Major Weather Event

[MarkMyWords]

Scanning Yahoo Transportation news and you find the following press releases from other airlines reguarding flex travel policies and severe weather impacting operations. Where is ours? :angry:

American Airlines Offers Increased Travel Options Due to Severe Weather In Chicago and the Northeast

ATA Sets Policy For Passengers Traveling To and From Indianapolis or Charlotte Jan. 27; To or From Chicago and Select Eastern Cities Jan. 27 or Jan. 28

United Revises Ticket Policies for Travel Affected by Winter Weather in The Midwest and Northeast

Guess Corporate Communications is to busy touting the possible sale of assets to know that there will be a severe weather impact on operations.

 

[BoeingBoy]

MMW,

I did see something in one article (think it was in CLT paper) but it was buried in discussion of overall effects of the storm. Think it was on Monday.

Jim

 

[FM2436]

Last night in Clt, just one incident I heard of, 2 gates 1 beltloader working for both & according to the lead no shift manager to be found!!!!!!!!! Of course many other delays due to wx..

DISCLAMER:
This was heard from a clt empl......

I have first hand knowledge of the conditions at CLT last evening. The ramp had about 1 inch of ice on it and the majority of the departure delays were for late arriving equipment and de-icing procedures. My flight sat at the gate with the jetway detached for 180 minutes and then after pushback, we waited almost 60 minutes to get through the car wash. Overall, the cancellations on the monitors were not as bad as they could have been. Most of the cancellations were for Express turbos and EMB-145's which don't fly very well in icing conditions. There were many reserve crews waiting in case of crew time-outs and I think the US was fairly well prepared for the conditions that were present.

Spin Doc,

Didn't you say you were NOT an U emplolyee? How can you have first hand knowledge of anything sitting from a seat on an airplane on the runway????????

You must be Houdini....

I'd think a revenue paying passenger sitting from a seat on an airplane on the runway in the middle of a snow and ice storm would have first knowledge of conditions at CLT. I don't agree with his comment about turboprops and RJs not fly very well in icing conditions. You can blame the sensationized media reporting for a passengers perception of that belief.

An airline can create the greatest winter storm plan ever demised. But it won't work if the airport management/owner can't, or has difficulty plowing, sweeping, and blowing the snow and ice off the movement areas to a minimum of a fair/poor braking action.

 

[lindy]

MMW,

Over the past four days, I did a fair amount of research on your allegation that there was "NO PLAN." I got my information from various sources. Let me tell you what I learned:

Conference calls were held, up to three a day, between OCC, the major stations, maintenance, and weather vendors. These calls dealt with the progress of the storm, station readiness, de-icing output, FAA restrictions, and tactical/strategic cancellations. In addition, updates of "THE PLAN" were disseminated through out the Company.

How successful was the plan? Let's take a few examples. Initial forcasts were that
Clt was going to be severely impacted on Sunday and snow would reach the DCA/PHL area by late afternoon/early evening. By all accounts, CLT did just fine until they lost several de-icing trucks in the early evening. Snow did not reach the DCA area until 2000. Had the Metro Authority not taken so long to clear the runway, we would not have taken the cancellations due to the take-off curfew. PHL ran just fine. Gee, certainly am glad cancellations were not made on this forecast.

Monday/Tuesday had tactical and strategic cancellations for PHL/LGA/DCA/BOS. This was done in concert with station/maintenance input. In fact, initial forecasts for BOS were to have 6-10 inches of snow to fall between late Tuesday and all day Wednesday. Based on changing forecasts throughout the day on Tuesday, strategic cancellations were not made for BOS on Wednesday. Good thing. Boston received less than two inches of snow by early afternoon.

So, Mark, as you can see, there was "A PLAN." I guess you don't occupy a positon within US Airways to know what "THE PLAN" is. Instead, you decide to come on an open forum, knowing there are passengers who peruse this forum, and lambaste the COMPANY and fellow employees for being un-prepared. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

One last item to be mentioned. I always have a plan. The plan these past few days was to transport passengers as safely and efficiently to their destination. If their travel plans were to be interrupted, I would let the professional people of the CWA come to their aid. This is when we truly earn our money, when we have to react to unplanned sitations.

I could not end this missive without addressing PITBull. You are truly the Queen of Negativity, the Princess of Sarcasm. "Spindoc" makes a statement, from a passenger viewpoint, that they did not believe CLT was operating badly. Yet, you verbally attack a paying passenger. How utterly crass. Thank-God you spend your time at Denny's playing with your Blackberry. I retract everything I said about you flying a trip. You should not be around the paying passenger.

Lindy

Disclaimer: Not the view of US Airways or any employee. Just someone who cares about the TRUTH.

 

[BoeingBoy]

lindy,

Thanks for the info. I, for one, wouldn't want to work in OCC during these wx events. If you go with the forecast and it proves to be wrong, you've screwed up. If you disregard the forecast and it proves accurate, you've screwed up. All you can do is make sure everyone and everything is prepared and do your best.

