I was peripherally involved in one of the lesser incidents where we had a UM traveling from CMH to SAN. I’ll tell a long story that may make the whole issue more understandable for some and also show how things work (or don’t work). This all occurred after the MCO/DTW problem had occurred a few months prior.
Our crew was coming off a layover and we were to fly CMH-DCA-CMH-PHX for our duty day. We arrived at CMH to see the plane that we had flown in the night before and were to be flying leave for PHX. The LAS-CMH redeye had arrived broken and they swapped out our aircraft. The loads for the DCA turn were, as memory recalls, about 25-28 pax each way. The folks on the CMH-DCA flight were quickly rebooked, but the flight was not formally cancelled because system ops was still trying to see if we could deadhead to DCA and pick up the folks from DCA, as many of them were to fly DCA-PHX with the one stop in CMH. Also, because of the controlled slots for DCA, they did not want to unnecessarily not use a slot that day if that could be avoided.
The problem with the plane was a leaking plumbing line. If I recall it was a hydraulic line. As the day went on we found out that parts were not locally available, especially whatever they used as a sealing agent for that line. Parts were obtained from NW out of MSP, and were being flown to CMH on the first available flight out of MSP.
Probably about five hours after our original departure time the DCA turn finally cancelled and the DCA-PHX passengers were rerouted by the staff at DCA. However, remember that the entire crew had been on duty for nearly six hours at this point and the parts for the plane were just arriving at CMH and the plumbing needed a curing period of one-to-two hours.
Eventually, the plane was declared ready and the flight was boarded, including one female UM. Weather was moving into the CMH area and we got in the takeoff line as approximately the fourth aircraft. Departures were already slowed because of the weather. As we got to the next flight leaving, all westbound flights were placed on departure hold because of the approaching line of weather.
As this was happening, a fairly small area of bad weather in New Mexico, along the planned arrival route started to mushroom in a big way. This often can happen in the summer coming into PHX. Also, mountain thunderstorms along the Mogollon Rim started to fire-up. After about 45 minutes of holding in CMH, the Captain called me to the flight deck and explained that weather was developing over that area and that our flight plan was now being re-routed further south to come in from eastern New Mexico rather then northern New Mexico and that this was adversely affecting our ability to fly that route with the fuel onboard and that if things were to get worse we might need to go back for fuel. The problem with that is that if we were to do that the flight deck crew would time-out with the additional anticipated flight time to PHX. He said that we would probably know in another 20 minutes.
About 15 minutes later I again get called to the flight deck and the Captain tells me that the flight plan had again been changed and that the new routing had us going all the way to El Paso before we could aim at PHX and that we now had insufficient fuel onboard for that routing after all the fuel we had burned off while waiting for the thunderstorms to clear the CMH area and it’s westbound departure routes. The Captain told me that he was going to make an announcement that we needed more fuel and that we were going to taxi to the gate. However, he also said that the second we pulled up to the jetway and turned off the engines those pilots would be timing-out for any trip of that timeframe. He was not going to tell that to the passengers, but rather have the gate staff at CMH say that once the doors were opened.
We got to the gate, the door was opened and the announcement made. The passengers were removed from the plane and the staff at CMH took possession of the UM and signed our UM form accepting the responsibility for the young lady.
In the meantime the PHX-CMH flight had arrived and was also at the gates and the staff at CMH was busily rebooking the customers from our flight to that flight. Operations communicated to the staff at CMH that the cabin crew was “must ride†on the CMH-PHX leg and we were boarded. A few minutes later a supervisor came on the plane and said they needed our seats and that we were to get off the plane. I called Scheduling and they said we were to be on the flight and they called System Ops who told CMH Ops to get us on the plane. They took three pax off and placed us on the flight. (Talk about dirty looks…)
While this was going on we had missed our departure time by a fair amount and this new flight was also being routed via El Paso, so we were already late and we were not going to be able to meet our block flying times anyway because of the weather.
We did finally depart, but our arrival in PHX misconnected the UM for the last three flights to SAN. She spent the night in PHX in a hotel with proper procedures having been followed, but her mother was calling every newspaper in the world the next day about AWA having UM problems again.
On arrival in PHX I had filled out an incident report because I smelled potential trouble in light of the entire history. Our entire crew was de-briefed on the incident and it was determined that we had followed all procedure and had acted properly in all respects. However, just a week or two later the company implemented the policy that we would not allow UM’s to travel on connection flights. The negative press, it appears, was too high a price to pay under all the applicable circumstances, despite all procedures having been followed and this young lady having never been in jeopardy or out of the control of AWA personnel.
Anyway, maybe this might shed some light on why the company has decided to act the way they have done in this matter.
The thing I most dread about summer is having the UMs onboard and keeping track of them until we can get someone to sign off on them. There is always one smart aleck kid who tries to leave the a/c without the required flight attendant or other escort--usually a 15 or 16 year old who is too "grown-up and sophisticated" to be treated as a child.
