The Airline Problem vs The Union Solution

[ThirdSeatHero]

PTO you're really just making this up as you go.

A 2 day engine change and its no big deal.

You get questioned on an 8 hour delay, and you have the gawl to tell the questioner they don't know what they're talking about???

You are one sad individual.


OH BTW when put in for rehire after your summers over, get ready for midnight shift. Gets awful cold up north, even more so at night.

 

[jenny@nw]

This sounds to me like another, "How many mechanics does it take to change a light bulb?" story. I don't doubt that you flight was delayed for eight hours over a landing gear issue but I do doubt the eight-hour tire change. In comparison you can say it took me five hours to install a hubcap. A simple enough task right? Should have taken all of twenty minutes including delivery, paperwork and BS-ing with the crew. What? Parts NIS DTW? No big deal I'll defer it. HHHHMMMMM, no deferral relief for a missing hubcap. Now I get to sit around and wait on a flight to bring one in. PTO gets his part, now what? This is just the hubcap, I ordered an assembly. Now I have to put on the gutless hubcap and defer the anti-skid and other related shet. These are in-depth DDG's that require yet more time. So Jenny@NW do you see how the simplest shet can get out of hand? So I seriously doubt that your simple tire change was in fact a simple tire change. I think it is more like eight hours of ignorance on your part as to what was going on.

I remember that delay as if it were YESTERDAY. I'm no mechanic but ... what I understood was some nut got loose and hit the tire and damaged it to the point that it would be unsafe to land on, according to the F/O.

The 8 hr DELAY was due partly to the fact that NONE OF THE MX from other AIRLINES wanted to help the SCAB MX out.
nor did they want to let him have any parts.......

what a tough job.

Poor scabanic was on the phone for at least an hour with MSP...........crying............

You get questioned on an 8 hour delay, and you have the gawl to tell the questioner they don't know what they're talking about???

You are one sad individual.

Thirdseathero, my hero......... :wub: neglected to check what he wrote earlier. Suddenly these long drawn out h34r: PTO rantings are looking like some dry reading with the same repetitious rhetoric.

 

[PlayTheOdds]

I remember that delay as if it were YESTERDAY. I'm no mechanic but ... what I understood was some nut got loose and hit the tire and damaged it to the point that it would be unsafe to land on, according to the F/O.
The 8 hr DELAY was due partly to the fact that NONE OF THE MX from other AIRLINES wanted to help the SCAB MX out.
nor did they want to let him have any parts.......what a tough job.
Poor scabanic was on the phone for at least an hour with MSP...........crying............

Now we get the rest of the story.

 

[jenny@nw]

Now we get the rest of the story.

did it sound like one of your fairy tales? because it was. it took them 8 hrs to fix it. :down:

 

[robbedagain]

wow! 8 hrs. wonder why it didnt take pto a whole yr to change the tire!

 

[Kev3188]

Quick question, do you think the IAM would have ever let this go to a strike for you guys?

Well, with over 90% of us voting to strike, they wouldn't have had much choice.....

 

[local 12 proud]

Now this was pretty stupid. Probably got snitched out by a Scab.

WOW I sure feel safe flying NWA. Thanks for verifying your lack of character and ethics and overall reminding us why NWA is not safe.....

Plus allowing a plane smelling like shet to Hawaii... that's really pathetic.

I'm sure the pilots complained. Who wants to be stuck in the cockpit smelling shet all day.

What did you expect coming from a moron who admittedly hand carries buckets of 'blue juice' onto an aircraft to service an UNserviceable lav?

 

[robbedagain]

What did you expect coming from a moron who admittedly hand carries buckets of 'blue juice' onto an aircraft to service an UNserviceable lav?

you cant expect much when you dont have much to work with!

 

[Necrophilias]

We all know that A/C maint. at NW is in question right now but reading airline reviews (like the one below) will show that other problems may exist. I've not had many problems with NW staff but apparently the writer below had a different experience.

Back to A/C maint. More coming today.

Readers Choice for Worst Airline, and winner of Ask the Pilot's Golden Pretzel Award...

Northwest Airlines

Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a polite semitropolis built on cold Scandinavian sensibilities. It's the home of Husker Du, the Replacements, and Walter Mondale. How much awful, really, can be wrought from the Mini Apple? What could be worse than Prince?

Your answer: Northwest Airlines, the city's most well-known commercial export. Not even that sparkling new concourse in Detroit was enough to save Northwest from an abhorrent last place finish in my poll. Fifty million people flew the carrier last year, just about all of whom sent me emails, their assorted and endless agonies documented in weepingly painful detail.

"Brusque, apathetic service, annoyed flight attendants, terrible food, no thought for comfort or enjoyment."

"Northworst personnel -- at the check-in counter, the gate, and onboard -- are often downright rude. Very rarely have I had a trip without a put-down from at least one of them."

