA announcements are surely part of the job - after all you are in the business of providing a service to a customer. While I see that this sort of thing can be annoying threatening lawsuits and the like is not really needed. I think passengers to an extent do have a right to pass judgment on a flight (this whole forum seems to be about judgements doesn't it?) and again to an extent pilots do have to live with this.

I personally would be quite flattered that they took the interest....

[loubylou]

Strid - to be fair, I think what got folk's goat was the way the original post was phrased.
To me it was not a polite enquiry of " what could this be , I found it all a bit scary", but a criticism of how the crew dealt with the issue and a suggestion of how it should have been done better.
Which I would imagine is why folk got upset.
No one minds people asking questions - but the way you phrased yours is not the way ahead

louby

[Contacttower]

No one minds people asking questions - but the way you phrased yours is not the way ahead

I agree.

[Topslide6]

GearDown&locked,

Whilst I appreciate the lecture on business and your appraisal of how flight crew should do their job, I think you've pretty much made my point for me. I can also readily assure you that i'm very conscious of the fact that there are people in the back, but thanks all the same.

Strid,

To be honest, it's not really that it was posted in the wrong forum. At the end of the day that's for the mods to sort out. From a personal point of view, however, it's not that you asked the question, just that i'm not that keen on the thread title or the fact that you chose to identify the exact flight.

Now, i was wondering if anyone else here was/is associated with this trip/flight company and could they verify the event/circumstances.
I also would like to enquire that whilst i fully appreciate that the crew would have been very busy particularly early on, but am i wrong to think that for perhaps an hr with no feed back when it's very apparent that there's some form of issue is not best practice??

Surely you can see it in the above statement?

To re-iterate the point I already made, if there is a non-normal situation on board an aircraft the crew will deal with and prioritise that situation as they have been trained to do. Amongst that is keeping the passengers informed, but it will be done at an appropriate time and in the appropriate manner.

[west lakes]

reality?

this is NOT intended to critisise individuals
read it all before going ballistic

I have worked in a service industry, originally nationalised now private, for a long time.
We are regulated, not just on safety, SOP but on quality of customer service & communication with our customers. for the last 5 years all I have dealt with are failures of our system _ when the electricity goes off!
I have to deal with locating the fault, site safety, electrical safety (not killing myself or collegues or customers or members of the public. I am on the street & visible. I am required to keep customers fully informed, my control informed and if needed other authorities.
I don't have checklists, or other members of staff with me to assist/communicate on my behalf. Amongst all this I still have to field calls unrelated to the problem at hand (though usually tell callers to ring later or I will call them back) Oh and still drive a car safely!

The point - our regulator WILL ring affected customers after and confirm we kept them fully & accurately informed of the problem, the solution & the time service would be restored, my employer WILL do the same.
If a customer has a problem/complaint it is up to me to resolve, I can't say write in, fill in a form cos were are judged on the number of written complaints we get!

The regulation is such the utilities companies are "fined" by having income reduced by not meeting targets, e.g.if we don't restore supplies in a set time (18hrs) we have to pay compensation, if customers, and they do, take the view that we have done our best & don't take the money it makes NO DIFFERENCE the requlator fines us them ammounts anyway. This also applies to survey results.
Just think every time you have a delay or an in flight event a proportion of your customers being contacted by say the CAA and your employer to confirm that you communicated properly.
But not that you dealt with the issue/delay correctly.

It is high time the airline industry came in line with providing real customer care (different to service) and stopped hiding behind it's internal issues and industry slang " sorry your flight is delayed by tech issues" does NOT work in the world anymore.

However I appreciate that once in the air communication needs to be well thought through to prevent "panic" but lack of communication can be worse
Also fair to say that, acceptably, some crew would be uncomfortable communicating in this way (some of my collegues are too) but IMHO think the industry needs to sort its act.

[loubylou]

Sorry your flight is delayed because the outer flange sprocket function is compromised in the manual position, and it needs to be repaired before safe flight can be undertaken,
or
Sorry your flight is delayed due to technical reasons!

louby
ps - I do hope that you're not driving your car while fielding phone calls and generally feeling fabulous in your utility ways in the UK as that, I believe, is not only illegal but also very unsafe!

[jimworcs]

Rainboe's rants

Rainboe is disingenuous. This is not a private pilots forum.. otherwise the public would be locked out, as they are for the airline specific threads. The anger and rants by Rainboe are totally disproportionate and frankly, I would prefer not to know if someone who was flying me lost it over such minor issues. In fact, if you look at Rainboe's posts it is clear.. he is an attention seeker and loves to rant. It is laughable the way he says that he is finding it increasingly difficult to have a professional discussion and then spends so much time ranting. I have an idea Rainboe, if you don't like the thread, go to another one and have a professional discussion. The reason you don't is you get off on the rant. Pathetic, rude and childish.

[PPRuNe Radar]

This is not a private pilots forum.

Private pilots means something different in the industry to what you infer. It means guys and gals flying for fun and not for air transport operators. Thus you are correct in more ways than you think.

The prime raison d'etre for PPRuNe is to serve as a conduit for 'professional pilots' in the many different guises that takes. It also serves other industry professionals.

