Stranded star blasts airline

I don't buy that a crew needs boarding completed 10 minutes prior for W&B. When I was doing them regularly, I could hammer out a manual trim in 5 minutes. There was this nifty little side chart for last minute calculations to revise to the final numbers. 10 minutes is WAY too long. Every employee should strive for an on time departure for every flight, but this is a customere service business. Sometimes hits need to be taken. For seven passengers that missed the 10 minute cutoff because they were on an inbound flight is not, IMO, acceptable.

For everyone, for the new gate agent to the senoir exec, I'll say it clearly. Our customers are the reason we're here and have jobs. If we're not afraid to take an occasional hit to give GOOD customer service, we deserve every hit we take on complaints threefold! Get your heads out of your asses, forget about D0 (DOT only cares about D5 anyway) and focus on the customers.
 
SS255 said:
I would. And when I take this flight, I book the 6:30AM out of LAX, not the 8:30AM......for precisely this reason. Unlike the cast of THE OFFICE, I am well aware of the reality of connecting from B-C to F in PHL.
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My guess is that this is the first and only visit to Scranton by the cast of The Office.
 
Closing the door ten minutes before boarding is ridiculous. They're loading bags for another five. That's enough time to fly 90 miles!(sm)
 
Express used to have a policy of having the paperwork 10 min prior to push. It has since been changed to 7 min.
Many many times especially on the CRJ 200, if you have an alternate you will need ballast. This 7 min gives you time to run the numbers and decide how much you need. Then run the numbers again. If you have a jet way it may still need to be moved and most importantly the block out times for express do not happen till pushback. 7 min isn't a lot of time.
 
The flight pushed on time according to flight aware. From what I've heard, they were late arriving at the gate and he saw the note that says "door closes ten minutes prior to departure". So, the 37 seat Dash 8 became "20 seats" and the airplane leaving on time became "the airplane left early" and you have some media attention for a spoiled child that has done this before. He had a similar tantrum when something similar happened with Alaska a few years ago.
 
cynic said:
The flight pushed on time according to flight aware. From what I've heard, they were late arriving at the gate and he saw the note that says "door closes ten minutes prior to departure". So, the 37 seat Dash 8 became "20 seats" and the airplane leaving on time became "the airplane left early" and you have some media attention for a spoiled child that has done this before. He had a similar tantrum when something similar happened with Alaska a few years ago.
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"....and that's the rest of the story." -- Paul Harvey
 
Over the past few years, I have seen MANY passengers that were not boarded even though the flight was still being loaded. When it comes to an Express flt, especially a DH-8, it's tough to explain to a passenger that they missed the flight when they can look outside and see bags being loaded for the next 10 min. My all-time favorite was seeing a group of people that weren't put on a Mainline flight that was still being fueled. Granted nobody wants to get pinned with a delay, but in some cases a bit of common sense and good judgement would be able to get a lot more people on their flights without taking a delay.
 
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If a plane is being fueled the jetway is still attached, that makes no sense not to board passengers.
 
nycbusdriver said:
Common sense and good judgement are management empowerments that SWA agents enjoy exercising. Don't look for that here, management has banned them.
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Very true indeed; it became much worse after Team Temp took over. Remember back when the Ancien Regime decided to empower all customer facing employees ? (Subject to the same guidelines). The idea was to get away from the notion of "I can't do that, you will need to speak a supv". Why, praytell, is the passenger wasting time speaking with the agent, when only the supv can do it? That concept also paints the supv into a corner. IIRC, complaints went down when those guidelines were in effect.
 
Does management really believe that customers purchase their tickets by looking at on-time performance?

Bad news....we just went out of business because we treated customers so badly.

Good news....we were always on-time!
 
nevergiveup said:
Does management really believe that customers purchase their tickets by looking at on-time performance?

Bad news....we just went out of business because we treated customers so badly.

Good news....we were always on-time!
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Mangement wants employees to know that customers mainly want only two things: to arrive on time with their bags. To arrive on time, it is necessary to leave on time.
The explanation I've been told is that waiting for a few late pax pisses off the rest of the pax already on the flight. Not waiting pisses off the least amount of customers.
Hoyle's airline rules according to mgmt.
Cheers.
 
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