"I ask for milk, as opposed to creamer. 'We are saving it for breakfast,' I'm told. 'Oh, just give it to him,' says a more senior attendant who happens to walk by. Last October coming from Amsterdam, I walk to the galley and ask for orange juice an hour before landing. 'We're closed.' Oh, and the pretzels are now thrown at passengers; the food trays slammed down. You'd think that half the cabin crew on any given flight have just lost their mothers and are working through their tears."

"Flight attendants serve a meal 20 minutes after takeoff, then hide for seven hours."

"Unsmiling, unhelpful flight attendants. They taunt me with their prices, convince me against my better judgement to buy another ticket with the hopes it'll be different this time, and then make me hate myself two hours into a ten hour ride to Tokyo."

"Horrible; surly service in the air, inattentive and dismissive gate personnel."

"To Europe on a DC-10! Are you kidding?"

Northwest has been phasing in Airbus A330s, but for now continues to use graying DC-10s across the ocean. It is the last major to operate '70s-era widebodies on intercontinental passenger routes, and the carrier's fleet ranks eldest in the world. Aviation history buffs can appreciate that Northwest is the oldest (large) carrier in the United States, founded in 1926, but clearly this is taking the honor a bit too literally. One thing to make clear: this is not a safety issue, but these planes lack the entertainment systems and other accoutrements to keep them competitive on longer-range services.

But more importantly for the airline, if one consistent thread wove its way through nearly all of the anti-Northwest mail I received, it was that of the demeanor of its employees, particularly cabin staff. My poll reveals how certain airlines have cultivated their own special areas of disappointment. At Delta it's unkempt planes; at American it's hub delays. At Northwest, judging from your remarks, it's a collective personality disorder bordering on violent psychosis.

Am I going too far with this? Just when I congratulate myself for avoiding gratuitous bashing, I decide to bash gratuitous. I'm just having fun, and besides I have an axe to grind: As part of Northwest's recent livery makeover, one of my all time favorite corporate trademarks -- the ingenious "NW" compass, devised by Landor Associates and in use since 1989 -- was uglified beyond recognition. As I described it in a column last year, it was "bastardized into a lazy abstraction."

I've had plenty of good (and a few bad) rides on Northwest, including several to Europe during the 1990s, when I always found the crews welcoming and hospitable. With my own recollections helping to demonstrate, let's bear in mind last week's lesson about first impressions and the fickle subjectivity of airline loyalties. To whit...

"I vote Northwest as the best airline in the US. Almost always on time, decent service, decent planes."

"They've won me over by doing nothing fancy, but getting me where I want to go, at a reasonable price, with reasonable comfort and reasonable service and friendliness."

Runners-up, Readers Choice Hall of Shame...

America West

 

[robbedagain]

funny but very good post Necro!

 

[Necrophilias]

A local newspaper reported that safety concerns at NW have escalated.

FAA airline safety checks faulted
Inspectors don't keep up with outsourced maintenance, watchdog says
BY MARTIN J. MOYLAN
Pioneer Press
While the past three years have been the safest in U.S. airline history, the Federal Aviation Administration is not paying enough attention to commercial aircraft maintenance work, a federal watchdog agency says.

The FAA is not adequately monitoring the work done by outside contractors or keeping a close enough eye on how the dire financial straits of some airlines may affect the quality of aircraft maintenance.

Safety inspections at low-cost carriers are not increasing in line with their rapid growth. And budget cuts will mean the loss of some 300 FAA safety inspectors this year.

Those were some of the key concerns expressed in a report issued Wednesday by the Department of Transportation.

While there has not been a fatal accident involving a large U.S. passenger airline in more than three years, there have been worrisome incidents and maintenance lapses, the department's inspector general noted.

"The FAA must … assure the public that industry changes, including financial distress and growth, do not compromise safety,'' the report said

Airplane safety has been a hot-button issue at Northwest Airlines, as mechanics have questioned the carrier's slashing of in-house maintenance workers in favor of sending the work to outside companies.

Eagan-based Northwest insists that safety has not been compromised, saying that its increasingly younger fleet requires fewer mechanics and that the quality of third-party work is as good as work done in-house.

The mechanics union disagrees.

"The FAA doesn't have the resources to monitor third-party vendors,'' said Ted Ludwig, president of Local 33 of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, which is in contract talks with the carrier. "We are headed for disaster if the FAA continues to be run like this, and the carriers are put in charge of monitoring outsourcing."

Northwest Airlines, which has lost about $3 billion on its operations since the start of 2001, has eliminated more than four of 10 aircraft maintenance jobs during that time. It has proposed eliminating still more maintenance jobs.

Currently, Northwest is bumping up against its contractual limit on how much of its aircraft maintenance can be performed by outside companies. It wants its mechanics union to agree to raise that limit. (By one measure, 51 percent of its maintenance work is outsourced. An internal company formula puts the total at 38 percent.)

The inspector general's office wants increased monitoring of outsourced maintenance. The report said it found that with one carrier, the FAA planned only seven inspections of outside maintenance contractors in a year, even though those vendors did more than half that carrier's aircraft maintenance.

