"Airline" show

[skydash]

Airline

Hey LJDRVR,
Re-read my post. I made no statement regarding the fact that we have never had an accident with fatalities,nor would I. All I said was to compare our record to the other major carriers. Wil stated that my(our) attitde towards safety was cavilier. That is a gratuitous assertion based on nothing other than his ASSUMPTIONS(his word not mine) regarding our FOM,training,and day to day operations. I'll compare our regard towards saftey,as well as the training involved to achieve it,to his.....anytime.

 

[LJDRVR]

Hey man,

I re-read your post. True; you are the only one that brought up WN's safety record in response to Wil's mudslinging. Perhaps I should have only cocncentrated on refuting the egriousness of "I saw someone do something I thought was stupid, therefore all pilots at that airline are unsafe and I don't want to work there..." foolishness.

Although this is just my presonnal opinion, I'm still just a bit wary of any "chest-thumping" cocncerning anything with as many variables as whether or not a certain carrier has ever had an accident which resulted in fatalaties. You say you'll compare your regard to safety as well as the training involved to achieve it. Again, neither of you are aware enough of each others safety culture to make such a challenge. Then again, maybe we could turn this thread into a Southwest vs. ASA's (Wil's airline I think)safety culture and training. I think we would find that pilots at both carriers value their lives immensely, and take the concept of safe operations quite seriously. I thinks a comparison of the coprporate safety culture would yeild similiar results.

Southwest's overall safety record has been influenced in part by several factors:

Experience of pilots: With one type of A/C, most WN operations are crewed by two people with much more time in type than the industry average.

Frequency of experience: Although more takeoffs and landings = greater risk, this frequency combined with work rules factor into the experience levels mentioned above. WN pilots on average have a LOT more TOL operations than any other airline out there.

Terrain: Compared to other carriers, SW has a favorable ratio of "flat" airports.

Human Factors: As I mentioned briefly in my first post, SW's checklists, SOP's an cockpit work environment are some of the best in the business. Before 9-11, I spent quite a bit of time jumpseating in the cockpits of just about everyone out there. Being a human factors superfreak, I made a lot of notes. I can say with a fair amount of certainty that Southwest has one of the more freindly and efficient cockpits out there. (Please don't start flaming my un-scientific observations, everyone does a great job, but I did detect a difference.)

Company culture: A crewforce that is happy with the company and certain of their future is much less likely to make errors. I'm not the smart guy who came up with this comparsion, but take a look at USAir pilot deviations before, during and after the Piedmont merger back in the late 80's
(Normal, "through the roof", and normal again.)

O.K. Nerd alert, I'll stop typing now. You are justifyably proud of your company skydash. I probably read way too much into your orignal statement. (Post edited for spelling)

 

[skydash]

Airline

LJDRVR- A well thought out response,void of emotion, which I agree with about 99%. My only reply would be to the "favorable flat airport ratio" How much flying have you done in the Western US? ABQ,LAS,ONT,BUR,SEA,SAN,ELP,TUS,SLC,etc....
Also..learn how to spell "piedmont"(I'm a spelling factors nerd).

 

[LJDRVR]

AAIYYEE!! A spelling nazi! Easily my worst area. (I did marry one of your ilk's womenfolk to help balance things out.) Let me do a bit more research on the mountainous terrain thing, you may have a point. I was thinking of carriers that had a higher percentage of MT destinations, coupled with more challenging airports/weather such as: ASE, ROA, EGE, MGGT, MMMY to name just a few.

At any rate, you were correct in detecting the only part of my post that wasn't researched, so back to the drawing board for me. I'll let you know what I found out.

I'll say this, with the advent of FOQA (Or whatever an individual airline is calling it...) there ought to be some sort of industry wide roundtable where pilots and safety managers from different operators could sit down and sort of compare notes in an attempt to discover trends that might not otherwise be discernable when analyzing just your own data. For example, airline A & B both record exceedances for flap movement below 500 feet. Both airlines operate the 737-300. Both airlines serve airport XYZ. Airline A has a 02% exceedance rate for the parameter, but airline B has 15%. Industry average is 6%. What's going on here that ALL of us could learn from? The tricky part of this is of course the legal ramifications of operators sharing this type of data with each other. Anyone want to chime in? Is anybody attempting to do this?

 

[TonyC]

Actually is is not from the show "Airport" From what I can remember it is being produced by the same people/company that produced a British version focusing on EasyJet, show in the UK. It got great ratings over there and from what I have heard it has good ratings over here too.....


go figure-

Lear-

You are correct. The UK version is also called "Airline." It was on the "teli" this morning.

 

[skydash]

Airline

Just when you thought you'd seen it all....A&E starts filming season#2 of "Airline" in BWI starting April 11!
FLAME AWAY !!!!

 

[Dash8]

just finished watching last nights eps on the dvr.....the show is entertaining, but all airlines have problems with people like that.....

which (each episode) invariably reminds me why i hate people.....
i want to reach through the tv and bitchslap some of those morons on there (pax for the most part)

 

[MJG]

which (each episode) invariably reminds me why i hate people.....i want to reach through the tv and bitchslap some of those morons on there (pax for the most part)

I couldn't have said it any better than that myself. Totally agree.

I just don't understand why Southwest agreed to do this show. I think that most of the general public being ignorant of the airline business would not make the connection that the things they see occuring on this show at Southwest happen to all the airlines.

I can't help but think that certain travelers who were thinking about trying SW are now not interested.

But some of the things I see on that show make me think to myself, "does that really happen at other airlines??".

It probably does but just goes unnoticed.

But the whole having to buy 2 seats for "large" people thing doesn't reflect well on their company at all.

 

[wil]

skydash and the rest- I am not "chest thumping" or mud slinging, just telling you what I see you guys do on the line. I take no pleasure in A/C incidents or accidents.

 

[skydash]

Airline

I guess my problem with this whole subject wil,is that if we are such a reckless operation as you point us out to be,we should by all measure, have a high number of accidents and incidents. We operate over 2800 flights a day,with a high percentage of those being an hour in length. I'm not chest thumping either,nor would I ever brag over our saftey record as I do believe in what goes around,comes around.However,whatever you percieve or assume regarding our flight operations is simply not bourne out in statistical data.