Easy. Have you not witnessed the "frenzy" that overtakes some gate agents as the clock ticks toward D-0. This type of "error" appears to be happening more often. In my last few trips I experienced pushing back with more passengers than seats, the gate agent closing the door without taking the release, gate agent closing the door without checking with CAPT while we were working on a mechanical and waiting for maintenance.

By themselves - none of these things are that bad (except maybe when we had more passengers than seats) and while maybe these things did happen 10 and 15 years ago, they were rare exceptions. Now you seem to get 1 or 2 a month.

But hey, we made D-0 in all the above cases even though in the most egregious case above we had to taxi into an empty gate to deplane one passenger, about a 30 minute delay.


Scoop