Topic is pretty much discussed already, Alex, so run with it. :)
Topic is pretty much discussed already, Alex, so run with it. :)
Email me anytime at [email protected].
Ryan--Originally Posted by hiss srq
As per phil he said to keep going, I took the time to speak to some folks about why we do not cancel and brought up some points you mentioned which were very much Valid.
It seems delaying a flight cost significantly less then canceling as we do not have to pay for hotels and food accomodations if we cancel due to operational issues when there really isn't any (as you know cancells due to weather is different)
That night, all of our planes were sold out for the next day so if we cancelled there was a possibility they would not get home for another day or two. We did not want to put our passengers through that either.
We had to many passengers on each of our legs to simply over fly the city, because we would then have to deal with THOSE passengers at those intermiediate cities.
SWA is VERY VERY remarkeable about making sure planes and crews are back into place by the next day, whether we delay or cancel.
As for crews going illegal, if it happens, we call up one of our reserves from our bigger stations and fly them out to meet the plane on arrival or something. To ensure we have fresh crews all the time.
As last night at ORD/MDW I am sure you saw all the horrible weather issues. A friend of mine sent this message about SWA yesterday..
"Last nights arrivals were still coming in as late as 5:35am this morning! This aircraft happened to be the 19:55 departure to ALB, so it left 10.5 hours late at 6:33 this morning. At 8:00pm departure to OMA left at 4:12am. An 8:20pm departure to PIT left at 5:42 this morning. "
Yes it is incredibly late, but no crews were illegal, and the passengers still got home within 24 hrs of their destination or less. From what I was told WN cancelled the least amount of flights, 35 flights were cancelled. I don't have any other flight information though. amd as you know, weather is always out of our control.
Hope this clears up some confusion or something.
Alex
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NOTE: "Going illegal" refers to crews that exceed "duty time". They are limited to how many hours they can fly in regards to their rest needs. If a flight is delayed x amount of hours and it exceeds duty time, the flight must be cancelled or delayed until a new crew can take over. (correct me if I'm wrong on any part here).
Email me anytime at [email protected].
You are correct Phil, but the crew can also call fatigue at any time wile on the ground even if the duty day has not been or will not be exceeded. For example a crew with an 18hr duty day is in a delay for an APU change before their 6hr flight. even after the 2 hr delay the crew would still be legal they might call fatigue just because they were sitting there for a few hrs.
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