Max tarmac wait: 3hrs

[sky's the limit]

Two months later, snow and ice led JetBlue Airways to leave planes full of passengers sitting on the tarmac at New York's Kennedy International Airport for nearly 11 hours.

[Commonwealth]

Ya, I'm really sure it was the decision of the cockpit crew to leave everyone on board. Come on.

[C-FABH]

Ya, I'm really sure it was the decision of the cockpit crew to leave everyone on board. Come on.

What does it take? Blowing the slides and having pax wander across the apron?

I realize weather can cause unpredictable wait times, but that is why you should be pro-active and cancel flights ahead of time if delays and flow will be restricted. There is much blame for delays during weather events, shared amongst airport authorities and airlines -- but these horror stories pop up every single year. You'd think everyone would have their IRROPS act together. These problems aren't exactly occurring in England or Dallas, where snowfall is considered the end of the world... but rather cities where winter storms are actually quite predictable during this season.

Edit: Don't know if I'm right or wrong, but it also seems these situations are magnified in the USA where the aprons/gates are managed by the airlines, versus the airport operators. Just adds another layer of complexity to an already SNAFU'd scenario.

[CAL]

I am surprised its even 3 hours...thats a long time to sit in an airplane not going anywhere..an imagine if you have a kid...

[PJ1]

After an hour I'm ready to blow the chute and plead insanity later.....

[ETOPS]

Its all relative!

Put Your Hand on a Hot Stove for a Minute, and It Seems like an Hour. Sit with a Pretty Girl for an Hour, and It Seems like a Minute. THAT'S Relativity

I got lucky on my last flight (all 11 minutes of it)
Maybe some of these folks did too.

[The Hammer]

Maybe AF447 flew threw thunderstorms because they didn't want to risk a fine for going to a diversionary airport where they might sit onboard for more than 3 hrs waiting.

These rules have already penalized an airline for diverting instead of operating in bad wx (Cont. Ex in KRST) and the dumbasses down south are boasting about it!!!!! Maybe next time the de-ice line will be too long so the crew will takeoff contaminated instead?

Quote "I realize weather can cause unpredictable wait times, but that is why you should be pro-active and cancel flights ahead of time if delays and flow will be restricted. "

Yes, that is the solution the pax will like. Why do't we just create the "Cancelled flights" bill of rights law while we are at it.

Does this mean if I spend 3 hrs waiting to deice in yyz I have to go back to the gate even though I am # 2 in line now?

I don't know what the issue is, the F/A's are required to show the passengers where the doors are, if they really want to leave they can.

Clearly now that the airline accident rate is so low people are finding other things to bitch/rant about.

[C-FABH]

Quote "I realize weather can cause unpredictable wait times, but that is why you should be pro-active and cancel flights ahead of time if delays and flow will be restricted. "

Yes, that is the solution the pax will like. Why do't we just create the "Cancelled flights" bill of rights law while we are at it.

Do you know many passengers that like having their flights canceled? I sure as hell don't.

[CAL]

hammer I am not sure on how AF came into this?....are you angry about something?

[corytrevor]

It's about bloody time that someone took this decision out of the hands of dispatchers and idiot captains who would otherwise operate their airplane like a jail on wheels.

If you did ATC at a real airport like LaGuardia or Newark instead of somewhere with 10 movements per hour you might realize there is more to the story than the "Idiots" operating the aircraft. Like they want to be delayed anymore than the passengers. Tool!.

[Topspin]

Ya, I'm really sure it was the decision of the cockpit crew to leave everyone on board. Come on.

Do PICs have ultimate authority over their aircraft or not?

You can't have it both ways; wanting to be God one moment, and blameless the next.

If I'm on an airplane and the shitter is overflowing, and there's no food or water, and babies are screaming along with their claustrophobic mothers, and we're sitting a couple of hundred feet away from a godd*mned terminal, you can bet I'm holding the crew responsible.

Do PIC's have authority over whether or not their is a ramp crew to marshal? Whether or not their is a gate available? Whether or not their is a gate controller to bridge the aircraft? Are their fleets of buses to transport passengers deplaning as some of the more amusing CBC comments have said? What about when 1 guy wants to get off for a cigarette after 45 minutes, and 199 want to still fly. How do they locate his luggage if it's containerized?

It's kind of sad that the Airline carries the burden of responsibility alone, when their are so many players....the airport authority controlling the gates, ATC controlling movements, contracted ground handling and passenger services to actually get it done.

I got pulled out of the office to go work on the ramp during last winters charlie-foxtrot at YVR. Everything I can imagine possible, and some new ones were done to try and help. Guys were working 28 hour shifts for $12/hr, if there was any other option to help get people out, it would have been done. They just ran out of resources, just about everybody did. From human, to glycol, to supplies for equipment.

