United flight canceled after upset pilot refuses to fly

Source: USA Today

United canceled a flight from Salt Lake City Thursday afternoon after the pilot announced to passengers that he was too upset to fly, according to one passenger on board.

The pilot, who may have been involved in a labor-related dispute with colleagues, said that he didn't feel he could fly safely, said Paul Jacobson, an energy company executive who was aboard United Flight 416 to Denver.

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After the passengers were seated, the pilot made his announcement.

"I'm roughly paraphrasing here, but the pilot came on the PA and said, 'some of you may have witnessed an incident I was involved in at the gate. I'm not going to go into the details, but it was an interpersonal confrontation that upset me significantly to the point where I'm not focused enough to fly you to Denver. I feel like I may not be calmed and focused enough to fly to Denver for another hour,' " Jacobson said.

The passengers reacted to the pilot's announcement with a collective groan. "I'm going to give him credit for standing in front of people and saying that," Jacobson added. "Still it was a very unusual situation."







Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2008-06-20-upset-united-pilot_N.htm

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Looks like one pilot was upset that another pilot hadn't removed his hat which is apparently a protest the pilot's union has encouraged.

She said four people were involved in the situation, a captain and first officer from the flight that arrived in Salt Lake City and a captain and first officer flying on to Denver.

USA Today reported passenger Paul Jacobson said another passenger questioned the crew and that passenger told him the incident stemmed from crew members from another United flight observing the pilot wearing his hat.

USA Today says United's pilots union has been urging pilots to remove their hats when they could be seen by members of management as a form of protest.

USA Today says the pilots union, Air Line Pilots Association, issued a statement Jan. 15 direction union members to adopt the practice because "now is the time to show management that this pilot group is serious about regaining what was stripped from us during bankruptcy."

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=94200&catid=339

                Leave the pilot alone!

- I love that guy....

Brittttnnnneeeeeeeyyy......

it's Friday night and I can't type (or remember to use SpellCheck, apparently)! edited to correct spelling...duh!

:rofl:
BTW, I hope everyone who reads your post knows what this picture references - it is sad but hysterical.

My 90 year old uncle passed on recently and at his memorial less than a week ago, they played that song. He was a music teacher, ardent socialist, and union guy. I'm not really any of those three things, but it is interesting you say that when I heard the song a week ago! Someone on stage played the song on guitar and sang - and all of the attendees (60 or so of them) sang that exact chorus.

A bilingual (English and French) acapella would be lovely.

bullying by other union members is acceptable. Each one has his own choice. Respect it dammit.

is not a good fit in a union.
Scabs are not left wanting for job options in Bush Amerika.

tactics over an individual's right to choose?

the law, in Bush Amerika, for the time being, protect your right to choose.
Enjoy it while it lasts.

Main reason I have a problem with multiple unions. Mob Justice and the belief that question their actions makes you part of the "corps" or "the system"

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I'm not an airline transport pilot, but I am a private pilot. I can recall a few times that I've been in the plane, ready to go, and aborted the flight just because something didn't feel right-and I didn't have to worry about a hundred or more passengers and the professional pressures the guys flying the big iron have to contend with. If the pilot isn't 100% mentally and physically ready, he shouldn't go.

It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than being in the air and wishing you were on the ground.

Thank goodness I was only jockeying a desk and not flying a plane load of passengers. I sure wasn't effective and thinking straight for a couple of hours.

to act in a passionate way that may endanger life over a contract issue?

What if a donor organ was on that flight and someone died because of the pilots actions?

Maybe he didn't have the "Right Stuff" for the job to begin with.

As pilot in command, that pilot has not only the right, but also the duty to stay on the ground if he feels that everything is not right. He is the final authority on whether the flight departs, and the responsibility rests squarely on his shoulders, and his alone. He most definitely DOES have the "right stuff" for the job, and he is the kind of pilot I want in the left seat of any commercial flight I am a passenger on.

I was a flight line troubleshooter on F-4 Phantoms, I launched pilots loaded to the gills with everything from chaff to nuke. I was also the guy on the ground who pulled flights if the pilot didn't make the grade for whatever reason. I know a little about what I'm talking about.

