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CFIse · July 13th, 2006, 21:04

I would not board the passengers. People who say board them are assuming the captain will turn up shortly, but you don't have a clue where he/she is. They could have been injured in a motorcycle accident on the way to work and understandably not taken time off from bleeding to call crew scheduling.

Most people would rather be in the terminal than in the plane and they CERTAINLY would rather not have boarded, sat for 2 hours and then been told to de-plane because there is no reserve captain to be found and the flight cancelled. I have not been there, but a friend of mine has, and he's swore off boarding without a captain right there and then.

I don't call crew scheduling if there's no captain at show time, but at some point you have to make the call because if the captain isn't going to show you need somebody working on a replacement. When you call is a tricky timing issue.

On the other hand I did have a captain call me and "he was on the airport property - get it all fired up he'd be there in 10 minutes" - so I boarded and got us setup, because I was pretty sure he was going to make it. For whatever reason (let's say the captain was optimistic about his time to get through security) he didn't get to the gate until 10 minutes after pushback time. I had about reached my last PA announcement about "just a last bit of paperwork we have to sort out" while telling the gate agents the captain was "just inside talking to the company" when he made his appearance at the jetway. Yeh, that was fun!

July 13th, 2006, 21:04	#13
CFIse Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Somewhere Posts: 624	Re: To Load Pax or not I would not board the passengers. People who say board them are assuming the captain will turn up shortly, but you don't have a clue where he/she is. They could have been injured in a motorcycle accident on the way to work and understandably not taken time off from bleeding to call crew scheduling. Most people would rather be in the terminal than in the plane and they CERTAINLY would rather not have boarded, sat for 2 hours and then been told to de-plane because there is no reserve captain to be found and the flight cancelled. I have not been there, but a friend of mine has, and he's swore off boarding without a captain right there and then. I don't call crew scheduling if there's no captain at show time, but at some point you have to make the call because if the captain isn't going to show you need somebody working on a replacement. When you call is a tricky timing issue. On the other hand I did have a captain call me and "he was on the airport property - get it all fired up he'd be there in 10 minutes" - so I boarded and got us setup, because I was pretty sure he was going to make it. For whatever reason (let's say the captain was optimistic about his time to get through security) he didn't get to the gate until 10 minutes after pushback time. I had about reached my last PA announcement about "just a last bit of paperwork we have to sort out" while telling the gate agents the captain was "just inside talking to the company" when he made his appearance at the jetway. Yeh, that was fun!