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Which information? That they belated realized they'd run out of duty hours and had to call in new crew, after the plane with the soon-to-expire crew had landed?

Which information? That they belated realized they'd run out of duty hours and had to call in new crew, after the plane with the soon-to-expire crew had landed? They told us that while we waited at the gate, including updates about the expected time that the newly-called-in crew would arrive. They were quite transparent about everything. Or are you asking why I think they're making it up as they go along? That is my conclusion, to be sure. It's one thing for dominoes to fall, but if you are in a situation where the dominoes are falling and you are not able to predict which dominoes will fall next and respond accordingly, you are making things up as you go along. I'd have expected that almost any decision they could even hypothetically make would run through a system that checked it for violations of constraints, which would have told them way ahead of time that they needed a fresh crew, and they'd have had the entire flight of the replacement plane to get one in (IIRC it flew Miami->Boston just to get us the plane).

seandoe 4y ago
Regarding your first paragraph, rarely are the gate agents telling the public the entire story. The truth is typically more complex and basically not of concern to the average passenger. As for your conclusion, it's just not accurate. Systems _are_ used for scheduling and allocation of equipment and crew resources. You just have to realize that getting you, as an individual, to your destination on time on any given day isn't the number one priority of the company. There are a lot more concerns they are considering. If the airline industry is really as dysfunctional as you think, with such shortcomings in areas as important as equipment and crew scheduling and allocation, you should drop whatever you're doing and start an airline. You'll soon be filthy rich and do the world a great service.
- icambron 4y ago
  That’s just hand-waiving. Sure, they could have been lying to us and had some hyper-competent, complex reason that delayed us and then made up some malarkey about duty limits. But you don’t know either, and the explanation they presented seems vastly more likely. Also your generalizations fly directly in the face of the information emerging from this Southwest fiasco, which indicates they don’t have systems in place to even track where their crews are (just where they are scheduled to be), so the shortcomings seem to be quite real.
boomboomsubban 4y ago
Couldn't the emergency flight have run into some problems, making it take longer and that led to the crew being out of duty hours? Like the flight was supposed to take 3-4 hours but wind and some airport issue caused it to take 5? Something that may not have been obvious until very late in the flight too.

seandoe 4y ago

Regarding your first paragraph, rarely are the gate agents telling the public the entire story. The truth is typically more complex and basically not of concern to the average passenger. As for your conclusion, it's just not accurate. Systems _are_ used for scheduling and allocation of equipment and crew resources. You just have to realize that getting you, as an individual, to your destination on time on any given day isn't the number one priority of the company. There are a lot more concerns they are considering. If the airline industry is really as dysfunctional as you think, with such shortcomings in areas as important as equipment and crew scheduling and allocation, you should drop whatever you're doing and start an airline. You'll soon be filthy rich and do the world a great service.

icambron 4y ago
That’s just hand-waiving. Sure, they could have been lying to us and had some hyper-competent, complex reason that delayed us and then made up some malarkey about duty limits. But you don’t know either, and the explanation they presented seems vastly more likely. Also your generalizations fly directly in the face of the information emerging from this Southwest fiasco, which indicates they don’t have systems in place to even track where their crews are (just where they are scheduled to be), so the shortcomings seem to be quite real.

boomboomsubban 4y ago

Couldn't the emergency flight have run into some problems, making it take longer and that led to the crew being out of duty hours? Like the flight was supposed to take 3-4 hours but wind and some airport issue caused it to take 5? Something that may not have been obvious until very late in the flight too.