My first mesa experience ;(

[vballindaytona]

Okay guys, wanted to talk a little about my first mesa experience, which was leaving las vegas to el paso texas on sunday night at 1159pm. The crj 900 was packed to capacity and we boarded about 10 minutes late. no big deal right? well once everybody is on board, one non-rev captain jumps up front in the jumpseat, and we hear them talking about another deadhead f/a that needs to be on the plane. the flight attendent announces to all us passengers that we will be waiting a few minutes for some of their employees that needs to be on this flight. so we wait. and wait..and wait.

about 20 minutes later the deadhead f/a gets onboard to find out that there is no open seat (no ******************** didn't we know that this flight was sold out 30 minutes ago?) anywho, she demands that she has to be on this flight and won't get off. the gate attendant that boarded us comes onboard and says that the deadhead f/a Must call dispatch immediately. she says (i hear all this because I am in the first seat) "im not going to call them, lets just close the door up and ill call them from el paso". For the next 10 minutes she acts like a 2 year old saying that she "is NOT going to get off the plane". Meanwhile all of us revenue passengers have now been boarded for about 40 minutes, everybody getting impatient, including myself.


I motion for the f/a working this flight to come over, tell her that I am also a pilot and I was wondering why they were holding over 50 revenue passengers over an hour to solve a nonrev situation. i got the reply "sir, i am not in charge of this flight, i am just working on it" a little smile, and walked away.

The gate attendant comes back on board and asks for a volunteer to get off the plane and they will give them a free roundtrip ticket, freee hotel , blah blah blah. they get one volunteer, that volunteer goes off board, and the deadhead gets on. problem solved right? wrong

we are getting ready to push when the f/a phone dings. i hear her say "are you kidding me?" she then opens the door and motions for the deadhead f/a to come up front. she then told her "the captain told me that you need to get off the plane and call dispatch". Meanwhile you can hear them opening up underneath getting her luggage off the plane. she gets off the plane, here we go again finally off to el paso. wait ..........not yet.

five minutes go by and the SAME deadhead gets back on board laughing HYSTERICALLY as loud as she can saying "i made it!! i made it back on!!! woohoo." the plane wasn't amused as we are now over an hour after being boarded and now we won't get home in el paso till about 4am, most people having to work 3 hours later. she saw that we were not amuzed and said "im sorry guys, i know yall hate this, im sorry". and yes, again they have to open up the cargo bay, throw her crap back on.

This is absolutely ridiculous. i have read most people criticizing mesa on here and only believed half of what i read but for christs sake, how do these people stay in business? how do they fly under aw/us air's banner conducting business this way. i will admit, i know very little about the 121 side of things, i am a freight dog, but i do know when customers are being taking for a ride.

a few questions for you 121 guys. in a situation like this who is suppose to take charge? i would think the captain would have the balls to say "hey we have to get these people where they need to go" and take charge, is this not true or does dispatch have a trump card over him? do airlines really hold an entire sold out flight over an hour to facilitate a nonrev crew member?

im not criticizing the flight crew in the cockpit, once they got the green light they hauled ass (i think we were taxiing at 50 knots) and were hauling ass into el paso, seems like they were doing the best they could when they got the green light.

needless to say, i won't be flying on a mesa airlines flight anytimes soon until their management can learn to manage something. thanks for listening to me vent! (*oh, and btw, that 900 was nice, im jealous!!!*)

 

[skygod75]

Yep, sounds like you got MESA'd pretty well (while sitting down, no less. Some get the pleasure of experiencing it bent over).

It's stories like yours that make me thankful that:

1) I don't work in aviation anymore
2) I try to avoid flying in airplanes..of any kind.

So, the most important question is: Was the deadhead f/a cute?

 

[EatinRamen]

Well on the DL side of things, non-rev's have NO priority over paying pax and the agents will NOT delay a flight for a non-rev. The only explanation I can think of is that maybe the FA was positive space and needed to ride. Although, even in that case, once the flight is past departure time, it should have left.