This strikes me as very similar to the no-cellphone-driving, no-smoking-in-doorways and other nonsense frivolous laws. Looks nice for the PR, at least for those lacking the capacity to think in depth, changes nothing, and takes money away from those already strapped for it.

[scopiton]

Do PICs have ultimate authority over their aircraft or not?

On the ground : no they don't at all.
funny how pilots don't have any clew about operations.
Do you think the Cpt and f/o are deciding anything in an ariline operation ? I doubt.
Airport manager and operation manager will have the last world, along with commercial ops manager and pax will stay in the aircraft as long as they'll try to get it airborn. cancelling a flihgt is expensive.
A Captain don't have any clue about commmercial airline agreement neither if pax will have a std-by with Translavian airlines or whoever.
If you would have worked on the operation side of things, you would understand that a pilot just sit in his chair and beg for things he'll never get : ice for coke, lavs, water, Xtra crew meal period.

for other matter as do we deplane, revise flight plan, choose alternate, wait for connections? they don't decide either. dispatch does, ops manager does.

If you want to take decisions in an airline, dont be a pilot.

I saw aircraft standing 1hoo front of a gate and nobody deplaned the aircraft as it's against procedures and unsafe. Some pilot did, but pax waited for their bags for hours. no crew to marshall your aircraft means no crew to offload it...
simple as that.

[mikegtzg]

Wonderful new rule. I fly every 2nd week commercially for the last 2 1/2 years. My worst fear is being stuck in the aircraft for hours on end. I've heard the horror stories...and have been lucky that it hasn't happened to me.
Sure the airline may have to change there operations to accomodate this new rule. I would rather have a cancelled flight and a day delay than sit in an aircraft for 5-6 hours before embarking on a 2 1/2 hour flight.
I wonder how many 'air rage' cases have had an excessive ground delay as a contributing factor.

[AirMail]

Ya, I'm really sure it was the decision of the cockpit crew to leave everyone on board. Come on.

agreed, sometimes situations are unavoidable, and the crew do everything to make the flight as best for pax in any event, just to bad some ppl on this site don't realize how things work beyond the flight school.

[Flying Nutcracker]

Commercial decisions are made far over a PICs head (on the ground) and is usually made by a few people higher up in the system that overlooks the overall operational impact of any delays and cancellations.

The PIC, I think and hope, will ultimately call it quits when it becomes obvious that the situation onboard an airplane is deteriorating to a point where common sense dictates disembarking the pax. There may be a phonecall or a visit to the head office to explain the decision, but... common sense!

The interesting thing with this rule of 3 hours, I find, is how much more inconvenience will incurr when a rule necessitates a deplanement after 3 hours. When do you start looking for a gate? When is there a gate available? Can the plane stay on the gate or will it have to be towed while passengers stretch their legs and replenish themselves with booze and food? How much more of a delay will this lead to??? 10 minute deplanement, God knows how long of a break the pax should get, 20 minutes of boarding... Because of the 3 hour rule, can the crew actually give the passengers a break and let the dog out for some fresh air for an hour and then make it to destination within the duty day???

So what happens when the crew after 3 hours see a light at the end of the waiting tunnel, asks their pax if they want to wait a little bit longer and be on their way... and the one that always have to be in the crowd says NO!!! Then what??? Animosity!!!

If fuel was only a little bit cheaper we could tanker 4 hours of holding fuel and avoid any diversions...

Lawsuits anyone???

[moreccsplease]

Come on, we all know cpl_atc is a pilot hater, it's obvious in a lot of his posts. Hence, his "idiot Captain" quote at the top of this page. If only he knew how much the airline Captains I know show respect for air traffic controllers.

Well not only is he a pilot hater, but he also does have absolutely no clue about how a major airline operates.

Yes, the Captain does have final authority over the aircraft, as we all know. But lots of situations are out of the Captain's control.

Here is one example that happened to me, but we'll super-impose it to the future, when cpl_atc excersizes his right to leave the aircraft:

We push back off gate 123 on schedule during a snow storm. Right after we push back, start engines, disconnect and go to hand signals, the lead waves us away and goes to their next plane. *ding* Master Caution. Some computer problem that requires a long CB reset. We call maintenance. Do the reset. Do it again. No joy. We've wasted 15 minutes now pushed back, and now it's time to go back to the gate and have maintenance come. Now we need a ground crew, and this is completely unscheduled and in the middle of a massive IRROP. All ground crews are working 110%. We wait patiently for half an hour. Ground crew comes, marshalls us in, bridges us. Maintenance is already waiting for us, and comes on board and does a quick swap out of a system, this takes about 20 minutes with paper work. Nice job by those pros!

