iaflyer

It's the way of the world nowadays - and if it's true (as apparently this is, as Delta has responded and acknowledged that the FF texting is correct) then it's in the company's interest to get in front of the story, no matter who's publishing it.

It used to be you needed a news organization and a printing press to get news out. Now you just need a Twitter account - for better or worse, the news can't be corralled by only news organizations.

4fans

The A line told me door closed.

PilotJ3

FAs are legal to start, legal to finish. Unless the door opens, then it’s a different story.

waldo135

Along the same lines, had a trip last week. Delayed in NYC. Waited about 2 hours to board. As boarding is almost complete, I hear a rumbling from the FAs. They are bumping up against ‘timing out’. No mention of this up until now. Boarding completes and they take another 10 minutes making calls and trying to decide if they are going to continue. Eventually, they decided their desire to go home over weighed their desire to continue the fight for more money. WTH. Is there any way for a CA to know the FAs are ‘timing out’? And what exactly are their rulers vis-a-vis continuing?

4fans

Even if you do know, the company probably won’t do anything about it until they actually call it quits. Just like if we refused an extension. Then you are sitting there with a loaded plane and the potential that them quitting will push you past your duty limit also.

DALFA

The sad part is that there's actually no FAR which limits a duty period of a flight attendant in the event of a delay. There's only "Scheduled" limitations. The only limitations are in the "work rules", but even then...it's an "option off" and not a mandatory thing. I've seen plenty of domestic duty periods go to 18-19-20+ hours.

80ktsClamp

Had a brain fart when I typed that... the FA that sent it to me framed it as the pilots were doing it. It was clearly between OCC people and the pilot(s) wasn't (weren't) even logged in.

sailingfun

The flight attendant rules are in their red book. You can download a copy from Deltanet. If they are going to time out the company often sends a ACARS message authorizing additional pay if they will continue. I have never seen the company force them to work beyond the red book limits with one exception about 15 years ago in ATL. The crew would have been on duty for 20 hours. I removed them from the flight and asked for airport standbys. A inflight supervisor showed up and told me this was not my decision. I begged to differ and we left with standbys. The flight attendants certainly should inform the Captain if they are close to timing out.
Sometimes the flight attendants will try and negotiate the amount of pay to extend. When the 747 was having so many issues flying to TLV the usual TLV FA’s kept upping their demands for extension on the return from TLV to the point the company took the trip from the NY flight attendants and deadheaded ATL crews to NY to staff the flight until the NY crews agreed to play nice.

flyallnite

Here we have a good example of the pitfalls of this sort of technology (FF). Just imagine if it were some pilot saying something like "it's broken but we will press on" or "the FA is _______" and it gets forwarded to the media... can you say "Field Day?" Consider it a warning to not put anything on it you don't want picked up and misconstrued as unsafe or non-PC. After this whole incident with SD on CNN I could see the company rethinking FF and @workplace.

waldo135

That makes sense now. The FAs were ‘negotiating’ and eventually got what they wanted or gave up.