Originally Posted by
Hotel Kilo
You said supervisor. The FOM is pretty clear about your role as Captain. Be one.
That doesn't mean ordering them to serve. It does mean pushing back when they are calling about it being "too rough to serve" when in smooth air or occasional light chop. Same goes when they call you to tell/ask you to turn on the belts to give them an excuse to not do the service.
I have no idea what the cabin crew are doing back there when the door is locked. If they call and ask I tell them what I think. Am I supposed go back there and supervise….Im sorry, CAPTAIN (by god!) them in to doing the job they were hired and trained to do by another department with its own manuals and management? Why aren’t our chief pilots calling them and demanding they do better?
If in-flight is getting complaints then they need to rectify that, not demand that pilots create bad CRM scenarios by pretending to know how be their proxy-bosses.
Fortunately in my experience in the real world I haven’t seen many issues with this. especially lately, except for my anecdote upthread about the OE instructor the other day. if I sense them calling me looking for an excuse I tell them straight up I think it is safe to bust out the carts. That said, I am reticent to cross the line in to telling them what to do. For a few reasons.
also, the FOM is actually fairly vague about our role. I won’t post the language here publicly but it uses extremely broad terms and offers very few specifics. I don’t believe 10.2.2.1 encapsulates becoming an IFS quality control officer.