PlayTheOdds
Veteran
Have you ever heard the term "If it isn't broke don't fix it."? Where do they get some of these guys from? NWA brings in a brand new workforce and basically gives them free reign to make this work. Well it did work, worked beyond anyone’s expectations for that matter. We came in here and kicked arse, that’s all there is to it. Well the NWA management team has been taking the reins and things are slowly turning south for us. We took our worst week for delays this year in April because management does not want us to greet the aircraft anymore. They want us to go out to the aircraft on an "on call basis." There are a couple of rumors as to why this is, I think it is a combination of both.
"We are short on manpower so go to the aircraft only when called." The problem with this is that many times if there is a write-up it is not sent to us across ACARS so we do not know there is a write-up until the next crew comes on board and calls us. By this time passengers are loading. So the problem immediately gets deferred or fixed with a delay. Same goes for anything found during the pilots walk around. We are losing precious ground time waiting on calls.
Next rumor, "We are finding too much wrong and trying to fix it or defer it, upper management thinks that if you don't see it, it isn't broke. A lot of the things that we find would not have been found by the pilot."
I didn't put much credit towards this one until one day after our horrible week of delays we took it upon ourselves to greet the aircraft and had a delay for an item we found. We were asked, "Who found the item?" No big deal right? That question was followed up with, "Why were you out there if you were not called?"
I could not believe I was being asked that. They want us to sit out on a originating aircraft with a fresh Line Check for an hour in the event something goes wrong, but they do not want us to greet the inbound aircraft. It is silly things like this that gets under the skin of contractors and sends them on their way. When we greet the aircraft our delay count is low, when we don't greet it the delay count goes up. It's pretty much a no brainer as to which way you need to go with this.
Here's another good one. They have this new checklist for waking the birds up. It has a larger scope than a TA check that would have just been accomplished on the aircraft if not a Line check. This is just crazy.
There are a bunch of little things that are beginning to add up that are going to run more contractors out of here. I do hope that NWA realizes soon that we do not need nor want to be Micro Managed.
I might add that we are getting eleven AMFA Boys that crossed from MSP.
"We are short on manpower so go to the aircraft only when called." The problem with this is that many times if there is a write-up it is not sent to us across ACARS so we do not know there is a write-up until the next crew comes on board and calls us. By this time passengers are loading. So the problem immediately gets deferred or fixed with a delay. Same goes for anything found during the pilots walk around. We are losing precious ground time waiting on calls.
Next rumor, "We are finding too much wrong and trying to fix it or defer it, upper management thinks that if you don't see it, it isn't broke. A lot of the things that we find would not have been found by the pilot."
I didn't put much credit towards this one until one day after our horrible week of delays we took it upon ourselves to greet the aircraft and had a delay for an item we found. We were asked, "Who found the item?" No big deal right? That question was followed up with, "Why were you out there if you were not called?"
I could not believe I was being asked that. They want us to sit out on a originating aircraft with a fresh Line Check for an hour in the event something goes wrong, but they do not want us to greet the inbound aircraft. It is silly things like this that gets under the skin of contractors and sends them on their way. When we greet the aircraft our delay count is low, when we don't greet it the delay count goes up. It's pretty much a no brainer as to which way you need to go with this. Here's another good one. They have this new checklist for waking the birds up. It has a larger scope than a TA check that would have just been accomplished on the aircraft if not a Line check.
This is just crazy.There are a bunch of little things that are beginning to add up that are going to run more contractors out of here. I do hope that NWA realizes soon that we do not need nor want to be Micro Managed.
I might add that we are getting eleven AMFA Boys that crossed from MSP.