Who knows what the guys up front were trying to do, but hell the Captain always has the final say. He should have kicked her off and gotten the hell out of there.

 

[Sam Snead]

Who knows what the guys up front were trying to do, but hell the Captain always has the final say. He should have kicked her off and gotten the hell out of there.

He has the final say, until he's doing a carpet dance for doing something wrong (perhaps leaving without a positive space crewmember?)

Maybe the FA was needed for some reason at El Paso.

Of course the gate should have had this all straightened out before departure but that's not my point.

 

[WWEfan]

That's not how we roll at ASA. If I was the one trying to deadhead on that flight and boarded only to find the airplane full, I would have simply walked off the plane, waited for it to leave and then call scheduling and ask, "WTF?"

This is how the phone call would go....

ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring

CS: Scheduling, this is Laquishawanda, can you hold?
Me: Sure.

5 mins later

CS: scheduling, whachu need?
Me: uh....I need a hotel room because my DH left without me.
CS: Huh? Where are you?
Me: Is this a trick question? I'm at the airport in LAX.
CS: You're supposed to be DH'ing on flight xxxx.
Me: (trying to suppress my laughter) Yeah, I couldn't get on.
CS: But you were positive space.
Me: Yeah, I couldn't get on.
CS: Whachu mean?
Me: Nevermind. I'm going back to the hotel. Call me when you guys figure something out.

click

 

[Secret Squirrel]

I showed up to jumpseat a flight to CLT. There was a large group of pilots/fa waiting by the boarding door. I asked the gate agent for the jumpseat and she asked if I was sure I wanted it. She continued to enlighten me on how screwed up the whole mesa operation is and this morning there was no crew for the first flight of the day and now there were two crews showed up to FLY this flight. The crew was very friendly and welcomed me on board. They seemed just as frustrated with the whole situation as the gate agent.

 

[goahead]

That's not how we roll at ASA. If I was the one trying to deadhead on that flight and boarded only to find the airplane full, I would have simply walked off the plane, waited for it to leave and then call scheduling and ask, "WTF?"

This is how the phone call would go....

ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring

CS: Scheduling, this is Laquishawanda, can you hold?
Me: Sure.

5 mins later

CS: scheduling, whachu need?
Me: uh....I need a hotel room because my DH left without me.
CS: Huh? Where are you?
Me: Is this a trick question? I'm at the airport in LAX.
CS: You're supposed to be DH'ing on flight xxxx.
Me: (trying to suppress my laughter) Yeah, I couldn't get on.
CS: But you were positive space.
Me: Yeah, I couldn't get on.
CS: Whachu mean?
Me: Nevermind. I'm going back to the hotel. Call me when you guys figure something out.

click

Perfect, except I think there would be about thirty more rings......

 

[labbats]

Ever notice how it's crew scheduling at every airline but Mesa? At Mesa it's crew tracking. They track you down.

 

[v1valarob]

The only explanation I can think of, and I dont know how mesa bases their people, but that the morning flight out of el paso would not have been able to go anywhere without that flight attendant, leaving 50 passengers stranded, and mesa would rather be an hour late than cancel a flight the next day because they didnt have any FAs. This is just my experiance from being a scheduler and having locations where no one lives and everyone is TDY. Still a royal ******************** up either way.

-Rob

 

[Weasil]

At skywest it's "Crew Support".. hehe..

Anyway, it sounds like this F/A was a positive space dead head fromwhat you are saying. If she was a non-rev she never would have got past the gate agent in the first place. mesa probably needed her in el paso to work a flight the next day. In which case it is normal to hold a flight for a positive space crew member that has to get to the destination. It sounds like they just didn't handle this particular situation very well. Mesa probably realised at the last possible minute they were short a crew member. I had a Mesa guy on the jumpseat last week on his way home. We were boarded up at the gate, door closed ready to push back when the gate agent came running down the jetbridge waving her arms. We opened the door again only to find out that crew tracking at mesa had called directly to the gate to ask her to not let this guy on board because they wanted to junior man him for the next day. Wow... now that's crew tracking...