While flying the past few days, I recently learned that one particular non-hub station, where an outsource ground service provider is used, has terminated 3 station managers, several shift leaders and a few agents. All were involved in what appears to be a bit of good old fashioned "cooking of the books" scheme. Fudging the times to make themselves look better, but ultimately, to lay hands on a substantial cash prize, offered by the mother corporation, for having the best on-time performance in the system.

The cool thing is the corporate structures involved here (yes more than just two corps. and at least 2 airlines), see their actions as theft and are starting to act accordingly. Unfortunately for everyone involved (especially the consumer) however, the DOT & FAA, late to the game and likely only involved due to self disclosure actions on behalf of the airline(s) themselves, have now gotten involved too. Why? Falsification of records is not only a violation of FARs but also a federal crime that goes beyond the authority of the FAA. Records the flying public lobbied congress to start keeping and reporting a decade ago, that airlines use for marketing purposes and arguably few consumers use when they purchase tickets, may not be accurate after all.

As a pilot, this will likely come as no big surprise, because we've all seen management in denial, hiding from the day to day drudgery of getting out of those "Joe vs. the Volcano" offices and actually "managing" anything. If you're like me, you've called in a delay code once or twice in your life, only to check it later and see that it was changed to something benign, like "aircraft servicing" when it was really something far more glaring like a fist fight between two ramp agents leaving nobody to drive the tug. Changing the reasons? No real big deal if your airline's management wants to play ostrich with it's head in the sand. Offer a reward for best on time performance that causes employee misconduct and the airline views the actions as theft. Changing the times themselves however, could be viewed by the regulatory agencies as criminal, certainly fines will be levied in this case. The consumer is ultimately the one being cheated here. This story is epic, dare I say colossal and still developing as the audits are ongoing.

With our industry's trend toward outsourced staffing, it's real hard to get the level of employee commitment bigger airlines had in the 70's, 80's and 90's. In most cases, it's now just seen as a part time job, with capped hours and minimal benefits, one of which might be pass travel. Incentives for theses employees, rather than the rewards of a good old fashioned career expectation, must be seen as a necessity by the airlines and cheaper than retirement plans. Once again it's easy for me to Monday morning QB from the cockpit, that hands on management would have been a far superior strategy to the gimmickry of a cash prize, but they never ask us...