COMair in ATL

[bailout]

Last night in ATL a 70 CO was trying to get parked for at least 30-40 minutes and were getting the round around by ops, (switching gates,etc) the Captain asked in an honest, but very frustrated kind of way, "why cant we get parked?" After that exchange went on, the ops person screamed back "well we tried to get you parked quicker at this new gate but if you dont like it you can go back to your original assigned gate and wait for however long it takes and see if you like that." And then of course the radio lit up with comments about Comair bashing.
The point of this post was to let Comair guys know, this is not anything against them, this is a typical day in ATL.
WELCOME!!!

 

[FL000]

I'll second that. You are getting equal treatment for sure.

 

[Caveman]

I was in ATL 8 times over the last couple of weeks. No weather delays, no flows, gate holds or anything like that. Not once did we depart on time. More than once we left without getting requests for commissary, water or lav service done. The 'work' ethic at the north end of ramp 3 is beyond pathetic. If I were the one calling the shots I'd fire every last one of them. Even starting over with brand new rampies with no experience would be an improvement over whats happening there now. Hats off to my fellow airmen at ASA. How you guys put up with that on a daily basis and still somehow keep a schedule together is beyond me. Next time I'm complaining about the occasional shoddy service in CVG somebody slap me and remind me how good we have it.

 

[ATR-DRIVR]

I was lucky enough to catch the last few months of CVG in the ATR and would like to say a big thanks to the Comair folks, ramp, catering, cleaning - everyone! I can attest to the above post about the sorry conditions here. You have to look at the pool to draw from as far as employees goes here. There IS no work ethic. Last week we got to an airplane that had almost a whole hour on the ground before we got there and nothing had been done. (no surprise) Asked ops for everything and he said it would be a while because they only had one person for catering and one person for cleaning, ON THE ENTIRE D CONCOURSE! Believe me, very few care about doing their best. When I do see it, I make sure to say thanks. Some of the ramp guys told me they need new people but they just shuffle the schedule around instead.......sigh

 

[WorldSeries]

i have been into atlanta a few times lately and to everyones defense who works there on the ground (rampers, gate agents) atlanta needs 100 times more space for ASA and now Comair operations. when you try to park 50 airplanes in the space that shoud hold only 25 your going to have alot of confusion!!!!!!! i have been a ramper once and when you have that many planes and so little space it is hard to figure out where they go..then through in a delayed arrival or departure then its gets even worse!!!

 

[ATR-DRIVR]

WS, I have to tell you it is a bit hard to defend the rampers when you pull up to D-22, NOT ANOTHER PLANE between center-road and 34, see 6 or more sitting on the chairs, slowly get up like they were 90yrs old, talk into their shoulders, shuffle around trying to find wands, try and hit on the females (any) tug drivers, look at the flight sheets, point at each other, ('you do it', 'no, you do it', FINALLLY start to walk to the roadway. If they were walking any slower they'd be backing up. Then they come up with something that looks like appropriate signals, (usually not even close)
I timed it....4min 22sec. Not alot? Try it.
Why?

 

[surplus1]

One thing is certain --- Delta's decisions to send Comair to ATL with such frequency will destroy the airlines' (CMR) 25-year record of excellence in performance and customer satisfaction --- system wide. Any Delay creates a chain reaction throughout the system. Sixty delays a day can destroy its efficenecy.

The Atlanta labor pool is a national tragedy. While I agree with Caveman's "fire them all" concept, it can't work in ATL. Whomever you fire will simply be replaced by the same thing. It's a zoo.

 

[bvt1151]

Oh how nice it is to hear the rants about Atlanta I've been keeping in for so long! We sat for 15 minutes waiting for a gate while 4 ramp workers shared a conversation over our baggage cart. Not another plane in site, and when we asked operations what the hold-up was, we were actually told it wasn't their job (yes, I tried the inbound 132 freq, 129.00 and even ramp 129.27). When we finally arrived the passengers were FURIOUS, since half of them had seen what the hold-up was. One thing I did learn about the trip, however, was that if you want something done, you've got to personally recruit the person to do it. The cleaning people are the ones who will wash your windshield, and suprisingly, they seem happy to do it when you ask them directly. When and if you get fuel seems to be a random function. There's a Comair captain who will nudge his nose into the gate so as to block the access road. I've never been parked faster! Unfortunatly the nice guy in the white Ranger had a few things to say about that. His reasoning (and I'm not making this up) was that the rampies don't know enough to stop when they see an airplane in front of them. They need another rampie to tell them to stop before they impact the side of the fuselage. We've had the fueler drive through our line of arriving passengers. Fortunatly the passengers know enough to stop walking before they impact the side of the fuel truck.
I have to agree, that the one nice thing about ATL ground crews is that it makes me appreciate CVG so much more.
I'm starting to think that the rampies in ATL seemed threatened by Comair's presence. Can't say I blame them if they've been talking to the BUF, ROC or ISP ground-handlers. Regardless, some airplanes and passengers are going to be hurt unless things change.

 

[rjcap]

The Atlanta labor pool is a national tragedy. While I agree with Caveman's "fire them all" concept, it can't work in ATL. Whomever you fire will simply be replaced by the same thing. It's a zoo.

Just thank God you don't have to live in this pathetic town !!


All you Comair guys. Please help the ASA pilots out by writing these ramp occurrences up every day. Its the only way things will ever change down here.

Thanks

 

[Brother Francis]

There are similar issues at the US Airways express facility in PHL. I raised heck over an incident recently that involved the "work ethic" on the ramp and got a pretty good response.

One of the things I did was to go to the Airways website, Customer Service page and filed a complaint that began with:

"I was the captain on flight XXXX on this and such date. I am filing this complaint on behalf of the 39 paying passengers who were affected by, blah, blah, blah..."

I got this in an e-mail the next day from HQ:

"... I just received the report from Consumer Affairs. I understand
that you were extremely angry when you [contacted CA]; however,
it's preferable to deal with station issues on a local level rather than that of CA...."

which indicated my note to mainline CS got attention.

Write this stuff up every time. Call dispatch in real time as the incident is unfolding; our calls to dispatch are recorded. Keep your copies of the load reports; they have names/employee #s.

Based on the response of my people and the management at PHL, they took it all seriously. Time will tell whether it actually did any practical good.