So does CAL take orders from the FAA on when to cancel flights?

[Bavarian Chef]

What was their reason for recinding Snowflake? Anyone know?

They need a better deicing program name, like "SnowBalls". Or "Tongue Frozen to Flagpole" or maybe even "Schwetty SnowBalls".

 

[gkrangers]

You pay your money and you take your chances, Sir.

Thats a pretty awesome business slogan....

 

[regionaltard]

ContiNorris doesn't cancel flights. It administers a roundhouse kick to people's travel plans.

 

[Beetle007]

We need the "Open Ground Initiative". Need more runways. Thats the bottleneck...

From a labor standpoint, I would rather less runways and less capacity. Less capacity = higher ticket costs = more revenue for airlines. We all complain about oil prices and oil profits because demand exceeds supply. But I have never seen an oil worker complaining.

The FAA needs to be more proactive in how much capacity airports are allowed to have. There is no reason any airport should be saturated to the point that delays are normal.

 

[ClubORD]

What was their reason for recinding Snowflake? Anyone know?

From what I have heard. The FAA did not want us leaving in the reported WX conditions when other airlines cancelled most of their flights. Our holdover charts state that in snow grains or ice pellets a pre takeoff contamination check is required after de-icing. "Snowflake" is a chief pilot who performs this inspection in association with the flight crew to determine if the aircraft is clean of ice and ready to leave. The Feds shut this operation down and thus we cancelled most of our flights because of it.

I personally think CAL's "Snowflake"/de-icing procedures are very efficient and really like the way we run things when the WX gets nasty. I was not in EWR that night but it was apparently pretty ugly.

 

[Uniform Shop]

I flew the next day and it was still a mess. It took three tugs and finally a super tug just to get us pushed off the gate.

It wasn't just CAL that was shut down. AA and DAL weren't flying either. I don't know what the ATIS was reporting at the time but if there is ice pellets and any other type of precipitation being reported at the same time it will shut down all operations.

 

[densoo]

"Snowflake" is a chief pilot who performs this inspection

Perhaps that's the problem...it is after all a chief pilot who said:

"Loose powdery snow covering the surfaces of the aircraft. Outside temperature was well below freezing. Was de-icing warranted that morning? It’s my opinion it was NOT. "

and

"It was more than my opinion that morning that the loose powdery
snow would have departed almost immediately during the takeoff roll"

and

"It was suggested by someone that he would not take the chance that a lawyer [or your daughter?] may be seated in row 13, as he was approaching the runway for takeoff with snow on his wings. My answer to that is to make an announcement to the passengers stating your intentions [to takeoff with snow on the wings, one assumes]"

This may have alerted the FAA to a less than cautious approach and been one of the factors (not the only one) in stopping ops for awhile.

 

[tmac3333]

Just what I was thinking Densoo before I read your post. I think you might have hit the nail on the head and someone put two and two together at the FAA, especially with it being an EWR post you quoted.....