Remember that ad the US Airline Pilots Association (USAPA) took out in USA Today claiming that US Airways was unsafe? There was a specific flight used as an example and that may be coming back to bite the union. According to a letter sent from the company’s flight ops group to the captain, the airplane was found to be working just fine. Hmm. This is like a soap opera.

According to USAPA’s website, here’s what happened that day:

• When pushing back from the gate, the auxiliary power unit (a backup source of electrical power) and the Hot Battery Bus (a critical source of primary electrical power) both failed – in other words, the plane had no electrical power and no radio communications. None.
• After opening a window to verbally call down to the ground crew (the Captain’s only option), US Airways maintenance was able to restart the power unit, but offered no explanation as to why it failed or any reasonable assurance that it wouldn’t fail again.

So we have a couple issues here. US Airways did a thorough review to see what happened. According to the letter from the US Airways VP of Flight Ops that I’ve obtained, the airline tried to meet with the captain in person to discuss the review but she was unwilling. So they put the results in writing to her.

On the issue of the APU failing, no problem was ever found. The APU (auxiliary power unit) is like a mini-engine which provides power when the engines aren’t running. This is actually used to start the engines on the ground, but it’s not necessarily required for flight. If you’ve ever seen an engine started while you’re at the gate with a big generator nearby, then that’s probably a case where the engines needed an external start because the APU wasn’t working.

Back to this incident, the first entry in the logbook from the captain said “APU failed at gate, unable to restart.” According to US Airways, the mechanics did a test that found no fault with the APU and then proceeded to restart it at the gate without any trouble at all. The captain said she wouldn’t accept the aircraft unless the APU was fixed, but since the mechanics couldn’t actually find any problems that needed fixing, they deferred the issue as permitted by the maintenance program.

That was followed by a second entry from the captain saying:

After APU Auto Shutdown on gate with no external power connected, battery power lasted 3-4 minutes. Unable to restart APU or communicate on VHF [radio] #1.

So the APU failed and wouldn’t restart. US Airways pulled the Electronic Control Box (ECB), which the airline describes as the “brains of the APU.” The ECB records any abnormal events to help with maintenance. So the airline sent the ECB to Diehl Aerospace, which is described as “the repair subcontractor for Honeywell (the manufacturer of the APU).”

Upon review, no auto shutdown nor any failed attempt to restart the APU was recorded. Could the ECB have failed to record the incident? Unlikely. It recorded minor issues before and after the event so it was functioning properly. Diehl sent the ECB back saying no problems were found, and that ECB went back into service with no further issues. The APU apparently was working just fine.

But what about the radio not working? Was there an issue preventing that from functioning properly? Well, that assumes that the APU did shutdown. All we know for sure is that the APU didn’t automatically shut down. But as US Airways notes in the letter, “the ECB does not record a ‘commanded’ shutdown.” So maybe there was a commanded shutdown by someone on the aircraft? I have no clue because it’s not spelled out, but let’s assume that the APU was in fact shut down for one reason or another. What about those other issues that followed?

Apparently the airplane worked as designed. When on the ground, if the engines aren’t on, the APU isn’t on, and there is no ground power (basically, when the airplane is plugged in to a source at the airport), then the batteries will power many of the electronics. But there’s a catch.

To avoid completely draining the batteries while on the ground, the system will cut battery power when voltage drops below 23V for 16 seconds and the airplane is on the ground. When that happens, that VHF radio #1 won’t work. So that’s probably what happened here, and it worked as designed. Was the battery draining too quickly? Not according to US Airways. The airline says “the two main batteries were . . . tested by an outside source and have also been returned to the Company with no faults found.”

So the APU worked, the batteries worked, and the airplane in general seemed to work as advertised. The only thing I don’t see mentioned is anything about the “Hot Battery Bus” not working. The only mention of the hot battery bus in the letter is this:

. . . The [automatic battery shut off on the ground] will not disconnect the batteries when either one is discharged below 23V while in the air; they will continue to power the hot battery buses, DC BAT bus, DC ESSENTIAL bus, and the AC ESSENTIAL bus as long as possible.

So that seems to say that the bus (or buses), which provides continuous power to vital systems, was working. But no further mention is made beyond that. In short, US Airways says “this aircraft performed exactly as it was designed.”

Does that mean the captain fabricated what happened? I wasn’t there, so I don’t know. The only clue we have is from the US Airways letter which says “there is no discipline contemplated” after reviewing this incident. US Airways says it just wants to “put closure on the incident.”

It seems to me that if a pilot fabricated a maintenance problem, and it was proven conclusively, then that would be grounds for discipline of some sort, right? So since there is no disciplinary action here, maybe they’re chalking it up to a misunderstanding or confusion about the situation. Either way, it puts a serious hole in USAPA’s ongoing campaign to question the airline’s safety procedures.

