Biopsy's airline gripe thread

#378
#378
UT_Dutchman said:
You would be surprised what a little courtesy can get. I was recently on a flight in coach, where I barely fit and asked for an Ice Pick. The flight attendant went back and made tea for it and did it twice. Of course I tipped her well.
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I’m not talking about the flight attendants I’m talking about the passengers some of which have never of deodorant or soap
 
#380
#380
RavinDave said:
I did retire, 8 years ago. So I could start my own business. Back when I worked for The Man I was traveling all the time and could not avoid it. Now my businesss rarely requires travel which is fine because I am too busy with shipping & receiving, paper/computer work and lab stuff which is the fun stuff. I may spend 10% of my time driving a forklift but that’s something I enjoy too.
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Okay, gotta ask, can't put it together. Lab work, shipping/receiving that involves forklift fun, startup in China.... I give up, what's your game? Broadly speaking, if you need to.
 
#381
#381
pismonque said:
Okay, gotta ask, can't put it together. Lab work, shipping/receiving that involves forklift fun, startup in China.... I give up, what's your game? Broadly speaking, if you need to.
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Broadly speaking it’s catalyst related, mainly for gas purification. We specialize in supplying small quantities to universities, more than 100 schools served including UT; but most of our business is with industry. Sometimes I’ll do some free engineering (reactor design proposals) to help sell catalyst. Lately been busy with a wave of “landfill gas” projects - so-called “renewable” methane being a “green” energy input to the natural gas distribution network but between the landfill and the pipeline it needs a lot of processing and there’s one key step we excel in, and that is for removal of oxygen. Lab-wise we do occasionally fill and activate (with heating and hydrogen/nitrogen mixtures) small cylinders for customers, a service that is hard to find. Just got an order yesterday from a Colorado State University physics dude to load and activate a cylinder to purify liquid argon. Time permitting I like to do some “internal” R&D type testing to see how different catalysts perform, but most weekends anymore i’m catching up on design requests and/or preparing orders for shipment.
 
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#384
#384
Right. This 737 was completely full. I guess most flights are nowadays. A little turbulence ascending and descending but a good flight and few minutes early.
 
#385
#385
RavinDave said:
Broadly speaking it’s catalyst related, mainly for gas purification. We specialize in supplying small quantities to universities, more than 100 schools served including UT; but most of our business is with industry. Sometimes I’ll do some free engineering (reactor design proposals) to help sell catalyst. Lately been busy with a wave of “landfill gas” projects - so-called “renewable” methane being a “green” energy input to the natural gas distribution network but between the landfill and the pipeline it needs a lot of processing and there’s one key step we excel in, and that is for removal of oxygen. Lab-wise we do occasionally fill and activate (with heating and hydrogen/nitrogen mixtures) small cylinders for customers, a service that is hard to find. Just got an order yesterday from a Colorado State University physics dude to load and activate a cylinder to purify liquid argon. Time permitting I like to do some “internal” R&D type testing to see how different catalysts perform, but most weekends anymore i’m catching up on design requests and/or preparing orders for shipment.
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Ah. That's exactly what I thought.










Okay, no, I would never ever have come up with that. Very interesting though, thanks.
 
#386
#386
pismonque said:
Ah. That's exactly what I thought.








Okay, no, I would never ever have come up with that. Very interesting though, thanks.
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No problem. Like your screen name by the way, always thought it might be code for an angry or beer-drinking
primate of some kind.
 
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#387
#387
30k in the air as I type this and it’s been one bumpy ride. Going Nashville to San Diego and there are storms all over the route. The lighting in the clouds is one incredible sight to see from up here though. Southwest has been good. Flight attendant still got me my Jack and coke in between bumpy moments so I’m a happy camper.
 
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#388
#388
Nash_Vol97 said:
30k in the air as I type this and it’s been one bumpy ride. Going Nashville to San Diego and there are storms all over the route. The lighting in the clouds is one incredible sight to see from up here though. Southwest has been good. Flight attendant still got me my Jack and coke in between bumpy moments so I’m a happy camper.
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Ouch... Jack on the rocks... sipped slowly.
 
