Babysitting the airplane

[Newjetjockey]

Another exciting announcement at SWA recently is that they are supposedly going to be getting rid of the requiremt for the pilots to have to pull the gear pins every morning on originators. Thank Gawd! This will put one ridiculous proceedure to bed hopefully.

An even more absurd and annoying proceedure at SWA is that at least one pilot must stay with the aircraft anytime there is ground power on the aircraft. Any time there are passengers on board you have to have power on the aircraft. Therefore you have to sit there and babysit the aircraft during all turns and crew swaps unless the new crew is at the gate waiting for you. You actually have to wait for the other crew to get there unless every pax gets off and you must power down and terminate the aircraft. SWA has tons of through flights so there's usually pax that stay on the aircraft and SWA is too scared of lawsuits to tell them to get off the plane.

I gotta know. Are there any other airlines that do this?

 

[Ops check good]

That sounds fairly normal to me? Are you suggesting that other airlines leave pax on the plane with no crew? Someone trained on the A/C should remain with the A/C when it is powered up to monitor it. Ever seen a ramper who "knows" how to turn power on deploy the O2 masks? I have.

 

[GogglesPisano]

No pilots are required to remain on at Delta. FA's with pax, yes (obviously.)

The last time I recall that requirement I was flying a DoJet -- which had no automatic APU fire protection.

 

[Newjetjockey]

That sounds fairly normal to me? Are you suggesting that other airlines leave pax on the plane with no crew? Someone trained on the A/C should remain with the A/C when it is powered up to monitor it. Ever seen a ramper who "knows" how to turn power on deploy the O2 masks? I have.

Where do you work?

Yeah, at the Tranny we left the A/C powered all the time. Grab your bags and go!....unless you're terminating. Often I've seen empty cockpits when I get off the aircraft of other airlines.

 

[Ty Webb]

That sounds fairly normal to me? Are you suggesting that other airlines leave pax on the plane with no crew? Someone trained on the A/C should remain with the A/C when it is powered up to monitor it. Ever seen a ramper who "knows" how to turn power on deploy the O2 masks? I have.

They are talking about an aircraft that has ground power up, emergency exit lights armed, and with the FAs on board.

I don't know of any airline that requires a pilot to be on board, only FAs.

 

[Ops check good]

Sorry I yelled

 

[Luv2BFlyin]

Supposedly it's driven by ground ops. What other airline drives their pilot policies by ground ops? Just the ones that want to spread the Luv I guess. Where is flight ops leadership on this? Actually, I know. Because their squadron did not have a policy in place allowing them to do it, they just assume that they can't. Obviously you can't leave an F15 powered up until the next crew arrives, therefore, no other airplane can remain powered up until the next crew arrives.

 

[145BOSS]

At United we are also permitted to leave the aircraft with the APU on.

 

[SIG600]

That sounds fairly normal to me? Are you suggesting that other airlines leave pax on the plane with no crew? Someone trained on the A/C should remain with the A/C when it is powered up to monitor it. Ever seen a ramper who "knows" how to turn power on deploy the O2 masks? I have.

That's the FA job. Set the break, run the parking checklist... Split. If it's the end of the night, terminate with the ground service bus powered, then split.

 

[Newjetjockey]

American?
Alaska?
JetBlue?
Frontier?
Spirit?

Just curious if any other majors do this. Thanks for the feedback.