Originally Posted by
oldmako
Kool-Aid,
Not to be a total jerk but comparing our refusals to anyone else's is meaningless. They should be comparing our refusals to last years and the year before and looking only at UA.
Take an A320 into LGA with no A-Skid? (etc.) No problem. Take the uber-guppy? Well, that might not be such an easy decision. How many of those Top-Fuel funny planes do we have? How many does DAL?
Not sure if it's still the case, but for a while at Brand-X airline, guys were immediately pulled off a trip and suffered pay loss when they refused a plane. How often did that policy effect pilots decisions? How many guys took broken trash because of it? How many of those flights
should have been refusals and was there a potential (negative) impact on the safety of those flights? At some point, the guy with the cool hat is obligated to say "Nyet!"
To minimize refusals, fix planes promptly, and when that's impossible, route them in a manner which will minimize impact to the operation.
Years ago a 767 was dispatched to GRU without an APU. A whole mess of guys refused it, over and over. Finally, Marvin took it. Well, guess what, it shat a gen and they did the 0300 divert into a Big E. The plane sat for days. Whose dumb decisions affected the operation the most?
*Very glad to read the positive from OM and the rest of your post.
Not to make this a Legacy thing (Unfortunately I am) but, I would also like to see a break down of the difference between LUAL and LCAL. (Cultures) I think it was HUGE when we first merged. However, I bet it decreased quite a bit over the years. Pilots always used to say it was "being safer and more conservative to turn a plane down". So, my response to that was, then lets not push back from the gate since thats the safest thing of all to do!
Oldmako, you brought up a case that did a SAFE air return "YEARS AGO" (your words) about a bad situation with someone taking a plane with a busted APU. I can tell you I accepted an A/C at least 5-10 times in my career over tens of thousands of hours of flying and have NEVER had an issue. So, the moral of the story is, with our 2 stories is you may lose a Gen. (which I've only done in SIM) once in your career and not have a Gen. to fall back on but, will still be able to return SAFELY to the Airport.
Flying involves RISK and I'm sure glad management is taking the opinion of letting the crew decide how much they are comfortable with. Its each crews own personal choice and I think as time goes on its starting to balance out.