#393
#393
golfballs said:
There was a guy on my flight today who lost consciousness and fell out of his seat into the aisle. They got him back into his seat and he came to for a second. But then lost consciousness again. I’ve never seen that look on someone’s face. It looked to me like he was going to die. They started calling for a doctor. Other passengers were trying to get him to come to. Some guy was using his fingers to keep his eyes open. It didn’t seem to me there was a doctor because several minutes passed and nobody showed up. I wondered why they didn’t immediately begin to divert the flight. Eventually a doctor showed up although I don’t know what kind of doctor he was. He put the guy back on the floor. After about 5 minutes the attendants showed up with a medical kit and the doctor grabbed a saline back and gave the guy and IV. The guy was still out of it. And still no attempt to land. After about 10 minutes he started coming to. But he just laid there the rest of the flight. When we finally landed the paramedics came on and took the guy out. He was at least conscious and able to speak. But I wonder if there hadn’t been a doctor or if whatever the doctor had determined was the matter meant that he needed immediate help we could at least have been already diverted and about to land.
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NEVolFan said:
Certainly is an top issue with airlines... from a report recently about "Are there doctors onbard",

Diversions are costly for airlines at $10,000 to $200,000 per incident. The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that a medical emergency occurs on 1 out of every 604 flights. Of those, 7.3% are diverted (or roughly one in very 4,409 flights). MedAire reports a much lower diversion rate – 1.6% – for flights where they provide assistance. One might speculate that the airline would prefer that there is not a doctor onboard to keep diversions low.
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ATC_VOL said:
From what I know/have been told... pilots let company know and either the company (probably dispatch) or the pilots communicate with this outside firm of doctors who help to diagnose the individual having the issues and make a suggestion on when and where to divert. For instance a certain city or airport may be better equipped to handle a particular issue. Any pilots on here please correct this if I’m wrong.

Other issues could play a factor in how quickly a diversion may happen as well, such as weight of the aircraft (fuel remaining), weather, or runway length of nearby airports.

In my experience probably at least 80% of the medical emergencies pilots have made me aware of result in the aircraft continuing on to their original destination.
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I wish I had known about this thread before now. This is where I came in and I wanted to comment on these posts before reading the whole thing and throwing in my $.02.

Diversions. Medical diversions in particular are tricky things. First a short story: Going to Beijing via a polar route and through eastern Russia. Our divert fields at this particular point in time are Fairbanks Alaska, and I don't remember if it was Magadan or Petropavlovsk and finally Beijing. We were literally at the equal time point between Fairbanks and Beijing and had a passenger in pretty serious trouble. Magadan or Petro were closer, no doubt. We have a medical person on board that has an opinion but says she cannot make a real diagnosis without lab work. We have the capability to hook up an on board medical person with a medical service we use (I call it Doc in a Box). I don't want to get into too much detail on that. We hook them up on SatCom and they discuss possible diagnoses and what our potential divert situations are. Now if I am on fire, I am going to land in Eastern Russia. For medical reasons... probably not because we might very well have better equipment on the airplane. The other part of this story is the fact that the cockpit crew has to coordinate the diversion process with ATC, and while not that difficult, even with the Russians, buy the time we would have coordinated it with ATC, and our dispatcher (who tracks every facet of our flights) we would have been past the ETP anyway and going back to Fairbanks would have taken longer. We proceeded on to PEK which was still 4.5 hours away.

A little epilogue to this particular story: When I was going back to my rest break I went back and talked to both the passenger and the doctor. The passenger was a very nice man who was obviously in a lot of pain, but he looked at me and mouthed that he was sorry for all the trouble. I felt terrible, but there was nothing else I could do for him at that particular point in time other than to tell him not to worry about that and that getting him quickly and safely to the best care we could was a top priority. We were met by an ambulance and he was taken to a hospital. As I saw him getting off, he seemed much better, but still not feeling the best.