Jim

ps - I have sat in an airplane and wondered "what in the world are they thinking" however. Just goes to show that pilots aren't happy unless they're complaining.

 

[FM2436]

MMW,

Over the past four days, I did a fair amount of research on your allegation that there was "NO PLAN." I got my information from various sources. Let me tell you what I learned:

Conference calls were held, up to three a day, between OCC, the major stations, maintenance, and weather vendors. These calls dealt with the progress of the storm, station readiness, de-icing output, FAA restrictions, and tactical/strategic cancellations. In addition, updates of "THE PLAN" were disseminated through out the Company.

How successful was the plan? Let's take a few examples. Initial forcasts were that
Clt was going to be severely impacted on Sunday and snow would reach the DCA/PHL area by late afternoon/early evening. By all accounts, CLT did just fine until they lost several de-icing trucks in the early evening. Snow did not reach the DCA area until 2000. Had the Metro Authority not taken so long to clear the runway, we would not have taken the cancellations due to the take-off curfew. PHL ran just fine. Gee, certainly am glad cancellations were not made on this forecast.

Monday/Tuesday had tactical and strategic cancellations for PHL/LGA/DCA/BOS. This was done in concert with station/maintenance input. In fact, initial forecasts for BOS were to have 6-10 inches of snow to fall between late Tuesday and all day Wednesday. Based on changing forecasts throughout the day on Tuesday, strategic cancellations were not made for BOS on Wednesday. Good thing. Boston received less than two inches of snow by early afternoon.

So, Mark, as you can see, there was "A PLAN." I guess you don't occupy a positon within US Airways to know what "THE PLAN" is. Instead, you decide to come on an open forum, knowing there are passengers who peruse this forum, and lambaste the COMPANY and fellow employees for being un-prepared. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

One last item to be mentioned. I always have a plan. The plan these past few days was to transport passengers as safely and efficiently to their destination. If their travel plans were to be interrupted, I would let the professional people of the CWA come to their aid. This is when we truly earn our money, when we have to react to unplanned sitations.

I could not end this missive without addressing PITBull. You are truly the Queen of Negativity, the Princess of Sarcasm. "Spindoc" makes a statement, from a passenger viewpoint, that they did not believe CLT was operating badly. Yet, you verbally attack a paying passenger. How utterly crass. Thank-God you spend your time at Denny's playing with your Blackberry. I retract everything I said about you flying a trip. You should not be around the paying passenger.

Lindy

Disclaimer: Not the view of US Airways or any employee. Just someone who cares about the TRUTH.

lindy:

EXCELLENT!

 

[Heinrich]

Hello,

I was on a nightmare flight #1109 on Tuesday from ALB to PHL. It was no one's fault - we approached PHL 2x right as freezing rain started. Everyone did a LOT to make sure I was taken care of as much as possible. But there were two things I was curious about.

#1 - I received one comment from one employee that a lot of flights were diverted from PHL to PIT due to fuel issues as the delays mounted. We circled for 30 minutes before giving up. IF we had waited the weather out we would have made it. I realize that safety is #1 concern. But why don't they put more fuel on the planes under these conditions?

#2 - I missed my flight by 15 minutes. That hurt my feelings a bit. Considering they needed to de-ice, and things were hours behind in the first place, my initial reaction was "they should have waited for me!" I realize that's very self-centered and I often feel annoyed when I hear it from others, but, that's just how I felt as it took about 4 hours to go from ALB-PHL and I missed my connection. How are these decisions to made? What made it worse is that we landed just across the hall from the missed connection.

Thanks guys for the great customer service. If I have to fly Helta again starting this summer I'm finding another job.

 

[TomBascom]

#2 - I missed my flight by 15 minutes. That hurt my feelings a bit... What made it worse is that we landed just across the hall from the missed connection.

It always works that way! F39 to A26 will never misconnect -- even if you pull in to F39 an hour late and have to wait 30 minutes for your planeside bag. But B11 to B13 is a completely different story :blink:

I swear that there is special code in the computers for this -- actually marketing probably ought to be notified -- they could spin it as a customer fitness benefit and charge extra B)

Anyhow -- to Lindy & MMW's points... I think that there is plenty of room for both points of view. Obviously a lot of planning does go on. But could it be better? Especially in the customer contact arena? Definitely!

 

[BoeingBoy]

Heinrich,

You asked "But why don't they put more fuel on the planes under these conditions?"

I wasn't there so obviously have no specific insight, but here's a possibility....

The maximum landing weight is well below the maximum takeoff weight so on shorter flights the landing weight can become the limiting factor. Given the conditions that existed, I would assume that as much fuel was put on as possible, considering normal fuel burn (no delays) would result in being below maximum landing weight at arrival.

At the other end of the spectrum, so to speak, regulations (and safety) require a flight to arrive at the destination with no less fuel than is required to fly to an alternate airport plus hold for 45 minutes. Therefore, when holding as you were, the amount of fuel needed to fly to your destination and make the approach, plus fly to the alternate, plus hold 45 minutes more becomes a minimum fuel quantity. When it is reached, the pilots must either proceed to the destination (if possible) or divert to an alternate airport.