A pilot who cannot completely disconnect his feelings from the mission he is charged with, is not the pilot I want to determine full flaps or none during a wind shear 700 feet of the ground on final approach to landing.

I agree that if he feels he can't do the job, stay down. But getting upset over a contract issue is too unprofessional for me to feel sorry for him.

What if his wife called him in mid flight and told him she was doing the neighbor? Would you think this guy is still the one for you?

Fighter pilots launch in extreme conditions as part of their job, and accept the high risk of death as a consequence. Airline pilots and the industry itself could never tolerate that risk. Commercial air transport, and air traffic control, must necessarily be founded on a culture of safety and multiple layers of redundancy to minimize risk.

This United pilot was doing his job well, and contributing to the culture of safety, by erring on the side of caution and more importantly by being a good example to other pilots. Yes, a "can-do" attitude is important in flying, but still more important is honesty with one's self first. And your example of a wind shear encounter at 700 feet agl on final should in any civilian pilot's mind result in an immediate balked landing or "go around", not flap setting decisions. I suspect that United's operations manual specifies that exact response for any unstabilized approach, whatever the reason.

One other example: there was a video posted on DU a couple of months ago of an airline pilot in the UK attempting a landing during an extreme crosswind and possible wind shear. The camera was on the extended centerline of the runway and the video followed the aircraft after it had passed overhead, clearly showing a point in time when the approach became de-stabilized as the plane drifted left of the centerline. Rather than initiating an immediate go-around at that point, the pilot elected to try to salvage the landing and consequently dragged a wingtip on the ground, coming within a hair's breadth of a horrific crash. He did, in fact, go around and land on another runway. I remember reading a respondent's post on DU praising the pilot for "controlling the beast". It is my humble opinion the pilot should have been fired on the spot.

of the B52's landing gear. Big balls don't make up for bad decisions.

So what is your point? Mine is simple, if you get too upset to do job over a hat, maybe you shouldn't be doing the job to begin with.

Determination of one's fitness-to-fly is an important part of accepting the airplane, crew, and passengers (by signing the dispatch flight release) for a flight. As an ALPA-trained airline accident investigator, I can assure you that a crews' fitness-to-fly (physical fitness, mental and emotional fitness, and technical competence) is an important part of any accident investigation.

I once refused to fly the last two legs of a trip as a fitness issue. I had flown the red-eye from LAX to BWI in a Boeing 737-400. The pairing had us then fly a BWI (Baltimore)-ISP (Islip)-BWI turn two hours after landing at BWI from LAX. My BWI chief pilot not only backed me up on the issue, but also called the crew scheduling administrator and told him that his BWI pilots would not be flying the BWI-ISP-BWI turn after the red-eye portion of the pairing for the rest of the month. He also told the crew scheduling administrator not to build future trip pairings with such back-side-of-the-clock (and barely legal) burdens on the crews.

To refuse to fly for any reason is usually not without consequences: minimum, a rug-dance in the chief pilots office (especially if a trip is canceled). Most chief pilots I have worked for always deferred to their pilots' good judgment .. especially on fitness and weather issues.

been so burdened by a contract issue to have been rendered incapable of carrying out the flight?

I understand that other factors may intervene, bad sushi, hotel had cockroaches that ate you shoes, etc.

Edit: Did you have military flight training?

I think the guy was wise to do this, and if he hadn't there could have been a disaster. Those who can't admit to the problem are a bigger danger. If to believe you have the right stuff, you have to go no matter what, people, especially men, will do that. Unless this guy makes a habit of it, he made a wise choice right at that point and may have saved lives. Being judgmental towards him discourages that kind of thought and could lead to accidents.

My point was more along the lines of how there would be little to no compassion for a manager who downed a bird for similar reasons.

I don't fly anymore, not on a commercial flight anyways, there is something about hurtling your ass through the air at 450 MPH in an aluminum cigar tube built and maintained by the lowest bidder that common sense tells me to avoid.

There was an incident a few years back where a pilot flew the jumbo jet he was piloting into the ocean. THere was some thought that he committed suicide and took a couple hundred people with him.

No one knows why he did it, but I know that I would be much happier sitting on the ground somewhere than in a jet with a pilot who has 'issues'.

that commercial airliners were flown almost exclusively by pilots with military training. In the service, you can't take a mental health day over a spat, I guess the "right stuff" is somewhat optional in airline pilots these days.

