Originally Posted by
madmax757
It was / is horrendous. They would keep delaying flights, then finally cancelling , I was at a Denver gate when they announced a cancellation, near riot. The customer service line was down to the main area by the food court. The police were called to monitor things as they were getting out of hand. Over 7 airplanes with over 3 hour tarmac delay because no gates / because maybe 10 rampers were left - isn't that $27.5 K per passenger fine ? It was Mega cold though and I froze my cajones on a 5 minute preflight. I Felt bery bad for the Rampers. When they did cancel , the pax waited 3-4 hours and never got their luggage. They ordered all flights to leave without bags to open up the gates. My flight left 10 hours late with no bags. No one told the pax though as we walked past them in baggage claim to the hotel van. -
If I were running the show and saw the temps and weather coming - I would have ordered double time for every ramper that showed up , head down there with my pockets filled with $100 s and hand them out -feed everyone etc. it would work and the cost would be minimal compared to the fines and lost customers.
2 things: typically the DOT fines are way less than the maximum fine, which is the number you mentioned above. It will be interesting to see what fines are really imposed on us.
The idea of paying the ramp staff double time during harsh conditions is a great idea, however they aren't our employees and we don't write their pay checks. Simplicity does. We can't just impose our policies on them. Now, Barry could go out there and hand out cash of course, and clearly he should have, but when you contract out employees, they aren't your employees anymore.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the morning meeting at the GO tomorrow.