[777 (not an A330) APU exhaust photo via Flickr user Robbie 1/CC 2.0]

No bag? Then airlines should refund fee – CNN Out of the Office
I’ve written about this here before. If your bag doesn’t travel with you, then you should get a refund of the bag fee, but that’s not the way it works at most airlines.

US Airways Warms to Inflight Internet – APEX Digest
I’m writing for the Airline Passenger Experience Association’s publications now. This piece was about US Airways revisiting inflight internet.

In the Trenches: Relying on Third Parties – Intuit Small Business Blog
Sometimes, you think you’re as prepared as you can be, but third parties can throw a wrench into things sometimes.

Apparently US Airways likes double digits. It seems that 9 Express carriers weren’t enough, so now US Airways has added a tenth to the stable: SkyWest. When Mesa came out of bankruptcy, US Airways agreed to keep 7 of the 50 seat CRJ-200s and 6 of the Dash-8 turboprops in the fleet for a short period of time. That time is up, and US Airways will replace those with 14 SkyWest CRJ-200s with the option to go up to CRJ-700s if it wants. What do you think of the move? Will Mesa’s remaining CRJ-900 operation end up flying under the SkyWest flag one of these days?

As a refresher, here are the other US Airways Express operators:

• Mesa – operates 38 of the CRJ-900s from Phoenix and Charlotte
• PSA – (wholly-owned) operates 35 CRJ-200s and 14 CRJ-700s on the east coast
• Air Wisconsin – operates 70 CRJ-200s on the east coast
• Republic Airlines – operates 20 ERJ-170s and 38 ERJ-175s on the east coast
• Chautauqua Airlines – operates 9 ERJ-145s on the east coast
• Trans States – operates 8 or fewer ERJ-145s from Pittsburgh
• Piedmont – (wholly-owned) operates 33 Dash-8-100 and 11 Dash-8-300 turboprops on the east coast
• Mesaba – operates 7 or fewer Saab 340 turboprops on the east coast
• Colgan Air – operates 7 or fewer Saab 340 turboprops from LaGuardia for now

Man, I really should have waited another day before writing that US Airways pilots union (USAPA) piece last week. Why? On Friday, US Airways filed an injunction in the courts to try to get the union to stop illegal slowdown activity. The evidence is quite comprehensive.

But let’s start with what’s important. If you’re flying, should you be concerned about a slowdown? It’s important to note that the slowdown is only being effected by “East” pilots from the pre-merger US Airways. That means that the Phoenix hub is running as usual. In fact, that’s one of the things that makes the evidence so compelling. The West operation is running just as it always has while the East has gotten much worse since May 1.

The epicenter of these problems is Charlotte, where USAPA has its strongest pilot support. If you’re flying through Charlotte, you may have had some problems during the last three months, and that could continue until (if) an injunction is issued. On time performance has suffered and there have been a few more cancellations each day, but it’s not a disastrous slowdown at this point. Still, it’s enough to get the airline to act.

So, should you stop flying US Airways on the east cost until it’s fixed? I say no; not unless you want to support illegal job action as a tactic for negotiations. If you stop flying US Airways, then those slowing things down will have achieved their goal. And remember, the West operation isn’t impacted, nor is the large Express operation. Hopefully this will all end quickly anyway now that the courts are involved.

How Bad is the Slowdown?
How bad is it? It’s not United summer of 2000 bad, but the actions seem pretty awful. Here is the motion. Take a look at this supporting brief for the juicy details. Also, here’s a report from an independent expert Darin Lee who performed statistical analysis to show how the changes are highly unlikely to be simply due to chance. (Take note, UNITE HERE. This is how to do analysis.)

There are really two parts to this. First, has there been a pilot slowdown? The statistics seem to conclusively point to “yes” as the answer. But there also has to be proof that the union is behind it, supporting it, or not doing anything to stop it. Let’s start with point one. Here’s what’s happened:

• The rate of the number of maintenance issues written up by pilots as a percent of total flights has usually been just below 25 percent. Since May 1, that has increased by half and stayed there. Here’s a chart:
  
• The percentage of East flights delayed due to pilot action has increased from a norm of 1.31 percent up to 2.85 percent since May 1.
• Previously there was an average of fewer than 7 fatigue calls per month. That’s more than doubled since May.
• Taxi times for mainline aircraft on the East were statistically about a quarter minute longer than Express. Since May, that has spiked to over 1 minute. Taxi times themselves have lengthened as well.

The end result here is that on-time performance in the East has dropped by 11 points and an additional 9 to 10 flights have been canceled each day due to pilot action. Once again, this is ONLY the EAST PILOTS. The West pilots and Express operations have seen no change, and that makes the evidence even more damning.

