Originally Posted by
Really
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.
Yes. I should add that Howard did say, 10 years ago we had 50 a day, and he admitted there was a period in UAL history when maintenance simply didn't have the resources to keep up, but more importantly I think he was just asking for people to use logic and not emotion when deciding to reject a plane. Personally, I think that is a fair request.
As a minor aside, we got to see while on our visit to the NOC a list of planes with broken items and where they were scheduled to meet up with the parts and maintenance. Point was, the company is making a much more significant effort to get the planes to a place where they can be fixed because dispatch reliability is a very high priority for the new team. In fact they have a global briefing where stations from around the world report in 4 times a day and in that briefing the first item discussed is dispatch reliability. While we were in the morning session, SFO had a double refusal. No one asked a single question about the pilot, they simply asked what part was needed to fix the problem and when it would be fixed.
Oh . . . and yes, Howard also mentioned that there are most definitely particular individuals who account for a disproportionate share of refusals.