Imagine, for a moment that you're at the airport. You were going to be taking a late night flight home to visit your folks. However, tonight, you now find yourself standing next to a podium at a gate. Everyone is looking at you. The gate agent is handing you a pile a papers and opening the door for you to walk down to the aircraft. You have no idea what is going on. As you reach out to take the papers, you notice stripes on your sleeve. You are the pilot. See all those people around the gate? They were your fellow passengers. You are now their Captain. They are now your passengers. You are now in charge of the safe operation of an aircraft transporting all those people to their destination. As you walk the door to the jetway, you catch a glimpse of your reflection in the glass and your heart sinks. "They made me wear the damn hat, too."
You get down to the aircraft early to start the long list of preflight items. Something isn't as it's supposed to be. You now have a maintenance issue. The delay begins. The gate agent is pissed because she wants to board the passengers. Why is she pissed? Because if the flight goes out late, and she can't put down that someone else caused it to be late, she gets chewed out by her boss. So, when maintenance finally calls operations and tells them the fix will take a while and not to board passengers, the gate agent calms down. This is classic. It just shows that they don't actually give a flying crap if the flight actually goes out on time or not. They are ONLY focused on not having any fingers pointed at them for it. Since this is officially a maintenance delay now, they are no longer under threat of discipline from their superiors and they become pleasant again.
Now comes something everyone hates. And aircraft change. Since it will take some time to get your original aircraft fixed and there is another aircraft open, operations has decided you will take that one instead. OK, no problem.
You gather all your things and walk down to the new gate. It all starts over again. All the paperwork you had is now useless. All the preflight checks you did before, are all to be started again on the new aircraft. You step aboard the new aircraft and what do you find? Maintenance is already here! Yes, the plane came in with it's own issues and they are trying to get that plane fixed for you to take. You get the feeling that it's going to be, "one of those days."
Rampies begin to unload the passenger bags from the first aircraft and then reload them on the new aircraft. They hate doing the same work twice. I don't really blame them. It's cold outside and I wouldn't like it either.
Now, while your Flight Attendants are now going through all their preflight checks again, making sure the emergency items are there, and getting the cabin cleaned up and straightened up, your first officer is walking around the outside of the aircraft. Your crew is trying to get the flight going to get the passengers where they are going.
Then, a rampy comes up to the flight deck asking if you have the bag count form from the other aircraft. You explain to them, "No, we are not allowed to keep any of the old paperwork." Why is this? Well, with the delay some people choose not to take the flight or try to get listed on other flights on other carriers. Their bags will be pulled off. Also, since the flight is going out later now, there might be some people that will now making the flight from a late inbound connection. Those bags will be added. Either way, both scenarios are very real and that means the bag count will not necessarily be exactly the same for the new aircraft.
Then, all the passengers start boarding. The gate agent hands you a HUGE pile of papers that you and the first officer are now trying to sort through. The flight plan, weight and balance information, performance data, must all be reentered into the aircraft computers. Then, a different rampy comes up to the flight deck with a question. "Do you guys have the bag count from before?" You have more than a few things to do, and you're annoyed that you are being re-asked the same question from just a few minutes ago. After all, they should KNOW that you can't keep any of the old paperwork. You get the feeling they just didn't do their job and recount the bags. However, you maintain a professional attitude and restate once again that you do not have the bag count from before as you are not allowed to keep anything from the old aircraft.
You continue to work and get everything set for flight. Passengers are all aboard now, you get a new fueling slip, you get additional weather information from the gate agent and you start on the long checklists to verify everything is ready and set up for the flight. This is now when the THIRD rampy comes up to the flight deck and says words you just can't believe. "Do you guys have the bag count from before?" NO, damnit! We don't keep anything! We aren't allowed to keep anything!! Do your god damn job!! In the time you keep talking with each other, and repeatedly asking us if we have the old one, you could have just recounted all the damn bags and been done anyways!
No, I didn't actually say that. But, I can't describe how much I wanted to.
Added: THIS could be what happens if the ground crew and the flight crew don't resolve differences in paperwork concerning bags/cargo.
You take a few deep breaths and continue. The flight attendants inform you that all the galley carts are still on the old plane and have not been transferred to this aircraft. So, you call operations. They inform you that the catering people who had placed all the necessary carts on the first aircraft have now gone home for the night. So, we say, "It's only four gates away. Can't you get a couple of operations folks to wheel them through the terminal and get them on here so we can go?" The answer you are then given is, "Uhhh... yeah... I guess we could do that..." Wow. You're not only the person with the most to do, but you appear to be one of the only people without an Inter-Rectal Cranial condition, or IRCC.
Then, while in the middle of getting all of the paperwork sorted, you catch something. Remember how maintenance was already on board when you got to this new aircraft? Well, they were not able to "fix" the issue, but it wasn't something critical to safety or anything, so the system is just disconnected and then "deferred." This is by no means abnormal, so no big deal. However, this deferral needs to be reflected in the new paperwork. (Depending on the system being deferred, there can be operational and performance considerations that need to be accounted for.) You double check the new paperwork. Nope. It's not there. So, you have to scrap all that new paperwork now and tell the gate agent you need new paperwork. You start to think, "Will this ever end??"
As pilots we are responsible for safe operation of an aircraft. We are responsible for the safe transportation of all the passengers wanting to take this flight. The most annoying part is that we are responsible for everyone else's work as well. It doesn't matter how much of a crap storm is going on with all the other things going on, if other people screw up their job and we don't catch it, it's our fault. When things are running late, everyone is push push push push on the crew, trying to get the flight out. However, it's IMPERATIVE in times like this for the crew to not get rushed, not get emotional and just slow down to make sure they don't miss anything. This is the job I signed up for, so this isn't a revelation.
However, this particular evening, something else dawned on me. During this whole circus, everyone was on the clock, but the flight crew. Hmmmm...... Those who are ultimately responsible for everyone else's job, are the only ones not being paid. The rampies were on the clock, even though they didn't want to redo the bag count. The gate agent trying to push and get us out (which is really at odds with us being able to slow down and catch everyone else's errors) was on the clock as well. The operations people who decided on having us swap aircraft were on the clock. The fuelers were on the clock. Everyone else involved in the whole effort was on the clock. Yet, until the door was closed and the parking brake was released for pushback, the flight crew (including the flight attendants!) were not being paid!!
Doesn't sound quite right, does it?
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