Originally Posted by
Jetpartner
I have been with Allegiant for almost 9 years and have to say that I have never been yelled at from a dispatcher or MX. I have never flown an aircraft I thought to be unsafe, I have never been pressured to fly broken aircraft or not to record an issue in the MX logbook. The most MELs I have ever seen was 6. The negative Allegiant people who say we fire Captains for an emergency evacs are just wrong. I have had to evac 155 pax plus crew on a runway at Allegiant. I was not fired or disciplined for my actions because my First Officer and I used good judgement in our emergency. Captains must evaluate the need to get out of an aircraft in a hurry, is there a danger to staying in a cabin with no fire and no smoke? Smoke coming from a breather on a engine is not a danger to pax inside an aircraft. The Captain that was fired had used poor judgement in his evac order in my opinion. He claims that it was necessary to evac asap but he lands and then exits the runway, why would he take the time to do this? He then waits 7-8 mins on a taxiway without actually seeing smoke in the cabin as CFR inspects the aircraft for signs of fire or smoke. Yes the JT8D will smoke from the breather this is normal. Ever seen the CFM56 after shutdown? It smokes like crazy but I am not throwing people down the slides for this. Why would he wait 7-8 mins to evac the plane if it was necessary to get out right away? So he thought there was a need to get out quickly because he thought there might be a smoke issue at the rear of the aircraft, so he orders an evac but does not specify which exits to avoid. You don't send pax towards an exit if you believe there was a safety issue. To top it off this "great Captain" with 100 pic in the 80 goes to Las Vegas with an attitude that he was right no matter what. Guess what he never ran the emergency evac checklist such as shuting down all engines, APU and setting flaps to 28 degrees. He got fired this is correct, I am glad this weak Captain is gone. The issue I see with Allegiant is the quick upgrade to Captain for some with little to no no 121 PIC time.
Kind sir,
I am the "weak Captain" you speak of, and it's disheartening to hear that you have such glee that I was fired. It is your opinion, so in that regard, I'll just say that you're entitled to it.
I'll also add that EVERYTHING else you wrote about is incorrect. You didn't get one thing right. If you'd like to have a coffee or a brew, I'll gladly sit down with you and tell you the actual story. My former First Officer from the evacuation would probably join us and get a giggle out of your commentary too.
Please don't misunderstand me: I WANT you to talk about these things. Evacuations, aborted takeoffs- whatever the scenario and whichever airline, it promises to yield educational dividends. As aviators, we're compelled to always glean some sort of sound knowledge from unfortunate mishaps, emergency events, accidents, and allow for that to develop our judgement as the years pass.
Admittedly, I'm troubled to see that your assessment of Allegiant's operational issues stems from "quick upgrade times". I'm troubled because I went through all of the same training that you did, took the same checkride that you did and checked all the same boxes that you did. So, are you comparing your evacuation to mine based on our experience levels? What's more, how do you know that I never ran a checklist, or shut down engines?
The answer is that you DON'T know and sadly, you didn't get any of your story right. You weren't there with my FO and me, so you couldn't know.
But instead of reaching out to me and asking me about it, or even calling just to say, "hey man, been there, done that- know what you're going through", you publicly boast of just how right you got it and just how wrong, in your expert opinion, I got it. Probably feels pretty good to sit back and know that you've got it all figured out, huh? Particularly when you can talk a bunch of smack at my expense, I'll bet. Well, I encourage you to call me or my FO and at least get the story straight.
I'll add only this: I'm glad you're evacuation was uneventful. I'm glad that those 155 folks had your sound judgement to keep them safe. I'm glad that the company allowed for you to act as PIC, that you did so with proficiency and that you weren't "punished" for pulling the trigger on that difficult decision to evacuate.
Let me know if you want to get together sometime and hear the way things really went.
You'll have to pick up the second round, however, because you have a job and I don't- and strangely, even though you don't even know me, you're "glad for that".