this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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What did it for me was a long delay that got me landed at my destination after car rental was closed
Not so much the delay itself; that upset me, but I get that things happen
It was the reason for the delay: a simple maintenance thing with the plane had them taking the engine further and further apart while we watched from the terminal, ultimately deciding they weren't getting this thing back up and running again anytime soon and having to get us another plane (which we had to wait for to fly to us)
Why couldn't they figure it out? Because they didn't have anyone who knew how to work on that plane model available
There are so many ways that pisses me off and makes me never want to trust them again
Also, every flight I had with them, including the return trip that I'd already booked from that trip, was miserable
Say what you will about Southwest but they know their damned planes inside and out and overall run their fleet efficiently and consistently. It's like riding a bus that flies
The median age for an A&P licensed plane tech is 55. We'll welcome you to the ranks anytime.
I have no idea what it is you're trying to say here or how it relates to an airline running planes without having maintenance crews that can actually do the work on them... And that they worked on it anyway without apparently having the required training for it...
This comment directly speaks to your lack of understanding of how airline maintenance works. The point though is there are a shortage of maintenance personnel in the industry. People are retiring all the time and nobody is filling those billets once they leave. And airlines don't just have a maintenance crew at every airport because there's not enough, and it wouldn't be cost effective. Be as angry as you want that airlines are running on such terrible margins that they can't have a backup plane. But do understand that this is not the fault of the maintenance personnel.
Who's blaming the maintenance personnel? I'm expecting the airlines to actually have their maintenance crews trained for the planes they fly.
I don't think this is a particularly unrealistic expectation.
Nor do I think the expectation that crews without enough training on a plane to tear its engine apart and put it back together not be tasked with something that will have them tearing the engine apart.
I don't need to understand how the maintenance works to expect it be done correctly for something that's going to be moving my ass at hundreds of miles per hour, thousands of feet in the air.
I don't blame the maintenance personnel for not giving themselves adequate training on the machines they'll be servicing; that's on the airlines to ensure they get that before telling them to work on those planes. I don't blame the maintenance personnel for being ordered to then work on planes they don't have training on.
And if "that's just how the industry is", that doesn't make it any better.
Either way, flying with an airline that runs basically one model and can ensure every maintenance person knows that plane and every pilot knows that plane seems a good way to avoid the issue, so I'll stick with what I've got for now, thanks.
Did it ever occur to you that they don't just have maintenance personnel at every airport? Because what I'm saying is that no airline in the world has maintenance personnel at every airport.
Spirit, Frontier and Allegiant are Airbus only and would require an Airbus tech. Airbus planes are pretty decent on that the A19-A321 planes are pretty much exactly the same in parts and configuration except that some are longer and or wider than others. On the other side of things Southwest has only Boeing planes, mostly 737 and 747.
Pretty much every other airline has a mix of different planes (Boeing, Airbus, and Bombardier, Embraer). To do what you're talking about every airline that flies more than one plane would have to have a technician for each of those plane types on the ground at every airport they fly to. That's 5000 airports, with at least two technicians per airport (assuming they only have one flight in and out of there at a time which is ludicrous). The average number of flights going in and out of any one airport at a time. Daily there are about 45,000 flights per day per FAA statistics not including private flights.
At Delta's hub in Atlanta, there are around 2100-2700 flights per day. Delta says they have about 6,400 AMT's worldwide One singular airport out of 242 airports that Delta flies to. 24 hours a day for most airports. They would be required to keep at least 8 people per airport per average number of flights leaving or arriving per at the same time. Let's say that at their hub they only have 5 planes on the ground at any given time ( a gross miscalculation of how many planes fly into their hub, but the math is cleaner). Delta has 4 different plane manufacturers's planes in their fleet. That's 4 mechanics on an 8 or 12 hour shift multiplied by 5 planes let's say per average turn around time of 30 minutes. You'd need 20 techs At every single solitary airport Delta flies to. Per shift. Supplied by the airline. It's a logistical nightmare and this number balloons when you realise just how.many departures and arrivals there are and at what intervals at pretty much any major airport. 9,640 AMT's assuming 12 hour shifts. Just for domestic USA flights, not including planes that are down for maintenance outside regular maintenance schedule. When the fleet only emplyes 6,400 AMT's world wide.
I cannot stress this enough, but you're making a lot of assumptions here. And you don't think it's an unrealistic expectation specifically because you have no idea how any of this works.
Cool story.
I still fail to see how this makes it okay for techs to be told to tear apart an engine they weren't experienced with.
You can try to keep talking around how that's actually no big deal and I just don't get it. Totally your right. Just be aware that from my perspective you're trying to argue that it's acceptable to work on components without training that could cause a plane crash with people on board if it fails, and I just don't see how you can make that scenario okay, like, at all.
Because you don't understand what an A&P licensed Technician is or what the certification means. It also means you likely didn't understand what you were told about what was causing the delay.
