AA73,

Your description of your ground personnel is what I am seeing every once and a while here at SWA. To be fair it is usually because we "surprised" them by being early, but occassionally it is the attitude you describe above. No doubt about it things are changing here at SWA.

 

Something fishy going on here.......

NEW YORK -

The chief financial officer of AMR Corp., the parent company of American Airlines, sold 103,984 shares of common stock, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday.

In a Form 4 filed with the SEC, Thomas Horton reported he sold the shares Thursday for $8.53 apiece.

Insiders file Form 4s with the SEC to report transactions in their companies' shares. Open market purchases and sales must be reported within two business days of the transaction.

AMR (nyse: AMR - news - people ) is based in Fort Worth, Texas.

 

Sorry to hear that, man.

 

You can also add CEO, EVP, and SVP to this list today. Something going down or is it just the normal sell and exercise options?

 

Actually it's quite simple. Gate agent has the bag count from T-point before anyone even boards the next flight. Scan the people and adds this number onto our load sheet. Hit's print and walks it down to us, were we put the numbers in the OPC (Laptop computer type think) and it spits out the speeds and trim settings. After we get the loadsheet from the Ops agent, takes about 30 seconds to enter it into the OPC. Off we go. Nothing special about it or program needed.

 

Nothing special except it is efficient.

 

You see, at SWA it's the gate agent that actually walks the paperwork down... whereas in our case, it's the load agent deep down in the caves of the dispatch center who ACARSes it over to us when the crew chief puts his numbers in. There's the difference. And that in a nutshell contributes to our slow taxi.

73

 

I've j/s'd on SWA it's a great system their load closeout and laptop. I wish we had something like it. We do complain to our Ops about slow closeouts.

We cannot get a closeout until brakes have been released. Anytime after that it may come on the printer.
If we do not receive our closeout within 7 minutes after taxi out, we are supposed to send an acars delay code. So they've actually made more heads down work for us during taxi out.

Years ago it was rumored that NWA management told the pilots to use the whole runway for deceleration to save brakes. At least that was the rumors I heard.
I never heard anyone complain or even question that.

Just last friday our union and company petitioned the FAA for an extension on our ASAP program.
Currently our company AA wants to be able to discharge or fire our pilots for ASAP reports. They currently cannot discharge other employee groups (mechanics and rampers) for ASAP infractions. Our union feels that if we agree to this, that the company will then change the other work groups asap's to include termination.
Fuqua or Foo Kwaa, in recurrent ground school they made a big deal of reporting to us that they had events of high high speed taxis in excess of 56 knots in 757's at AA. Not just once. All but one going to the gate. One going out for takeoff.

Our system chief pilot is not current on any piece of equip. He has no respect form the pilots.
We do not have a deadhead policy and can be deadheaded anywhere globally that AA flies to or from in coach while one or all of the flight attendants are in first class.
We are really short handed and while not flying as much as our UAL pilot friends we (and most other airline pilots) are fatigued and cranky.

Could any of that have something to do with slow taxi speeds?

 

FOQA...not Kudwa...the clean Marine left a long time ago.

And yes, you are cranky.

FF

 

What happened to the good old days of the "BLUE FLU"?