Presumably, your crew held as long as possible after the 2 attempts to get into PHL given the above.

Hope this helps,

Jim

 

[MarkMyWords]

Lindy -

While conference calls are great, were there ever plans to try and consolidate flights when and where possible? Was there ever a plan to reduce the flight schedule in effected airports if the weather became an operational problem? No. The plan was to "run everything" until weather became a factor and then react accordingly.

Let's look at a few of the items you spoke of. You said CLT did a great job until several pieces of deicing equipment broke down. 100% correct. The employees of CLT deserve a standing ovation for their handeling of the icing event. However, the deicing truck problems began around 4-5p. If the company knew that 25-50% of the deicers broke down, why did we continue to try and operate a full schedule? Why weren't their plans put in place to try and reduce CLT departures to something more manageable on the 8-10p banks? Instead, we sent flts to deice where they spent hours waiting to deice, with several returning to the gate and canceling due to crew legalities. If we knew there was a problem at 5p, why was there no reaction to it?

PHL's Mon/Tues/Wed operations should have been thinned out. Deicing delays, especially in the morning peak banks range from 30 min to 2 hours. Tuesday night deicing delays peaked at 4 hours! Is this acceptable to you? It isn't to me. I am sure it isn't to the customers that sat in gridlock in PHL.....I should know.....I was there! My flight was delayed departing the gate nearly 1.5 hours due to gridlock and then we sat out there to be deiced for another 3 hours. A 10:00pm departure and we didn't lift off until almost 2:30 and arrived home at 3:30am! But you had a plan right?

While you may feel that we have accurately planned for these situations, I feel that we could do much better. Bookings were light this week, so why wouldn't we try to consolidate flights and make the operation run much smoother? I could understand the "run everything" mentality if the flights were all full, but there was room for consolidation that would have enhanced the operation. While I understand the changes in forecasted weather and the need for the operational plan to be flexible, we also need to address and react to problems as they come up.

 

[700UW]

MWM,

On Monday night in CLT the last bank was reduced a lot and the second to last was a little.

 

[MarkMyWords]

So, did we learn from our mistakes on Sunday, or was this just a coincedence?

I guess my point of contention primarily is with PHL. There is not a person in the company, or on this board, that doesn't know that if you have a weather event in PHL, the operation will be negatively effected. Then why do we continue to 1) schedule PHL as a bankign hub. 2) continue to try and operate 100% of the flights during these events.

 

[Heinrich]

MarkMyWords,

I as well was stuck in PHL de-icing for about 1.5-2 hours. Previously I had been diverted to PIT and was deiced almost immediately. This speaks more towards the reduction in service to PIT due to low O&D traffic & high airport fees. It seemed that we got a far more thorough de-icing in PHL than in PIT. Also there was at least one A330 I saw and that took a long time - we were told there was a BA 767 (I think) and a few more transcontinental flights in big craft.

When I did get to the deicing station, they were all in operation - every single station.

I'm not sure what kind of plan you are thinking of. It would be quick to say they should be using PIT more but there are compelling business reasons unrelated to weather that they are not. If there were deicing stations not being used I could understand your complaint.

 

[ilg30/7]

Mark,

The operation was thinned out in Clt Monday night as conditions deteriorated with light freezing rain and freezing drizzle. The last bank was removed and other select cancellations were made.

The same thing happened in Lga on Tuesday night. They were forecasted to get hit with 6-10 inches of snow by Wednesday morning. We took out most of the terminating flights Tuesday night, and mostly as a result, cancelled most of the early AM departures Wednesday morning.

Phl was predicted to be out of the path of the heaviest precip., with 1-2 inches forecast for the overnight period Tuesday night. This forecast was revised signifigantly from Monday, when Phl was predicting a major weather event. Plans were in place to reduce the Phl operation had the snow been heavier. Was Phl impacted with delays anyway due to the weather? Certainly. Was it severe? Not this time. The unfortunate reality is that Phl is a difficult operational environment, and if we reduced flights everytime there was any kind of delay program there, it would not even qualify as a focus city.

Unfortunately, weather prediction is not an exact science. We are never going to be able to have zero cancellations and no delays during a weather event. The goal of everyone in operations is to minimize the impact to the system and to our costomers. One good indication of how well an airline is run is how long it takes to recover after the storm passes. By Wednesday afternoon, we were back up and running a full schedule.

 

[ClueByFour]

This speaks more towards the reduction in service to PIT due to low O&D traffic & high airport fees. It seemed that we got a far more thorough de-icing in PHL than in PIT.

2 comments:

The PIT O&D point is getting old, and is still incorrect (PIT's O&D is higher than CLT, and would be much higher than CLT if half a million boardings did not drive to CLE every year for the much more realistic fares).

The "thorough" de-icing in PHL was probably due to the fact that simply by going thru PHL, you were sitting on the ground at the gate and enroute to the de-iceing pads for about 5 times as long as you would have had to wait at PIT.