Originally Posted by
aa73
No, it's still a captain PA. Why, I don't know, nor will I ever understand. We are truly the only airline to do this. The closest I ever got in getting an answer was back in the mid 2000s when my idea of having the FO do this PA made it up to the monthly fleet meetings down at HQ. The answer I got was "we feel the Captains have a much better idea of when to seat the FAs so we're going to leave this PA to them." To which I answered, "why not have the CA tell the FO to seat the FAs?" No answer. And so it is to this day.
These are the kinds of things AA does that keeps me shaking my head, but I digress... The funny thing about it is, when I bring it up to captains, 99% of them who never flew for another airline are fine with the procedure and don't really understand why it should go to the FO. The ones that did fly for someone else totally get it.
"We are truly the only airline to do this." One of your dream airlines, USAIR, with leading edge TEM theory, has the CAPTAIN do the PA.
USAIR has exterior lights out by 10,000'. AA policy was lights on at 18,000. S80 wasn't defined. LUS policy is landing lights off at 10,000'.
LUS procedure is the Captain will brief the approach. Not doing so is PINC.
Captain will do the prepare for the landing PA.
The difference between AA's and US's PA procedures is zero.
You check the fuel before the fuel is loaded. Huh? Yeah.
You check the engine oil 4 times before departure. Not once, not twice, four times. "But I just did it and he just did it too." Doesn't matter, you do it again. Huh? Yeah.
Same with hydraulics. It might have changed since you last looked at it so you look at again, and again, and again. And it has an auto sensing system for divergent trends....but they want you to double check the automated double check system. Huh? Yeah.
You check your O2 mask setup twice. Not sure why, maybe you shouldn't trust yourself the first time?
The good news is they trust you doing the first walk around. Two walk arounds aren't required.
You can do the before landing checklist before you have final flaps selected. Huh? Yeah.
You can't arm the spoilers until you have Flaps 3 selected(basically landing flaps). Huh? Yeah.
You do the taxi checklist after you taxi. There is no before takeoff checklist. Huh? Yeah. They switched names on it.
There is no preflight card to verify you did it correctly. Huh? Yeah.
Memorization is the name of the checklist game. Remember that in modern jet aircraft aviation theory?? Huh? Uh, no.
GS is a continous 'huh? Really?' process. "We check that again? Now??" Yes. "But we don't check that?" Nope. Huh? Yeah.
Both sides look at each others procedures and think 'this is some dumb stuff'. Some stuff is an improvement. Some of it is just different. Some of it is backwards.