Sound advice from lowcostdolly and illustrates an all too prevalent management ethos.

Jetset Lady,

Forgive the cut and paste from Google but what you experienced is a classic example of The Peter Principle. Rather than me explain if you have never heard of it, read on:

Bureaucracy at Work

The Peter Principle concept was introduced by Canadian sociologist Dr. Laurence Johnston Peter in his humorous and witty book going by same name. In this book, he explains the dangers and maladies of the bureaucratic organization witnessed during his extensive research into business organization and its management.

The Peter Principle book has attained such renown that The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as "The theory that employees within an organization will advance to their highest level of competence and then be promoted to and remain at a level at which they are incompetent."

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Peter Principle Management is the concept that in bureaucratic organizations, new employees generally start off in the bottom ranks of the company, such as the mailroom. As the workers prove their competence in the the lower level ranks, they are then promoted up the ladder, generally management. The process of working one's way up the hierarchy can continue ad nauseum, until the worker attains a position at which point they cease to be competent. Once there, the promotion process generally stops, as the bureaucratic system and policies make it very difficult to reduce someone's rank, once so attained, even if that person would be a much better fit and happier in a non-management role. The end impact of this principle is that most of the management positions within a bureaucracy are filled by those who are incompetent, who attained that superior positions by being rather good at very different work (and frequently easier) than the tasks currently expected of them.

Your ops manager or whoever fits the description exactly. Learn from your error - which is an understandable one -and that is your enthusiasm to right an obvious wrong and so increase flight safety.

In the real world of airline flying you will find superiors who pay lip service to flight safety but in reality think it is a bloody nuisance when employees come up with a better idea such as that you described. Your Ops manager should have thought of it before you did - after all that is why he has been given the job and presumably more pay.

His answer indicates he is an idiot. There is some truth in the old British Army adage of "never volunteer." You have volunteered some good information about shortcomings in the SOP's and in turn you have copped it.

Cynical though this may sound, it is a fact that the more you come up with a good idea the more people you will irritate and annoy because it means they have to make a decision. In turn that decision may affect their superior who himself wants to live a quiet life devoid of decisions. And so on.

By all means try for excellence in your appointed job, but don't make the fatal mistake of trying to pass your excellence up the greasy pole.

Spot on Centauras!! I said as much to JSL in a PM but you explained it so much better than I could :ok:

In my experience this sort of rubbish management is more prevelent in CC department than in Tech Crew department.
Managers seem to let personalities get in the way of their decision making.....the old "whats right not who's right" springs to mind.
back to the evacuating thing, having a SOP where the FD nominates a side to evacuate on is outdated. There have been incidents when there was a fire on the right hand side of the a/c so the FD ordered an evac out the left side. What they didn't know was that the wind was blowing the flames under the fuselage and engulfing L2. Several people died at that door if I remember correctly.
Many carriers now just have the FD order "Evacuate Evacuate" and the individual CC at each door assess that doors suitability for evac. they are there and can see whats happening.

Among other airline SOP's that are outdated and don't stand up to logical thinking is that of turning down the cabin lights at night prior to take off and landing.

The theory being passengers and cabin staff will be night vision prepared in event of evacuation. The fact that passenger over-head brightly focussed reading lights are not turned off means people in the area who see the lights on - and that includes flight attendants, are immediately bereft of night vision. The flight crew up front have already no night vision because they are exposed to glare of runway lights and their own landing lights. In the galleys the lights are bright.

Worse still, when the cabin lights are turned to low or dim, passengers wearing glasses often cannot read the passenger safety cards or pin-point the nearest emergency exits particularly when trying to look over the top of the seats directly in front of them.

Another equally illogical long standing SOP is for the passenger window shades to be retracted out of sight before take off and landing. In fact one airline I have flown on forces passengers to raise the blinds at top of descent allowing blinding sun to discomfort the hapless victims nearest the window. The "theory" behind that gem is to permit flight attendants to look through each window to spot a fire if the aircraft crashes. While maybe that's OK if the door type emergency exits should have their sun blinds retracted before take off and landing but you may as well order all passengers to don their life jackets when taking of or landing over water - just in case of ditching. Or have their high heels already removed for each landing or departure.