So, it seems pretty clear that there is a slowdown here, but the harder part is proving that the union is behind it. See, the union knows that it’s illegal to have any sort of job action unless the National Mediation Board releases the two sides from negotiation and the cooling off period has passed. That hasn’t happened here, so this kind of job action would be illegal.

Of course, that means the union, if involved, will do what it can to cover its tracks. It is, of course, already denying that it has anything to do with this, but it has left plenty of clues according to the evidence submitted by US Airways. Though there have been issues before this year including a flawed safety culture survey and incorrect information about what is considered safe to fly, the rhetoric ramped up this year.

Get On Board for Safety
The whole effort seems to be disguised as a safety campaign, something that has been used before as a tactic for disrupting operations at other airlines. US Airways strings together a picture of a campaign linked by a central campaign for being “On Board” the slowdown effort.

All of the information below comes from the US Airways supporting information. Though many of the actions came from anonymous email addresses and prepaid cell phones, there were plenty of mentions of this in union communications as well.

The union even started handing out lanyards with “Safety First” and “I’m on Board” on them. When a West pilot asked about them, the union’s communications chair said:

The lanyards are not however just a ‘party gift’ handed to everyone; they are handed to those, from any domicile, who have first demonstrated that they are onboard with the idea that safety comes before everything else . . . there are pilots roaming the system giving them out to those who demonstrate they are on board. If you’re flying, demonstrate in some fashion that you’re on board and have one of these pilots in the back, I would imagine you’ll get one.

Distance Learning Delays Not Safety-Related
So where else did this campaign show up? For example, calls were made to pilots encouraging them not to complete their FAA-mandated distance learning courses until the day they were due, May 31. These calls again referenced being “On Board” and clearly had nothing to do with safety.

Three days before the deadline, 897 pilots had failed to finish the learning, and only 1 of those was from the West group. That’s about 900 out of 2,600 active East pilots, or about a third. What’s worse? Sixty percent of those pilots had completed 94 percent of the learning, so they were just waiting for the deadline. Had US Airways not been able to get a waiver from the FAA for a couple of days, it would have had to cancel flights because the pilots weren’t going to be legal to be scheduled for multi-day trips that extended beyond May 31.

Emails and Text Messages Leave Ample Evidence
The informal communications got even bolder. One email told pilots “to engage in slow taxi, stay home if they are fatigued, and refuse aircraft with legal [Minimum Equipment Lists] with the express purpose of “prov[ing] that [the pilots] are willing to endure a summer of inconvenience in exchange for decent wages.”

Decals were placed around the system with words like “+16” and “Time to get serious about a contract BLOCK +16.” The +16 reference refers to pilots arriving at the gate 16 minutes late so it counts as late in the Department of Transportation statistics.

Another email said “[b]eing ‘ON BOARD’ means . . . do[ing] what you can to help our cause,” including being “15 MINUTES LATE EVERYWHERE.”

A note was found on an aircraft stating “Management is very upset about the deteriorating performance of our airline. It’s time to turn up the heat. Until that time, the e-mail WE WILL Prevail[.] Pass this along to another pilot that you know is “ON BOARD[.]”

As if that wasn’t enough, the pilots turned on themselves and started calling out people who weren’t willing to obey. A broadcast text message went out on July 24 of this year saying:

Seems like we have our first winner for the COMPANY SUCK UP AWARD… PINK PANTY AWARD or whatever you want to call it. This A330 CAP on Reserve, on July 15th had 1 Day Available, suddenly on July 16th he is on a FRA 3 day trip. Congratulations go to [rank and file US Airways pilot] XXXX [name deleted by Cranky] as our first winner. Keep up the good work by screwing all your fellow pilots that are trying to get a contract we deserve. If you have a good reason please let everyone know.

They then actually placed a card in his mailbox saying “CONGRATULATIONS! You’re a WINNER! Your heroic effort to help management achieve their bonus checks has earned you the Pretty Pink Panties award[.] Do you want a new contract? EARN IT[.]”

Pretty awful stuff, right? As mentioned above, the union unsurprisingly argues that it was not behind these efforts. That means that this would have been just individual pilot actions that it can’t be responsible for, but that seems less likely after reviewing the filing. But even if that’s the case, how can the union explain why it hasn’t done anything to try to put a stop to these actions? It has a responsibility to do so and appears to have not acted, or used lukewarm responses at most.

With this mountain of evidence, I imagine it’s going to be a tough ride for the union with mounting legal bills. Once again, I feel terrible for the West pilots and really even worse for the East pilots who are just doing their jobs and not participating is this. What happens next? The union has 14 days to respond and then it goes from there. It could take weeks or even months depending upon the different tactics used by each side.