By that I mean they probably initially had someone working on that plane who was new to being a tech. Which tracks because outside of recruiting from the military, a lot of AMT's recruited to the business are fresh out of highschool or college because that's when it's cheapest to hire them, and considering that older technicians are retiring every day. That technician was told there was a specific problem (let's say a fan cowl door won't latch). They open that door up to find that the reason it won't latch is because the latch is broken. To replace the latch they remove some parts, and then find that the reason it's broken is because some safety wire is broken off a bolt somewhere and wedged itself in such a way that it stressed that latch til it broke. Not only do they have to figure out where that safety wire came from, they have to do further teardown and inspection to make sure that there's no other damage. Unless you want to randomly lose an engine at 10k+ feet in the air where you can't pull over to the side of the road. And that's where being a subject matter expert on that particular model platform of plane would be preferred. Because while any AMT could find where that safety wire came from, not any AMT could do it on the Line without delaying a plane.
And that's why I said you were blaming Technicians. Because you were blaming Techs for the delay. Which in actuality was probably caused by something outside their control. Have a nice life dude. Your opinion is trash.
Yeah, no. I was very clear that I was not blaming the techs, but you go ahead, keep insisting on that.
I do not blame line workers for failings of management, which is exactly what I said I thought this was.
Maybe I am wrong here, wouldn't be the first time. If so, sorry for busting your chops like that. I've just seen too many businesses cutting corners and compromising safety to save a couple bucks, so maybe I'm overly jaded for this one. But the ire was NEVER directed at the techs.
United is still garbage and was miserable every time I flew with them, so regardless of the truth behind that incident I still stand by my decision to never fly with them again, and if that hadn't happened on that trip, the rest of the trip was enough to make me want nothing to do with them again.
Can I ask exactly what you expected them to do? The managers or gate staff or whoever?
I ask because delays when they happen are usually tied to federal regulations about who can fly, what can fly, in what condition, in what weather, etc. So if they found something to be mechanically wrong with your plane and not fixable in a way that is airworthy, generally that plane would be grounded and the airline would then have to scramble to find accommodation.
While I'll grant you that airlines overbook pretty much every plane in the event that people don't show up, and that's a scummy practice, I also fully understand that this decision was definitely not made by some.manager actively at the airport. This was a decision from the executive suite of the company.
I don't have good things to say about flying United, American, or Delta, even. I'm a bit biased about Southwest. But I haven't really had any problems with them. Believe it or not, same with Alaska despite the recent bad press.
I have been delayed many a time. I recognise that it can be devastatingly inconvenient and problematic. It can cost customers significant amounts of money and time.
I'm not saying it's unreasonable to be angry. I'm saying that the airport staff who likely would have related this information to you (pilot, flight attendants, gate staff) also aren't responsible. Further, the person who tasked that AMT or those AMT's to work on the plane you were on is likely doing their best to utilise staff efficiently and effectively to keep planes in the air because that's their job, and that job becomes exponentially harder when planes are grounded.
Your ire seems to be directed towards the airline at large, and it seems like you had an expectation of what would and should happen that I feel is unreasonable given what I know.
You haven't really made it clear what you expected except the things I have spoken to in previous comments in this thread. But even if you didn't mean it that way, what you basically said is that the AMT wasn't qualified (which isn't true) to be working on the model of plane that they were servicing, and that caused a delay. Which is why I said you were blaming the AMT. The fact that the manager of that AMT is also probably an AMT as well is something you seem to have glossed over.
The other thing I want to point out is that the cost of keeping planes on standby in the case of mechanical issues grounding a different plane would be astronomical, and that cost would probably triple or quadruple the cost of your plane ticket. At an airlines hub airport that might be feasible. But airport hangar space is limited and the run on costs of doing so are so cost prohibitive to most customers (not to mention the lack of AMT's available to make it happen), that I just don't understand what you expect a better result to look like.
We're not talking about shade tree mechanics on their garage tearing down an engine here. We're talking about highly trained AMT's who are part of a maintenance apparatus that is heavily heavily regulated by the federal government.
I expected them to have mechanics working on the planes that had proper training for them. This is based on what I was told by the gate attendants, which I'll admit may not have been accurate.
That expectation is not levied at anyone in the local chain of command; it's directed at the decision making at he executive level that would lead to maintenance crews working on engines they weren't certified/trained on.
Part of it I will admit comes down to my frustration with watching the engine become progressively dissembled while waiting for hours and watching the clock run out on my rental, but I never blamed the people there. I've worked IT for a long time and know first hand that the people talking to you are usually just doing the best they can and often following policy that they have no flexibility in. Even local management often has their hands tied.
If I came across blaming the techs or the crew or management at the airport, which it sounds like I did at least to you, I'm sorry for that, it really wasn't ever my intention. At the point the plane needed something fixed, the situation was already way too far gone to salvage, and whether it was because it was more serious than it first appeared or there simply wasn't the right experience available, the damage was already done and nothing anyone there at that time would have salvaged it.
Waiting on the replacement plane was frustrating, but logistics are logistics and you can't summon a plane or crew from thin air, crews can only fly so long without a break safely, and keeping additional extremely expensive planes sitting around gathering dust waiting to be needed at every airport just doesn't make sense.
My expectation (which it sounds increasingly like to me was down to misunderstanding of what's involved, which you've been trying to tell me) was that airlines will have maintenance crews that know the planes they're working on. You're saying this was probably outside the scope of what's a typical maintenance crew is able to tackle in a short time, like a car mechanic checking a seemingly minor leak and ultimately finding out the engine needs to be rebuilt.
But again, never did blame anyone but upper management, who were nowhere near anyone at that airport during that, and I hope that's now clear
I've reluctantly come to the same conclusion.