Originally Posted by
LeeFXDWG
UA's policy used to be to use lids on the coffee cups....of course, can't tell you how many times catering failed to provide them. On the Bus at least, most of the FA's I'd fly with would pass the coffee over the outside shoulder when you had your seat forward and even put it in the cup holder in many cases. What a nice cockpit design.
Hopefully, there won't be some knee jerk reaction to this incident which is not new by any means. Regulating common sense never succeeds. You are correct however by saying that this type of stuff should be written up. Happened to me twice in my time at UA. Once on the 200 and once on the 300/500. Nothing happened but wrote it up anyway. Then again....we had a lot more mechanics then to deal with it!
Lee
coffee is the big deal because many crews like sugar in it. the coffee isn't a bid deal but the Sugar? welds contacts like STEEL when voltage pass thru it. Saw it light up a fire panel where if the capt hadn't been a "cool hand" he'd have done some real damage to the airplane. As it was, he and the FO looked out the window, didn't see any smoke,
called SAMC, and dispatch found a place to land. But he did say all those warnings going off at once made him "pucker up". Me? That seat cover would have had a SPIRE in it!!