In the end, we’ll see if the court agrees, but there is clearly some solid statistical analysis showing evidence of a slowdown. The question is – will the union be held accountable for these actions?

I’ve written many times about the US Airline Pilots Association (USAPA), and it’s never been in a good light. This week, the group which represents the pilots at US Airways has once again topped itself by taking out a full page ad in USA Today talking about how US Airways is unsafe. Though there are other groups in the running, I think USAPA has demonstrated that it is the most ineffective, poorly run union group out there. For the misguided representation it provides its pilots, USAPA gets the Cranky Jackass award. This has been a long time coming.

You may already know the story. USAPA was created when the US Airways “East” (pre-merger US Airways) pilots didn’t like the seniority agreement that was decided upon in binding arbitration (yes, “binding” is apparently a loose term) with the US Airways “West” (pre-merger America West) pilots. So they marched off and voted in a new union, casting off the arbitration result. The West pilots didn’t like that (it’s been working its way through the courts), but they didn’t have the numbers to prevent the move. You can read more of the history here. In short, USAPA has done absolutely nothing good for its members, but it wrongly likes to blame US Airways management for its failings.

And that brings us to USAPA’s current strategy . . . try to burn down the company and apparently put all of its members out of a job.

The latest shameful tactic is the taking out of a full page ad in USA Today claiming that US Airways is unsafe. Let’s see. You work for an airline that pays your salary with revenue that comes in the door, and now you’re going to turn around and try to shut off that revenue by falsely claiming your airline is unsafe? Simply pathetic. It’s such a blatant negotiating tactic, but how will the general public react? That’s unclear, though this hasn’t received much press at all considering all the more important “real” news in the aviation world in the last week.

The ad itself used a single pilot incident that happened on June 16 to show the supposed danger of flying the airline. Apparently there was a flight scheduled to cross the Atlantic from Philly that evening and there were a couple of mechanical issues. There are some mechanical issues that aren’t considered crucial to be fixed, and that appears to be the case here, but the captain refused to fly the airplane and then, according to the union, she was escorted out of the airport by corporate security. The next crew refused to fly the airplane as well. Over the next couple hours, some maintenance work was done and the airplane went on its way with a third crew.

This is why the union says US Airways is an unsafe airline. It says the airline is intimidating its pilots and pushing them to fly even if it’s not safe. Then if they refuse, it has security remove them. Sounds bad, right? Too bad it’s a crock.

Now, regarding the mechanical incident itself, I don’t know whether the captain did the right thing by refusing to fly the airplane. I do know that the FAA found US Airways did nothing wrong. Here’s the statement:

The FAA manager assigned to the US Airways certificate reviewed the June 16, 2011 incident. The APU shutdown the aircraft experienced is a failure that pilots are well aware can happen and that they are trained to recognize. The battery apparently was depleted by attempts to restart the APU. Flying an aircraft with an inoperative APU is not an unusual event and normally poses no safety issues when proper limitations are applied. The Captain simply chose to exercise her pilot-in-command authority of not accepting an aircraft. Our information indicates that US Airways followed their approved MEL procedures, and all maintenance procedures were followed in accordance with the operator’s approved maintenance program. We found no violations of Federal Aviation Regulations.

That being said, if a captain doesn’t feel comfortable flying an airplane, then it’s his or her right to deny it. The problem arises when that privilege is abused just to delay or cancel flights without good reason. I’m not saying that happened here. I don’t know, and frankly, it’s not central to my point. I have no problem in theory with her walking away from the flight.

But why would security come escort the captain from the airport? USAPA wants you to believe it’s because she refused to fly the airplane. Not quite. According to US Airways, “the Captain was escorted out of the airport by corporate security (after being released from duty) not for her refusal to fly but for her comments made to customers regarding the safety of the aircraft.” Unfortunately, I don’t know details about what she said to the passengers, but it was apparently highly inappropriate. See more in this a.net discussion. I would have had her carted off the airplane as well.

In reality, there is nothing pointing to US Airways being unsafe but rather more evidence of the airline having good safety practices. It recently passed the IATA Operational Safety Audit, for example. But that won’t stop the union from trying to sully the airline’s reputation. (Get it? Sully? I crack myself up.)

In the end, USAPA simply wants to damage US Airways as if this will somehow convince the airline to throw a ton of money at the union and solve all its problems. Unfortunately, the union needs to solve its own problems regarding seniority before it can even be ready to talk to management, and it doesn’t seem any closer to doing so. I feel really bad for those pilots who never even wanted this union to represent them in the first place. This whole thing is simply pathetic and more than worthy of the Cranky Jackass Award.

[Thanks to Johosofat for the excellent Cranky Jackass Award]