A secondary role is to provide a means for non industry people to interface with the industry. Quite often this will mean that day to day business (which appears to non industry folks as shock horror stories) will get moved to a forum where it is more appropriate. A sleepy backwater if you will .... because to those of us in the industry it is a non event. It may also attract scorn from professionals who see their industry under attack and scrutiny on a regular basis, but also hopefully will see professional people providing the answers to the questions raised.

[redsnail]

I'll have a go. I don't work for a an airline although who I work for runs the largest private airline in the world.

Strid,
On the aeroplanes are things called microswitches. Ironically, they're not that micro. They work not unlike the fridge door switch that turns the light on and off. Occassionally, one or more get stuck and it confuses the aeroplane. This can lead to a variety of problems depending on the type. On the type I fly, it will depressurise the aeroplane. Not a lot of fun at FL380.

As crew, the mantra is "aviate navigate and communicate". Ask any ATCer, when something dramatic occurs, the crew will be fighting fang and claw to keep it flying and going in the right direction. Only once that's happening will the crew get on the radio and declare a mayday or check in with Departures.

We're not being arrogant, we're just prioritising the workload. There's no point in being the best informed pax if the crew sticks it into the ground. Now, a departure can sound a tad weird if you can't get an unrestricted climb but it's nothing to worry about. You don't go driving around with the pedal flat out so that's the same with us.

I know people who pay our wages want to be informed. We don't have a pax door and believe me, they'll tap you on the shoulder if they have a question. However, there's only so much we can say otherwise it just confuses them and thus lead to more questions. This takes us away from our primary task of operating the aircraft safely. There is a fine line between no info and too much. It's an art and one I am still learning.

I hope this helps.

[werbil]

Redsnail - well done - an answer to the original question answered in a professional manner. It may not be the answer the poster wanted but it did answer some of the questions.

As to some of the others, you need to learn what the word professional means. Some of the arrogance displayed embarrasses me as a professional pilot.

Mind you SLF needs to understand that a warning light or bell is not critical - it is there to bring something to the flight crew's attention. For example when the first low fuel light illuminates there has to be at least an hours fuel left and every time I disconnect the autopilot the horn sounds. If passengers ask I will explain if appropriate but I won't bring the passengers attention to it.

W

BTW I do warn passengers of turbulance and when we are going to pass close to other aircraft so that they dont themselves too much.

[GearDown&Locked]

I can also readily assure you that i'm very conscious of the fact that there are people in the back, but thanks all the same.

Topslide6,
thank you; I feel so much better now. You bring new and interesting meanings to the buzzword Lo-Co.


redsnail
I'm not surprised by the clear and polite contents of your post. You're one of the best industry professional examples I know. If anyone deserves their stripes you're top of the list.

[carbheathot]

When flying for fun(as the Mod puts it) if I hear some odd sounds and feel some strange bumps, I tend to panic a little bit because I am in charge, and then try to remember to fly the aircraft. When I am a paying customer and the same thing happens, I turn up the I-pod volume and sit confident in the fact that the guy or gal up front knows what he/she is doing. I can with a teeny bit of knowledge imagine what is happening if the gear is half unstuck, the hydraulics are leaking or the flat screen cockpit displays are going blank, but I really don't want a P.A. announcement to tell me that.
I buy a ticket to travel, I don't want information.Trust the professionals folks, at 38000 feet they are all you've got anyway.

[flyinthesky]

There is of course a simple answer to stop us all getting our knickers in a twist.

Lock the forum and insist on proof of qualification to gain entry, just leaving spotters/simmers and SLF with an open forum on which they can ask questions and MAYBE receive answers. This is not to belittle anyone with an interest in aviation but it would stop the constant 'oh my god we were soooo close to dying' type posts that come up with increasing regularity.

After all, when I joined the network under a different guise back in '97/98, it was a much more civil sensible place with mostly professional aircrew participating.

It seems that pretty much the only ones not enjoying our caustic comments are the SLF that raise these posts themselves. It sure does brighten up my days off

Answers on a postcard please.

[west lakes]

Sorry your flight is delayed because the outer flange sprocket function is compromised in the manual position, and it needs to be repaired before safe flight can be undertaken,
or
Sorry your flight is delayed due to technical reasons!

or sorry your flight is delayed owing to an equipment/computer/engine/ etc. failure. We are in the process of repairing it for your safety & comfort!
it's called a judgement call, tech problems too little info, detail of actual component too much - think compromise

ps - I do hope that you're not driving your car while fielding phone calls and generally feeling fabulous in your utility ways in the UK as that, I believe, is not only illegal but also very unsafe!

Normally just when I'm doing some intensive safety related task. Ever heard of hands free? No not the cheapo versions full installed systems with a remote answer button adjacent to steering wheel - similar to PTT on radio.........Totally legal to answer and use, not to make calls from!


I have no problem trusting the proffesionals to do the job they are trained for, solve the problem & ensure my safety. I would (and do) react the same when my skills are questioned by a customer. My only beef is the poor communication and apparent lack of customer care brought about by company policy ......... not individual members of staff. See my earlier post on congestion problems at LHR. I happily thanked crew for their up front info - even though some of it was possibly against company poilicy.

look at it this way. it has been said that the best form of defence is attack. if you get your end of the story in first without being asked and keep people informed (thread on landing speeds where ATC are asking to be informed if pilots can't comply) you WILL have fewer problems Try it it does work.

[redsnail]

G D&L,

I try to do my best.