(The passengers have now been on the plane one hour. Does it make sense to deplane them? Absolutely not. If we did, we would need to wait for an agent to be assigned to us (and all of them are working 110% as well) this would take a while. Then once off the plane the passengers start wandering through the terminal and shopping, eating, and missing all sorts of announcements about the reboarding of their plane. If they didn't come back, the ground crew would have to go through the cargo holds and remove each individual bag, for each passenger that didn't show up now. That process to deplane and reboard, then remove some bags, would take literally 2-hours or more. Doesn't make sense at this time, with the information that we have.)

Now we're all fixed up and ready to go again. Well guess what? We need a ground crew again. Let's put in our request for that now that we know we're good to go. Wait patiently, they're working like slaves trying to stop this operation from falling apart. Wait 20 minutes for a ground crew. Fuel is now becoming a consideration, our APU has been running for a long time, but we're still OK, after a quick talk with dispatch. A flight attendant is bringing up the point that her day is now at jeopardy of being maxed, although not quite there. We met her at this flight, she had already been working the whole day before we got here. Now we have to talk with crew scheduling and inform them of the problem, and wait for their response. Well, try getting a hold of crew scheduling in under 30 minutes during an IRROP. Nevertheless, we are still good to go.

Keep in mind, the Captain is managing this whole situation, dealing with lots of different people at once (maintenance, STOC, dispatch, crew scheduling, and commercial), and making the best decisions in the interests of safety.

We advise the ground crew, ready to push. Oh, wait. A passenger really needs to take a piss right now and can't wait says the flight attendant. OK. "Flight deck to ground crew, hold the push please."

OK, now we're ready to push after another short delay. Here we go. Push back, start up, disconnect, ground crew waves us off.

Where are we now? Pax on the plane for almost 2 hours? Something like that. The Captain makes sure the FA has done a water service and offered some chips to the pax. It turns out she's done two water services.

Let's start our taxi to the CDF. The taxi takes about 15 minutes or so. We're finally there, number 25 to get deiced. About a half-an-hour wait in line, maybe more. It turns out things are going slow and it takes just under an hour. Nice! Type I and IV.

We've hit the three hour mark or so that passengers have been on the plane. Everything has been out of our control. "These idiot Captains, eh cpl_atc?" Stick to your day job; with things you understand.

Now we get our flow control time, for our wheels up. It should still work for our holdover time, but we'll see, we can't control it, if we need to go and get de-iced again, that's what we need to do. We don't make the rules. Canceling the flight would make a lot of angry customers, they want to get home for Christmas.

Well we've reached the first part of our holdover limit, which requires an inspection of the wing. OK, the Captain makes an announcement to the passengers of what will be happening. I get out of my seat, go to the wing area, ask the passengers to kindly move, "I just need to do a safety check our our wings, sir." They look good still, the type IV is holding up. We're good to go, within our flow time too.

Boom, and then it hits. This gentleman wants to excersize his new-found lawful right to be deplaned after 3 hours. He's talking to me about how he's a CPL and works for ATC and blah, blah, blah, this is unacceptable. Sounds like an AvCanada forum poster here, doesn't it?

Well. Thanks for that.

Taxi back, 15 minutes. Wait for a ground crew, 20 minutes. Wait for a gate agent, 15 minutes. This is a major IRROP! Deplane the passengers and put them in the long ass customer service lineup with 100 people in front of them so a sales agent can rebook their flight (hopefully for the same day, but probably the next now). By the way, since the ground crew was running around trying to handle literally dozens and dozens of planes waiting for their service, they only had time to marshall us in and bridge us to the gate. The bags are still on the plane, that's not a priority right now. There are probably 10 other planes all set for a pushback right now waiting for a crew. As said above, lots of people on overtime, working 16 hour days... just that this massive operation of 1,500 flights a day has been thrown for a complete loop.

Well, our FA is dutied out. We're good to go for a while longer. Guess it's time to call crew scheduling and hold for an hour. Wow that place sounds like a complete Zoo in the background. Those people are tired too. Everyone is. They're so far behind in trying to get this operation back on track they tell us to go home, reset our rest, and they'll call us tomorrow (guaranteed).

As we walk out of the terminal we notice every single flight inbound and outbound from every single airline is delayed or cancelled. I wonder how many of those were from this "3-hour rule" I think to myself.

We could have got our entire cabin of passengers home for Christmas, but cpl_atc pulled his new-found 3-hour rule.