In another worrisome move, the report said, one unnamed airline increased its fleet by 56 percent over three years while cutting its mechanics by 14 percent. Yet the FAA "did not identify the increase in flights and reduction in mechanics as risks or evaluate the impact … on the air carrier's maintenance and operations."

The inspector general's office also reported that in the federal fiscal year of 2003, FAA employees did not complete 26 percent — or 938 — of the safety inspections planned at five big carriers, including Northwest. And with three struggling carriers, the FAA did not significantly increase surveillance of them until they were in or near bankruptcy.

Overall, though, the report points out the airline industry's "excellent safety record,'' contended Jack Evans, spokesman for the Air Transport Association.

"FAA inspections are secondary to the robust quality-assurance programs the airlines adhere to in overseeing all maintenance work,'' he said. "Those programs continue to produce the safety results the public expects."

The FAA dismissed many of the report's findings, arguing the quality of airline maintenance and the FAA's oversight of it is sound, given the safety of air travel in recent years.

The charge of FAA inspectors is not to kick every tire or check every turn of wench, said spokeswoman Alison Duquette.

"What they do is make sure the airlines are identifying and managing risks," she said.

While the inspector general's report said that airlines outsource an average of 53 percent of their maintenance expenses, Duquette argued that figure is inflated.

Anyway, she said, "Work is being done at the highest level regardless of where it is performed. "

The FAA will lose safety inspectors because of budget cuts, but the agency will have enough to "cover the system," Duquette said.

The union for the safety inspectors disputes that.

"Staffing is a big concern for us,'' said Linda Goodrich, a leader of the Professional Airways Systems Specialists. "And we have significant concerns over outsourcing. We just don't have the personnel to get to those locations."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Martin J. Moylan covers airlines and can be reached at [email protected] or 651-228-5479.

 

[jenny@nw]

interesting posts.......... thanks for sharing...

"Northworst personnel -- at the check-in counter, the gate, and onboard -- are often downright rude. Very rarely have I had a trip without a put-down from at least one of them."

"I ask for milk, as opposed to creamer. 'We are saving it for breakfast,' I'm told. 'Oh, just give it to him,' says a more senior attendant who happens to walk by. Last October coming from Amsterdam, I walk to the galley and ask for orange juice an hour before landing. 'We're closed.' Oh, and the pretzels are now thrown at passengers; the food trays slammed down. You'd think that half the cabin crew on any given flight have just lost their mothers and are working through their tears."

"Flight attendants serve a meal 20 minutes after takeoff, then hide for seven hours."

"Unsmiling, unhelpful flight attendants. They taunt me with their prices, convince me against my better judgement to buy another ticket with the hopes it'll be different this time, and then make me hate myself two hours into a ten hour ride to Tokyo."

"Horrible; surly service in the air, inattentive and dismissive gate personnel."

I'm sure the masterminds at bldg A are scratching their monkey nuts right now wondering why the frontline personel are always disgruntled.........

disrespect the employees.........

employees disrespect customers.........

customers in turn tell 7 other people about bad service............

then they tell another 7 people about the bad sevice......

(or write a article like this one....)

It costs MORE money to bring back customers than getting new customers. Or bread and butter are REPEAT customers.

too bad the people running the show don't have a clue about management or service management or experienced frontline work or we wouldn't be having this. JMHO.

 

[Necrophilias]

interesting posts.......... thanks for sharing...
I'm sure the masterminds at bldg A are scratching their monkey nuts right now wondering why the frontline personel are always disgruntled.........

disrespect the employees.........

employees disrespect customers.........

customers in turn tell 7 other people about bad service............

then they tell another 7 people about the bad sevice......

(or write a article like this one....)

It costs MORE money to bring back customers than getting new customers. Or bread and butter are REPEAT customers.

too bad the people running the show don't have a clue about management or service management or experienced frontline work or we wouldn't be having this. JMHO.

Jenny,

I concur! This isn't "rocket science". Air transport is the NW mission. It would seem that the NW executives have the idea that customer service is not our business. Air transport is our business and customer service has the mission of supporting air transport. This view leads to a situation where one department will dump on another department and nobody is well served.

Certainly the frontline employees are demoralized...WHY WOULDN'T THEY BE?

 

[PlayTheOdds]

We all know that A/C maint. at NW is in question right now but reading airline reviews (like the one below) will show that other problems may exist. I've not had many problems with NW staff but apparently the writer below had a different experience.

It sounds to me as if NWA needs to be putting customer feed back cards on their aircraft or headhunters and start terminating some people.

 

[Hackman]

It sounds to me as if NWA needs to be putting customer feed back cards on their aircraft or headhunters and start terminating some people.

Scab Air needs to finally start treating its employees like humans instead of dogs, fire the worthless scabs, and stop sh*tting on the taxpayers of Minnesota. :angry: