Not all......

 

When rampers start doing a walk around/preflight on the airplane, I tyypically start doing a walk around/preflight on the baggage cart.

 

The procedure at Delta has the rampers focus mainly around the service doors and cargo bins looking for any damage that might have been caused by ground equipment. Once on taxi in, to make sure there is none present, and once before pushing, to make sure they didn't cause any damage. Since there is usually GSE around the doors when a pilot does his walkaround, he may not see any damage.

The ALA is also supposed to give the plane an overall look, and bring anything that doesn't seem right to MX's attention. That way, if something needs to be fixed, MX may already be working on it before the pilots get to the plane, thus reducing delays caused by damage.

I found all this out one day by finding some FOD damage to the underside leading edge by the wing root. Seems something was kicked up and struck the plane below the 2L door, then traveled back and hit the wing fillet area, leaving a groove in the fiberglass and knocking paint off. Went unnoticed for close to two hours as the plane was unloaded and then prepped for a crossing. MX even missed it on the ETOPS check. We ended up taking a two hour delay waiting on the engineering repair order from Boeing. The AMTs were joking that that ramp supervisor was going to be ****ed because his department was gonna get the delay charged to them.

 

Speaking of rampies...

http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/ma...ska-ooops.html

 

You don't even know what the actual procedure is, that is the rub.

Maybe you can ask your ramper buddy about how it works during his next "what is this?" text message.

 

or windy, or cloudy, or hot, or cold, or sunny, or Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday, or Saturday, or Sunday. Truthfully, I have no problem with that. They did their walk arounds when they were FOs or SOs.

 

I must be broken then because walkarounds are one of the things I miss about being in the left seat. After being in the tube for a few hours, some alone time outside is nice. Just not at 5am. In Minot. In January. With all our knuckle-busting latches. But a May morning in Pensacola? I'll get this one junior :P

 

 

Maybe i'm the odd one out, but so far at Delta, all but 1 of my Captains have done the walk around when it was my leg to fly.

 

CAs go by the 70/30 rule. If it's 70 degrees or warmer, there'll be a 30% chance they'll do the walk.

For you up tight/anal retentive sorts, it's an OLD joke.