"Idiot Captains!" Show some respect.

[corytrevor]

This whole thread makes me think that we need ATC to ride in the cockpit once and a while to see how shit works. We as pilots should also make an effort to visit the other side once in a while too.

[teacher]

"moreccsplease" awesome post, this should be printed in the national news papers so that the traveling public understood what is actually going on.

[bombardierfixer]

More CC's, awesome, good post. These situations are regrettable for the flying public but just holding the airline accountable is not fair, or right. Like most things its a bunch of circumstances where joe flyer gets stuck in the middle. Wasn't it last year a international flight had to land in moosejaw or somthing to that effect and it took like 10hrs to get customs out there. Who's fault is that? Yeah sure the A/C had to divert but it wasn't the airline who held them hostage, it was the authority, and general beauracrcy(SP?).

Its not a easy answer, I think overselling, poor maintenace, lack of proper resources are the airlines issue, but it has to be proven that the airline is setting itself up for failure. Weather, airport authorities, mechnical issues, and reactionary politicaly motivated laws are not the airlines issues and they shouldn't have to pay for those mistakes.

Don't worry, additonal fees will be getting charged to the customer when airlines have to pay for "PAX bill of rights insurance"
Be careful of what you ask for, cause you may just get it!!!

[ywgflyboy]

I am willing to wager that if the crew had it their way, they would be in the hotel lounge rather than spend 11 hours stuck on an apron. There are for sure higher beings.

I recall a chapter in Capt Sullys book I recently read about how he got into a fight with a gate agent for not allowing 2 standby passengers on board his aircraft when there was 5 empty seats. The responsibility to push the plane on time was that of the gate agents and she was going to get negative performance points if the plane left late. It made more sense to leave the standby passengers instead of waste the 4 minutes boarding them. That put it all in perspective for me.

[yycflyguy]

Come on, we all know cpl_atc is a pilot hater, it's obvious in a lot of his posts. Hence, his "idiot Captain" quote at the top of this page. If only he knew how much the airline Captains I know show respect for air traffic controllers.

Well not only is he a pilot hater, but he also does have absolutely no clue about how a major airline operates.

Yes, the Captain does have final authority over the aircraft, as we all know. But lots of situations are out of the Captain's control.

Here is one example that happened to me, but we'll super-impose it to the future, when cpl_atc excersizes his right to leave the aircraft:

We push back off gate 123 on schedule during a snow storm. Right after we push back, start engines, disconnect and go to hand signals, the lead waves us away and goes to their next plane. *ding* Master Caution. Some computer problem that requires a long CB reset. We call maintenance. Do the reset. Do it again. No joy. We've wasted 15 minutes now pushed back, and now it's time to go back to the gate and have maintenance come. Now we need a ground crew, and this is completely unscheduled and in the middle of a massive IRROP. All ground crews are working 110%. We wait patiently for half an hour. Ground crew comes, marshalls us in, bridges us. Maintenance is already waiting for us, and comes on board and does a quick swap out of a system, this takes about 20 minutes with paper work. Nice job by those pros!

(The passengers have now been on the plane one hour. Does it make sense to deplane them? Absolutely not. If we did, we would need to wait for an agent to be assigned to us (and all of them are working 110% as well) this would take a while. Then once off the plane the passengers start wandering through the terminal and shopping, eating, and missing all sorts of announcements about the reboarding of their plane. If they didn't come back, the ground crew would have to go through the cargo holds and remove each individual bag, for each passenger that didn't show up now. That process to deplane and reboard, then remove some bags, would take literally 2-hours or more. Doesn't make sense at this time, with the information that we have.)

Now we're all fixed up and ready to go again. Well guess what? We need a ground crew again. Let's put in our request for that now that we know we're good to go. Wait patiently, they're working like slaves trying to stop this operation from falling apart. Wait 20 minutes for a ground crew. Fuel is now becoming a consideration, our APU has been running for a long time, but we're still OK, after a quick talk with dispatch. A flight attendant is bringing up the point that her day is now at jeopardy of being maxed, although not quite there. We met her at this flight, she had already been working the whole day before we got here. Now we have to talk with crew scheduling and inform them of the problem, and wait for their response. Well, try getting a hold of crew scheduling in under 30 minutes during an IRROP. Nevertheless, we are still good to go.

Keep in mind, the Captain is managing this whole situation, dealing with lots of different people at once (maintenance, STOC, dispatch, crew scheduling, and commercial), and making the best decisions in the interests of safety.

We advise the ground crew, ready to push. Oh, wait. A passenger really needs to take a piss right now and can't wait says the flight attendant. OK. "Flight deck to ground crew, hold the push please."

