Express Meltdown - Was It Serioius?

deelmakur

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Aug 26, 2002
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Show up for a New Haven to PHL flight on Saturday (1/8). Ship arrives early (DH 8). Unusual, in that a crew change occurs at 3 in the afternoon. Anyway, the new Captain, an older fellow by Express standards, goes out to the plane, comes back looking unhappy, and disappears with a bunch of papers, charts, etc, Next thing you know, the co-pilot goes out to the plane, climbs on, and pulls the stairs. Much time passes. About 40 minutes past departure, the agent comes back, and announces there is a "documentation" problem, but won't elaborate. In the interest of time, I wil roll forward 2 hours. We are still there, all connex broken. Calls to the CP desk don't provide any info. At that point, the phone at the gate rings. Call for the Captain. He comes off the plane and takes it. I overhear the conversation, which seems to suggest the plane has certain paperwork on board, but it's Piedmont, and these guys are Allegheny, and they can't fly unitl they get the correct stuff. Apparently the companies pool aircraft, or something. Anyway, I hear him say it's happened twice in the last few weeks. Something has been taken off, and replaced with stuff from another carrier. Thanks to no information, and false promises of imminent departure,, we have lost all alternatives, until somebody figures out we can still make a flight to CLT from Hartford, 60 miles away. They offer taxi vouchers, only no driver will take them because the company is so shaky. Avis is still open, and in the spirit of the moment, rents me a compact car for $110. I drive through sleet and ice, somehow make the flight, and 10 hours later, arrive in FLL, 40 miles from my original destination (PBI). Big night for the car rental guys. What is going on? If that plane was illegal, how did it get up there from Philly? More to the point, where was the company on all this, and how can it survive when even the taxis won't take it's paper? Also, if it was serious, how did it not get caught by somebody, and does that kind of thing carry through to maintenance? Crazy..and scary.
 
A problem with one flight counts as a "meltdown" now?

Do you write headlines for the media, by any chance?
 
I have over 3 milion lifetime miles on this carrier, and its predecessors. I have been US1 since the program began, includng the first year, when nobody even knew they were going to have it. I am out several hundred bucks from a 10 hour flight of a thousand miles, between two airports I never intended to use. I have had cabdrivers who can't even speak English, but know enough in the short time they have been here, to not take the company's word. Last week, an Express flight I was on landed at HPN in perfectly good weather, and when we arrived at the terminal the ground crew boarded,and told the flight crew they were to ferry the ship back, which they did, leaving the customers in the terminal. Forgetting the normal perfomance of Express stations, which are generally bereft of managers, what I witnessed at New Haven certainly calls some things into question. With that kind of performance, you don't need the media. It is right out there for all to see. And if you would like to suggest I take my business elsewhere, I tried that at New Haven, which, thanks to this kind of performance has now attracted Delta. When I attempted to transfer to them, the US agents insisted they would not take us. I am Gold Medallion over there, and do not believe they would have refused me, but apparently the company has told its staff to try and avoid such reacommodation, lest they have to pay Delta and others for it.
 
If you only knew the paperwork mountain that is the Airline Industry..., Only the real estate, legal and medical professions come close.

Most of the time you will never need to be bothered with this. Your travel experience goes off without a hitch. But those few times that something needs to corrected, signed, or documented... There is little choice but to get it done, no matter the inposition it places upon the operation and passengers.

Sorry sir
 
I hd raised this issue on another forum, and got this intelligent and informative response:


"As a pilot flying for Piedmont, I can shed some light on this, though I don't know the exact details of the flight in question...

Allegheny was legally merged into Piedmont late last year, but the Allegheny pilots can't fly as Piedmont pilots until they complete Piedmont training. That process takes some time, so until the training is complete, Allegheny crews who have not completed Piedmont training are flying Allegheny flights (roughly 3500-3999), while Piedmont pilots and Allegheny pilots who have completed Piedmont training are flying Piedmont flights (4000-4499). All Allegheny crews are expected to be Piedmont qualified by April, at which point the Allegheny call sign will be gone from the skies.

As this process happens, Allegheny airplanes are being brought into the Piedmont operation. Unfortunately, some of the planes are being swapped between the two carriers. When they swap a plane from one airline to the other, it comes out of service for an hour or two while maintenance removes one carrier's approved paperwork (weight and balance info, checklists, manuals, etc.) and replaces it with the other carrier's. This is followed by a log entry that the airplane has been prepared for Piedmont (or Allegheny) service. The crew, then, must verify that all of the paperwork required by their airline is onboard, as a Piedmont crew must use documents approved by the FAA for Piedmont, and vice versa. None of this is really safety of flight related, as a Dash 8-100 is a Dash 8-100, and we fly the Allegheny planes the same way we fly the Piedmont ones. Legally, however, we have to do what we have to do. It sounds like, in this case, the new crew discovered that at least one thing required by Allegheny's certificate was not onboard the plane, and it was not legal, therefore, for the plane to be flown in Allegheny service, even though such operation wouldn't really be unsafe.

As an aside, if you're curious which carrier originally operated the Dash you're on, here's the N-number breakdown:

N---EX aircraft are Allegheny birds
N---HA airplanes are Piedmont 37-seaters (100s and 200s)
N---EN airplanes are Piedmont 50-seaters (300s) "

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Having this kind of situation hanging around unitil May, at a time like this, is nuts, especially in light of the fact you can't expect the company to do much for you, as a customer, in event of flight interruptions.
 
In a perfect world this will would have never happened!!! I have seen ASA (Delta) crews come out in the morning in Florence SC, the crew that brought the plane in that night flew the CRJ. Well, on that night seems ASA decides to fly the EMB-120. (maybe because the CRJ was broke, and to keep the pax happy, well lets fly the EMB-120). This happened a bunch while ASA was phasing out the EMB-120's. So the crew in the morning waiting to see a CRJ, wow its a EMB-120!!! Can't fly that, man, So all the pax from DELTA are boarded on our nice DASH 8 and taken to CLT.

Remember in a perfect world this would never happen. So by you coming on this board and trying to make it seem like a US Airways only problem! Well, Get a Life!!!!!!
Nuff said :)
 
deelmakur said:
...60 miles away. They offer taxi vouchers, only no driver will take them because the company is so shaky.
[post="237124"][/post]​


Wow... cabbies that won't fight over a 60 mile fare... :huh: I imagine they would fight over a Delta voucher.
 
Thanks, Bob. As you may see in the notes in the margin, I am a "founding member" like yourself (although it shows me in the 500's, my original number was much lower, but they all got erased in a website redesign, when we had to renroll). I've been on hiatus, and shall resume that status. "Dark side" is a good description. Unless some of this bunch is Baldanza in drag, stirring the pot, it clearly is representative of the core of what will help put the lights out over there.
 
Good grief, and people say the employees on this board are negative.

Bear96 is right -- that is not a meltdown! It's just another FAA-approved paperwork mess.

Go back to FlyerTalk and whine!