DL 1973 28 Jul OOOPS

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08-05-2010, 05:22 PM
Art at ISP

DL 1973 28 Jul OOOPS

After a service interruption handled very well by DL last week (and I let them know how well it was handled--someone in Consumer Affairs CALLED me within 3 hours of my email), I had another experience on Wednesday night which you'd need to see to believe.....

Good meetings in Atlanta, back to the airport early, nice cocktail in the Sky Club near A18-flight planned to leave for Miami from A17....so I think all is well.

Get to A17 6:30...around 10 min later, they announce the airplane is going mechanical. Eventually they send us to B31--ride 1 on the underground....

100 of us get to B31, the agent is overwhelmed and has NO CLUE what's happening....we then look at the video board and it shows DL1973 moved AGAIN to A6....ride 2 on the underground...

Get to A6, flight at the gate is held up to remove a bag (Intl departure positive bag match required)....ok inbound finally gets to the gate, we board a little while later, begin to taxi out--only an hour late .. not terrible....get almost to the runway, Captain comes on and says there's a problem with the APU, we have to go back to the gate.....so we do....B26......

Mechanics come on, they are working to fix the problem, about a half hour later, the pilots time out, but they announce they found new pilots to take the trip.....so we stay on board another half hour....THEN the flight attendants time out, and they work on getting us new cabin crew.......so now everyone off the airplane......ok....waiting for 2 more FA's, finally an hour later we board again....and FINALLY we're off to MIA......arriving at 1:30AM, or 4 plus hours late......I will say, except for the gate dancing, it was handled pretty well, and of course we got there, and they didn't cancel the flight....but it did look like a comedy of errors for a while--and a dispatcher/scheduler/agent's nightmare......

To top it all off, it took me an hour to get the rental car because Hertz' computers were down....but that's another story...

On a bright note I made a new friend on board...an attorney who can help JoAnn with her breast density disclosure law...but as I said you just had to be there...you couldn't make this one up.......

NO WAY complaining, I just thought the confluence of events was interesting....or as one of my friends calls it, Beth effect.....
08-06-2010, 10:17 PM
mirrodie

Beth....That is a forbidden name in our household.

Ridiculous story though. I get concept of timing out, but its amazing that its allowed still to interfere with the passenger experience. Something eeds to be done about that. There is no reason why it shoudl affect customers. Going texh is one thing but timing out?

blows my mind.
08-09-2010, 11:48 AM
T-Bird76

Quote:

Originally Posted by mirrodie

Beth....That is a forbidden name in our household.

Ridiculous story though. I get concept of timing out, but its amazing that its allowed still to interfere with the passenger experience. Something eeds to be done about that. There is no reason why it shoudl affect customers. Going texh is one thing but timing out?

blows my mind.

Mario if they time out they time out... Would you rather have sleepy pilots and FA's on board? I think the CO crash in Buffalo is a great examply why crews need proper rest. Its seems this was handled correctly and that Delta had crews on ready reserve or were able to shift crews around. I rather be delayed then dead...
08-09-2010, 10:15 PM
USAF Pilot 07

Quote:

Originally Posted by mirrodie

Ridiculous story though. I get concept of timing out, but its amazing that its allowed still to interfere with the passenger experience. Something eeds to be done about that. There is no reason why it shoudl affect customers. Going texh is one thing but timing out?

blows my mind.

Sounds like they had several mx issues before the crew timed out. I would agree that it would be ridiculous if the flight was on-time with no mx issues and the crew showed up and was already timed out. But, when you have mx issues, stuff like this happens. You can't expect an airline to have a replacement crew all crew rested sitting there at the gate in the rare case something should go wrong to take over.

Sounds like they did have some ready reserves somewhere though and instead of the flight being canceled and pushed to the next day, it was able to go only a few hours late. A 4 hour delay sucks, but when you consider they not only had mx issues but crew-issues, it's really not all that bad.

The FAA has rest rules for a reason. If they didn't, I guarantee you the airlines would be slave-driving their pilots even more so than they are now. Chances are these pilots had already been up for more than 12 hours that day (probably more depending on where they were coming from and what legs they had previously flown). Like Tommy said, I'd rather have a well rested crew operating at their peak than an exhausted crew who slips up or is more mistake-prone.
08-10-2010, 03:38 PM
mirrodie

I'm not debating a rested crew but i am sure there are better ways to tend to switching crews and really being on top of it so that it reduces further delay.
08-25-2010, 12:31 PM
Art at ISP

Last week, I got a letter of apology from Delta, unsolicited, along with a 15000 mile deposit in my SkyMiles account.

That is at least excellent customer service.
09-03-2010, 12:25 AM
NLovis

Quote:

Originally Posted by Art at ISP

Last week, I got a letter of apology from Delta, unsolicited, along with a 15000 mile deposit in my SkyMiles account.

That is at least excellent customer service.

It sounds like Delta is at least trying to keep their rep good. Though i'd say they definitly need to fix JFK for that. When I went through it was a story 1/2 which was posted here. It was so bad after one booking I now try to advoid flying Delta if at all possible. I had really bad customer service, really late bags, and a really really pathetic excuse from a customer servece rep (along with the others) who didnt seem to care about the customers. Maby its just JFK? Though we all know Delta at JFK needs some work done. My flight from TPA to DTW was also rather dirty on a 738. Well after hearing this i'm willing to give Delta another try in the future. Maby this time i'll fly out of JFK instead of into on Delta. And I would have to agree with you art, the confluence of events is definitly interesting ideed. I would also have to agree I would rather a delay then be dead. When a crew times out they have been up some hours. EIA crews get 12-18 hour duty days. True its overseas but would you want a crew that timed out after an 18 hour day? I would think not. Cudos to Delta for having standby crews. Finding another crew could have taken longer or maby they would have had to cancel the flight. Do Delta crews have 18 hour days? I wouldnt know but then again unless you work for them where you are associated with the crews in some way you wouldnt know. But lets assume they have 8-12 hr duty days.
09-03-2010, 08:52 PM
AA 777

Quote:

Originally Posted by NLovis

It sounds like Delta is at least trying to keep their rep good. Though i'd say they definitly need to fix JFK for that. When I went through it was a story 1/2 which was posted here. It was so bad after one booking I now try to advoid flying Delta if at all possible. I had really bad customer service, really late bags, and a really really pathetic excuse from a customer servece rep (along with the others) who didnt seem to care about the customers. Maby its just JFK? Though we all know Delta at JFK needs some work done. My flight from TPA to DTW was also rather dirty on a 738. Well after hearing this i'm willing to give Delta another try in the future. Maby this time i'll fly out of JFK instead of into on Delta. And I would have to agree with you art, the confluence of events is definitly interesting ideed. I would also have to agree I would rather a delay then be dead. When a crew times out they have been up some hours. EIA crews get 12-18 hour duty days. True its overseas but would you want a crew that timed out after an 18 hour day? I would think not. Cudos to Delta for having standby crews. Finding another crew could have taken longer or maby they would have had to cancel the flight. Do Delta crews have 18 hour days? I wouldnt know but then again unless you work for them where you are associated with the crews in some way you wouldnt know. But lets assume they have 8-12 hr duty days.

Ouch my head hurts....

Anyway I'd say major airlines get somewhere in the ballpark of a 14 hr duty day but a maximum of 8 hours (of the 14) can be flying hours. Beyond the 8 hrs of flying they will fly with an additional crew member or two in the case of Asia etc. Anything longer than 14 block hours is handled on a case by case basis with the pilot union.