Originally Posted by
TANSTAAFL
The liability thing is another Red Herring. Almost every other airline had their own FAA approved manuals that were far better than the factory, which is more a minimum standard.
There is no excuse in our world for lack of standardization - I don't buy the liability, we might be checked on it nonsense - now we are checked to two standards - the schoolhouse and the way we "really" do it.
I hear the liability excuse all the time - I think it's just a weak excuse for sloppy airmanship
I don't know if you are a captain or not, but I will tell you this: When I checked out a few years back, the In Command class (knife and fork school for new captains) got a visit from Greg Riggs who was at the time the Counsel General at DAL. After his little talk, I didn't EVER want to turn off the seat belt light. It's no red herring. It's very very real, and there are lawsuits. Can you imagine the financial liability to DAL if there is ever a procedural misstep that Boeing did not sanction and resulted in injury or worse? Now since we are using BA procedures and operations manuals, it's all on them. I really liked the DAL manuals we had before the BA change.. probably like you like the NWA manuals better: things were easy to find... they were more logical.. etc etc... But the fact is that all lawyers suck and they make the rules so we all have to deal with it.. unfortunately.