Road Blogs Ahead: Missing a couple of passengers
Early morning flight for Louisville, KY. Everybody in the plane was bleary eyed or already sleeping. A few in the first class were sipping airplane coffee. And all of us were wondering why the plane door was not closing in spite of no more passengers getting on and it being already past our departure time. The weather was fine in Atlanta.
Then the flight attendant grabbed the PA. I was sure she was going to announce a weather delay or a mechanical problem. Instead she asked for some patience as we await two more persons to get on board. Some passenger way up in the first class yelled out asking why could we not leave without them? It was already past departure time.
The fifty-something flight attendant had built the perfect set up. She knew what she was doing. For, she responded on the PA, without missing a beat “Because, Sir, they are our pilot and first officer”!! She certainly made a potentially irritating situation funny.
As a post script, a few minutes later, our missing “passengers” came onboard and informed us “We have no idea what happened to your pilot and first passenger. We just landed from Colombus and we were told to run to your plane and take it to Louisville”. Wow!!
Another first time experience in my annals of continuous jumping in and out of planes…
Hmm. I thought they don’t board without a pilot inspecting the aircraft.
Sumit, long time back, when we were stuck (once again) waiting for our crew, I had asked the lady at the gate why could we not just go ahead and sit in the plane (it was evening and I wanted to sleep off). She had explained to me that for them to do the boarding, two personnel items have to be ticked off – the attendants need to have already boarded and the pilot and co-pilot must have landed at the airport from their previous flight. As long as they are on the ground (presumably safe), they can start boarding. The pilot and co pilot actually does the testing while and after passengers have boarded.
this is taking me back to Latest Possible Start Time/Earliest Possible Start Time/Factory Planner memories from i2:)
Vijay , amen!
Rajib – I was thinking of the preflight external walk around. Just googled and learnt that mechanics do it for some airlines.
I once got delayed getting to the airport due to construction in chennai (at 4 a.m. mind you). After a mad rush to the airport, thru’ security and reaching my seat, I was told that the pilot is stuck in the same traffic jam and is expected 30 mins later 🙂