Airlines spend a lot of time worrying about blame. I don't see it quite so much with the mainliners that I jumpseat on, but it's still there to some extent. Here in the regionals, it's excessive to the point of utter stupidity.
Sadly, this really isn't anything new to the business world. This is one of the reasons I left the "cube-life" of a large corporation some years back. So much time and effort is spent just trying to find where to put blame. I see little time actually put towards addressing the root cause of problems that plaque our daily performance. Some people just think that all problems can be solved with memos.
Here's a classic case and point. In the morning, after a long overnight, our crew arrived at the gate on time. No gate agent was in sight. But, the inbound flight was late anyways, so no big deal. We we would be a little late getting our day started since we couldn't take a plane that hadn't arrived yet! Of course, this isn't the first time a flight has been late. Flights get delayed for a multitude or reasons.
The gate agent did show up a few minutes later, obviously stressed due to pressure from his boss, and asked us to really push to try and get it out on time. Now, sure, we can try. However, there is a bit of a conflict of interest there. We have LOTS to do when we get to an aircraft. It's not like getting in a car, starting the engine and driving away. In this case the inbound aircraft was about 10 mins late. It takes time to get everyone off the plane. Then the crew needs to pack up all their stuff and get off. In a larger airliner, perhaps there is space to be able to have two crews switching places simultaneously. A little regional plane, well, they're damn small. One crew needs to get off, then the next can get on. If you try and do it simultaneously, there just isn't enough room and you get in each others way, taking even longer. Then there are the cleaners. Now, don't get me wrong, I love seeing them, as passengers can be a messy bunch. But they also take up space and get in our way if we're trying to do our preflight stuff at the same time they are cleaning the cabin.
The inbound crew got off the plane and then the cleaners got done. Then we finally got on the aircraft and got to work. No less than 60 seconds later the gate agent is barking at us saying he wants to board the passengers. The flight attendants said, "We juuuuust stepped on! We need 5 mins... " There are things that the flight attendants need to do before having passengers aboard, by law and company policy. Some gate agents don't seem to understand that. The agent let us down to the plane 10 mins ago, but he didn't understand that we had to stand on the jetway and wait for everyone else to finish their tasks before we could step aboard. Not only that, but he didn't even have our paperwork for the flight yet. We can't leave without it or start getting things set up and programmed either. The agent was quite unhappy with us and stormed off saying, "Well, this delay is going on the crew!"
Once we got all our preflight stuff finished, passengers boarded up and finally got our paperwork, I noticed that in the middle of the blame storm, the fuel truck didn't give us all the fuel that we needed. So, back open the door had to go, and longer we had to sit to wait for the fuel truck to come back and finish fueling us. Even more delay.
So, as you can guess, this delay indeed went down as a "crew delay." And funny enough, after the gate agent stormed off blaming the crew, he was no longer in any rush at all. He didn't care about actually getting the passengers where they were going, he was only concerned with not having the blame finger pointed at him. Once that was taken care of, he didn't care much about anything else.
Even under normal circumstances, the flight crew has quite a large responsibility, as we all know. Having the crew caught in the crossfire of all this push, push, push, go, go, go, serves only as an added distraction and increases the likelihood of us missing something. Could be something small, might be something a bit larger. This is when, as we are taught, you need to step back, and slow things down. That's how to trap an error and not let it grow. This is for safety. However, by the flight crew resisting pressure from the gate agent means the finger of blame swings around to us. Blamed for doing what we are taught and expected to do. Good times...
Now, this isn't unique to any specific location. This is part of the culture in the regionals. We're small and we're cheap. We've got "big brother" constantly looking down at us like chess pieces. Depending on whether they like us or not, they can either give us more flying (which pisses off the mainliners, since it means flying gets pulled away from them...) or they can take it and give it to another regional company. So, the brass up top of each regional just scramble trying to make their numbers look as good as they can.
Sure, there is a need for accountability and reviews of where the company is struggling are necessary. I'm not saying otherwise. But if I saw just half the effort that we spend pointing fingers placed on actually fixing root causes, I bet the brass would see numbers and figures that they would love.
Unfortunately, much of the culture I see is built on fear and blame. It doesn't matter that we are all on the same team, in the same company, serving the same customer. It's just about keeping the blame away from your department. How can you have people with water buckets standing in front of a burning house and argue over who set it on fire rather than actually putting out the fire? That is just plain wrong. I don't care what you can make your numbers and metrics show. It's wrong and the customers, the flying public, end up paying the price in delays, lower levels of service and compromised safety margins.
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