So... from MY perspective in the cockpit. I want to go wherever I can get the passenger the best care as soon possible but if I am in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean or over Eastern Russia it is not always close. It might be 3 or even more hours away. So you are probably asking what about over Nebraska. A lot of times, the FAs will call for a doctor before they ever let us know up front about it. And 'doctors' can be any health professional from EMTs to OB nurses to neurosurgeons (I have had all of those). The Doc in the Box helps us to make not only the decision to divert, but WHERE to divert to, depending on what help is needed. That is information he has at his fingertips. For example if it is a heart issue, we might want to go to a city that has a good heart center as opposed to finding the first piece of concrete available. Oh, and cost never enters the equation.

Sorry for the length. I understand tldr if that applies.
 
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#394
#394
Biopsyman said:
I travel a lot for work and flying has gone way down..
1. People that want to rearrange your luggage or ask to move iyour to get their crap in. Smash your stuff to get their shat iin
2. Sit in the front of the plane and want to the back to get their luggage after the plane lands.
3. Body odor..
4. Fat people who sit my seat and theirs
5. All the flights are full.. No room..
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I wish people that have small bags would have the courtesy to put them under the seat instead of taking up overhead space so that I can get my roll aboard up there where it belongs. If that is you Biopsy... that is why your shizz gets smashed and I have no sympathy.:p
 
#395
#395
McDad said:
The show MythBusters did an episode where they tested plane boarding scenarios to discover which was quickest and most efficient. Ironically, the free-for-all was the quickest in their test. I'm dubious. I cannot figure out why Airlines do not board back to front, window to aisle after first class seating is finished. It seems like that would be the quickest and most efficient process.
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There have been countless studies on this stuff.
 
#396
#396
McDad said:
My interest is piqued.

What's their boarding order/method?
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It is a society thing with them. They don't each think the whole flight is just for them. They get on sit down and are ready to go. They don't take 5 minutes stowing their **** while blocking the aisle.
 
#397
#397
volfanbill said:
So the airline is responsible for an individual’s hygiene? And being lax on the issue has sent the whole industry to he**?
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No, but if they are too funky they can be taken off the flight until they get it taken care of. SWA was doing a reality show a few years ago and this was one of the vignettes. Pretty interesting.
 
#398
#398
05_never_again said:
Atlanta gets maybe the worst rap out of any airport in the country.

Yes, it is an enormous airport (the busiest in the world). Yes, they did recently have that insane incident where the entire airport lost power for about 12 hours.

Having said that, it is laid out very efficiently and you can get from one end of the airport to the other in about 15 minutes. Seven concourses, laid out parallel with each other, with a train connecting them all. Simple. The signage is good and you kind of have to try to get lost there. Assuming that the weather is OK, you get through that airport perfectly fine most of the time. I've noticed people who bash ATL generally tend to not fly that often and haven't been to many other airports. They don't see how worse it can be.

I've been to many airports, ones like DFW and Minneapolis come to mind, where the aesthetics people got a hold of the airport plans and in their effort to be creative and make the airport look cool make it unnecessarily long to get from one place to the other. Some airports appear to be laid out in the most illogical ways.
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This^^^^^^^ I get the hate for Atlanta, but it is by far the best airport on the planet for moving airplanes and people.
 
#399
#399
Biopsyman said:
Yes.. Not all TSA pre are alike, Some place they want you to take your computer out and even take your belt off, other places take your shoes off and leave your computer in the your bag
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This. And Tennessee airports are all on their own program. MEM is the worst. Just one more reason to hate that God forsaken place.
 
#400
#400
OldandStillaVol said:
I’ve never had a personal issue with TSA but am always baffled on how they allocate their personnel. I’ve seen numerous times when less than half of their check lines were open yet 10-15 agents were standing around watching others do their job or were fiddling with the rope lines for the 100 people waiting. Or 100 people in line and an agent just stops checking and closes his/her post and walks away.
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Seriously Clark? It is a government agency. A FEDERAL government agency.
 
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