Captain gone crazy

[Thin Controller]

Last week a captain from a regional british airline cancelled a schedulled flight due technical. The real reason was that the inbound skipper had had a fag and the flight deck smelled of smoke!!!!
This caused great inconveinence to the 40 pax and all the ground crew who had to re-route the pax. Worse still, this was the second aircraft due to the first been really tech.
Is this what the airline industry needs
at the moment or has this guy gome mad???

After all, this could have been sorted out by a can of air freshener.

[FlapsOne]

Well, I am a smoker , but I wouldn't dream of smoking on the flight deck. It makes for a seriously unpleasant atmosphere for subsequent occupants - as well as being totally against (my, and most other) company's rules.

As for going tech, a little OTT probably.

[TowerDog]

Way OTT.
Reality check needed.

Wonder if the idiot is reading this thread?

[Mr Benn]

How do you know this is the real reason for the cancelled flight?

[QAVION]

Did he cancel the flight because he knew the previous pilot was smoking, or because he thought the aircraft was generating smoke?

PNF: Fire on #2 engine, Skipper!

PF: Don't worry, matey, I have a can of air freshener.

[ 08 November 2001: Message edited by: QAVION ]

[ft]

I wouldn't want to fly with a captain who ignored a smoke smell in the cockpit. ANY kind of smoke smell. Who knows what in an aircraft could smell like tobacco when burning?

The smoking pilot is the guy who caused the inconvenience for pax and everyone else. If someone went crazy it was him. IMNSHO.

Cheers,
/ft

[nilnotedtks]

I do not believe there is a credible airline engineering department in the world who would accept a technical delay for the flight compartment smelling of cigarette smoke. What must have been written in the Tech Log to take an engineering delay for this, heaven alone knows !

[Knold]

A real treat would be to see him drop it in to the crew bag , starting a nice little bonfire.

[flybyvelcro]

Let me tell you exactly what happened. The Captain in question is one of the biggest idiots ever to command an aircraft. He grounded the flight because the previous Captain had had a fag ON THE JETBRIDGE, not anywhere the cockpit. The Captain is so antismoking it is ridiculous for him to ground a flight because he smelt cigarette smoke.
This same wonderboy also took off from Brussels in an RJ85 after forgetting to remove the pitot cover! When he got on the groud, after continuing the flight, he quickly removed the offending item, and tried to hide it. Fortunately the f/o reported him, and he was immediately dismissed.
This type of incident is guaranteed to get you tea and biscuits with the CEO!

[DownIn3Green]

Twice in my 9+ yrs on the left side I have refused an a/c for this kind of thing, both times when I was with an FAR 121 operator.

The first time I was with a bottom feeder Pax/charter outfit out of S. Florida. I came to the a/c and the F/E reported it was "trashed" and there were roaches crawling all around her desk. The plane had been parked in Mem overnight, and the previous crew were obvivously pigs, as there was evidence of crew meals all over the seats and floor, as well as peanut shells and crisp wrappers, etc, down around the base of the control yoke and rudder pedals. And yes, there were roaches. My logbook entry went something like "trash and food left down around flight controls, roaches crawling around cockpit and in F/E's desk, cockpit deemed unsanitary for continued safe operation."

The second time was when I was under contract to an FAR 121 cargo operator. After continued complaints re: cigarette butts and ashes left scattered around the cockpit. This happened each time the a/c came out of maint. One day I told the base manager enough was enough, and although I didn't make a write-up or delay the flight, I did observe the base manager personally cleaning the cockpit.

So I guess I am fully in support of the actions of the skipper in question. No one has said how many times this has occurred previously, or if this skipper had verbally reported the same situation before with nothing being done.

[nilnotedtks]

. .I am fairly well sure that 99% of all aviators can recognise the smell of second hand cigarette smoke when they come across it. And of that 99%, I am sure 100% of them would be able to put 2 and 2 together and figure out that perhaps the previous crew had been smoking in their seats ! It is unfair and unresonable to drag engineering into a brawl between smoking and non smoking pilots. To read, SMELL OF SMOKE IN COCKPIT, SOURCE OF SMELL COULD NOT BE IDENTIFIEDin a log book smacks of an unhappy crew. To generalise, if this were the case and a genuine electrical fault had occured, often C/B's pop and things dont work ( in an extreme case, yes SR111 ! ). Lingereing cigarette smoke and it's associated smell does not constitute a technical defect, not in my book anyway ! Wake up guys and smell the flowers, if you don't like the stink, have a word with your buddies, don't try and take it out on the engineers who are generally too busy these days chasing cockroaches and sweeping out instrument panels after the last lot dumped their dinner all over it !

[GlueBall]

When my wife enters a confined space with unpleasant odors she puts a drop of perfume onto the tip of her nose.

[fionan]

Glueball, does is cause a rash?

As for the thread, this is not an engineering or an individual problem it is an Operations problem. Surely the outfit in question have a cockpit smoking/no-smoking policy to deal with this sort of thing.

If the policy does not suit, get a new job.

[Hoverman]

flybyvelcro's explanation shows that the Captain's behaviour was EVEN more bizarre than it first seemed.

Just the sort of self-important prig the industry needs when we're going through a time like this.

If I read the post correctly, he's lost his job for something else. Good!