In any case, few hundred people who were already terribly inconvenienced by the TSA jackboots were further inconvenienced by some guy who probably had a capable co-pilot who was just as able to push the buttons on the aircraft as this guy was.

A terrorist bomb closed the Canary Islands' main airport and airliners were diverted to Tenerife. While on the ground at Tenerife, the pilots of several big airliners watched as the fog rolled in. The pilots were tired and stressed. The tower controllers at Tenerife were stressed .. they seldom had so many airplanes under their control on their small airport. The weather got worse. Language was a barrier. Clearances were ambiguous. Sometimes all it takes to break the error chain leading to an air disaster the magnitude of the Pan Am 1736 and KLM 4805 (both Boeing 747s) runway collision is one pilot or one controller calling a time-out .. passenger convenience be damned.

And, no, the days of military-trained pilots' dominance of the airline seniority rosters is long gone. And it doesn't have anything to do with the "right stuff." The US military would be happy to have a safety record as stellar as the US airline industries.

BTW: The captain of the Pan Am "Clipper Victor" was Victor Grubbs, a family friend from my home town south of Atlanta.

But it has nothing to do with a pilot who hasn't even received clearance to leave the tarmac.

How does this apply to the situation?

mental factors. The KLM crew were in a rush to takeoff since they were facing an hours cutoff on their flying time.

The KLM pilot didn't confirm he had clearance to begin takeoff. He was the senior pilot of KLM so he probably also felt responsible to the company in costing them money if they had to layover a 747 on Tenerife overnight and the frustration of the passengers for not getting to their final destination. His copilot tried to question if they had clearance but probably wasn't forceful enough cause he was intimidated by flying with the airline's senior pilot.

When the impatient pilot of KLM began his takeoff without confirmation that the runway was clear he doomed himself and his planeload of passengers and crew and most of the passengers and crew of the Pan Am 747 still on the runaway hidden by the fog.

I believe the issue is that the pilot was wise enough about himself to know that emotionally he could not focus enough to fly safely! I commend the pilot to think about not only his life but those he would be flying to Denver. Stress I believe the pilot above your link was trying to tell you is the reason why the pilot did not choose to fly, regardless of him getting permission for take-off or not!

If a hat on a head disabled him what else would have caused him to nose dive your happy travels into the ground?

Whatever, here's a nickel, buy a clue.

Million dollar trained premadonas who can barely read a map.

The old saying is "It takes a college educated idiot to fly it and high school drop out to fix it".

for over 25 years, I can attest to the fact that I've never met a high-school drop-out working on any crew I've been on or led....

was the last to take dropouts, I got in just before the lock, so to speak. (1981)

So you most likely would not be acquainted with those who left formal education to pursue something better than picking corn for a living.

Had I went through with obtaining my A&P after leaving the Corps, I could be you boss right now and you would never know my education level.

They offered me Nuclear, I turned it down.

Edit: Blowing my horn here, but I graduated Millington NAS with the highest score ever. Not bad for a dropout, what do you think?

And you don't think it was responsible for the pilot to decline flight rather than to fly in a negative emotional state and perhaps risk the lives of the people -- and "donor organs" -- on board?

Put yourself in the worst case scenario...the pilot, distracted, misses a warning light or a critical calculation, and the plane crashes. They write it off to "pilot error," or "fatigue." But you don't feel any better...you're DEAD.

I think it's responsible of him to decline to fly. There are many other flights, other pilots. Inconvenience over safety.

I know where this guy is coming from. I've had to do the same thing at times and just leave the office for an hour to chill out, though I don't fly airliners for a living.

To upset to fly? I'm OK with that.

:kick:

The pilot then added, "And in the interests of further honerty, I have to warn you... please do not use the forward restroom for a few minutes. I just took a nasty dump in there. While I was masturbating. Thank you for your understanding."

Hell even in simulations I noticed how complicated getting these birds up can be. If he has anything on his mind but safety and the checklist. I want him to stay on the ground.

Now I don't want him to get a medal or anything and I wish he could have left the issue on the ground but he made the right call.

Then he would have been fine.