Tag Archives for pilot.
A Southwest Airlines pilot was arrested on Wednesday morning at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport. The airline found another pilot and the flight departed to Chicago-Midway airport nearly five hours late.
He was stopped at the airport’s TSA checkpoint, and airport police called, because his breath smelled of alcohol.
A former Delta pilot was reportedly stalking a woman headed to pilot training in Atlanta. They were traveling on board Delta flight 2835, and she was concerned enough for her safety that the flight’s captain reported this to dispatch during the trip, and was requesting assistance and an escort for the woman who was going to stay on board initially during deplaning.
Sometimes a pilot will make news going above and beyond ordering pizza to a stranded aircraft. This American Airlines captain trumped that even – and ordered breakfast tacos for everyone!
After 9/11, the cockpit gets blocked off when the door is opened. A pilot goes to the lavatory, and no one can approach the front of the aircraft. That makes sense, but the flipside is that this should be reserved only for the pilot’s important needs. Here, a Southwest Airlines pilot flying from Dallas Love Field to Los Angeles reportedly spends a part of the flight chatting up a flight attendant, while passengers are forced to wait to use the lavatory. That seems like bad judgment to me – and actually illegal!
Over the summer the FAA launched a safety audit of Southwest Airlines. This came after the airline came within feet of the water while still miles from Tampa less than a month after another of the airline’s 737s descended to just over 500 feet while still 9 miles out from the Oklahoma City airport. In April, a Southwest Airlines flight in Hawaii came within 400 feet of the Pacific Ocean. Then in June a Southwest Airlines flight took off from a closed runway Southwest has shared internally some of the issues that FAA inspectors have flagged during the Certificate Holder Evaluation Process Safety Audit. I suppose some of these are better than the pilots who spent a flight watching video feed of passengers in the lavatory? The airline declined comment since “[t]he CHEP is still…
The President of the American Airlines pilot union has been removed, recalled by the union’s board of directors in a 15-5 vote. Captain Ed Sicher, in office in 2022, had controversially sought to exclude pilots from union positions that favored merging with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), which is the largest pilot union group while pilots at American have their own independent union.
The pilot of an Iberia flight from Miami to Madrid pushed back the Airbus A330 despite “DOZENS of passengers still waiting to find their seats and stow their bags.”
One passenger, filming the cabin, noted that flight attendants seemed “unconcerned” and wanted to report this to government authorities. In fact, one crewmember is distributing predeparture beverages in the aisle and overhead bins remain open as well.
The pilot of a San Francisco to Houston United Airlines flight ordered pizza for everyone on board after the plane diverted to New Mexico for a medical emergency, leaving passengers with a long delay on the ground.
Pilots have been seeing record wages in new deals at the major carriers, in the face of paying too many to retire at the depths of Covid while not adding more to the pipeline, a recovery in air travel, and the time and cost to introduce new pilots as a result of government regulation lobbied for by the big pilot union ALPA. The tide may be about to turn.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