OK, now we're ready to push after another short delay. Here we go. Push back, start up, disconnect, ground crew waves us off.

Where are we now? Pax on the plane for almost 2 hours? Something like that. The Captain makes sure the FA has done a water service and offered some chips to the pax. It turns out she's done two water services.

Let's start our taxi to the CDF. The taxi takes about 15 minutes or so. We're finally there, number 25 to get deiced. About a half-an-hour wait in line, maybe more. It turns out things are going slow and it takes just under an hour. Nice! Type I and IV.

We've hit the three hour mark or so that passengers have been on the plane. Everything has been out of our control. "These idiot Captains, eh cpl_atc?" Stick to your day job; with things you understand.

Now we get our flow control time, for our wheels up. It should still work for our holdover time, but we'll see, we can't control it, if we need to go and get de-iced again, that's what we need to do. We don't make the rules. Canceling the flight would make a lot of angry customers, they want to get home for Christmas.

Well we've reached the first part of our holdover limit, which requires an inspection of the wing. OK, the Captain makes an announcement to the passengers of what will be happening. I get out of my seat, go to the wing area, ask the passengers to kindly move, "I just need to do a safety check our our wings, sir." They look good still, the type IV is holding up. We're good to go, within our flow time too.

Boom, and then it hits. This gentleman wants to excersize his new-found lawful right to be deplaned after 3 hours. He's talking to me about how he's a CPL and works for ATC and blah, blah, blah, this is unacceptable. Sounds like an AvCanada forum poster here, doesn't it?

Well. Thanks for that.

Taxi back, 15 minutes. Wait for a ground crew, 20 minutes. Wait for a gate agent, 15 minutes. This is a major IRROP! Deplane the passengers and put them in the long ass customer service lineup with 100 people in front of them so a sales agent can rebook their flight (hopefully for the same day, but probably the next now). By the way, since the ground crew was running around trying to handle literally dozens and dozens of planes waiting for their service, they only had time to marshall us in and bridge us to the gate. The bags are still on the plane, that's not a priority right now. There are probably 10 other planes all set for a pushback right now waiting for a crew. As said above, lots of people on overtime, working 16 hour days... just that this massive operation of 1,500 flights a day has been thrown for a complete loop.

Well, our FA is dutied out. We're good to go for a while longer. Guess it's time to call crew scheduling and hold for an hour. Wow that place sounds like a complete Zoo in the background. Those people are tired too. Everyone is. They're so far behind in trying to get this operation back on track they tell us to go home, reset our rest, and they'll call us tomorrow (guaranteed).

As we walk out of the terminal we notice every single flight inbound and outbound from every single airline is delayed or cancelled. I wonder how many of those were from this "3-hour rule" I think to myself.

We could have got our entire cabin of passengers home for Christmas, but cpl_atc pulled his new-found 3-hour rule.

"Idiot Captains!" Show some respect.

Brilliant. Thanks for taking the time to write out one scenario that makes this Passenger Bill of Rights bogus.

We are just average men doing the jobs of heroes

[tailgunner]

Cpl-atc....Sometimes it is like herding cats. I am sure you have the same type of days, you know the ones i am talking about, trying to coordinate all 3 of your pax, on your 4 seater...

[GilletteNorth]

I recall one flight I took from Edmonton to Yellowknife. We were told prior to boarding that there was a good chance the plane would be unable to land at the destination. If we did get onboard and we had to return we were not going to be reimbursed for taxis or hotels. That was reasonable and quite a few did not board.
Airlines MUST address the forseeable consequences of flight delays due to inclement weather. They don't want to do this because it DOES cause a large disruption to their operations and causes unhappy customers. The airlines can't be held accountable for the weather nor should the customer attempt to hold them accountable. However airlines should be advising passengers sooner that a particular flight will be delayed or even cancelled and have those passengers reschedule (go home) and/or refuse to load until it's reasonable to expect the aircraft will leave within an hour. Loading passengers and then holding aircraft for hours on the ramp when it's KNOWN the weather is causing huge delays is simply wrong.

[reality check]

We are just average men doing the jobs of heroes

Unfortunately it's become a lot of average and below average men and women doing a job that's sucked almost all personal touch out the equation. There are no heroes anymore, there are few exceptions to the rule, and the only thing the matters to the public, the pilots, and companies is the bottom dollar and/or time off. Emphasis on bottom. It's a race, and the direction is down.

[Doc]

Cpl-atc....Sometimes it is like herding cats. I am sure you have the same type of days, you know the ones i am talking about, trying to coordinate all 3 of your pax, on your 4 seater...

Did somebody say.."Herding Cats.......?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8