Originally Posted by e6bpilot

This is the Southwest way. I totally agree with everything that you said there. They have taken away any and all authority from front line employees to make judgment calls.
This really happened tonight: a doctor on a BUR-LAS flight got a flight attendants attention because it appeared that the organ that he was flying to transplant into a live patient was sitting on the ramp and they had closed the door to depart. Captain gets ops to bring the jetbridge back but ops refuses to reopen the flight stating that he needs sup approval. Sup does not want to open the flight but does so after arguing with captain for 5 minutes. Flight is reopened. Organ gets on. The irony is that had the organ not been on, the surgeon would have had to get off, resulting in...you guessed it...reopening the flight. The final kicker was there was a 30 minute delay for ATC sector saturation anyway so the flight was departing late no matter what. The ops agent was clearly afraid to make the call. The sup was probably backing up the ops agent and being a complete moron. The captain rightfully stood his ground, but how many would have? I don't know the answer to that.

Metrics above all costs and leadership by intimidation are the hallmarks of failing organizations. That BS needs to be rooted out of this company.