Quote:
Originally Posted by Micaoct  I just wanted to pop in here and mention that did actually happened to me 2 days ago. Everyone boarded and we were all ready to go. 20 minutes passed and we still didn't push back after about 40 minutes the Captain got on the PA and said that the Lav is broken so we are going to wait for maintenance to come fix it.
Estimated time was said to be about 15 minutes. 40 minutes later the captain came back and said that they were still working on it and it should be another 25 minutes. Meanwhile one of the flight attendants came and said that no one can de-board and we have to wait in the plane, right after that a ticket agent came and talked about connecting flights, as there were quite a few people which had to make a connection which was delayed for the people who had to make the connection.
After about 1.5 hours sitting on the ramp we finally were told that we had another 757 waiting at a different gate and they had everyone deboard and move to the other plane. As we were getting off a different crew were preparing to get on the plane to take it to Seattle, after the lav was fixed. So we had a 2 hours delay.
Oh this was from Minneapolis to Portland. Oh and there was multiple lavs working at the time, only one was actually broken (from what I could tell). People were going to the other lav constantly. |
From a maintenance perspective as why they swapped equipment even though the other lavs where functional:
The one lav was probably already Inop and deferred per the a/c MEL (Minimum Equip List) or MCO as my company calls it. I'm going to guess that this MEL was about to expire or would expire while the aircraft was in a non-maintenance station.
Happens all time especially since 9/11. Airline management rule #1. The first way to cut costs is to cut maintenance.
I'll also guess if maintenance had the parts they probably could of had the issue fixed in 30 minutes. Unless it was a vacuum system and someone flushed a diaper, but most 757 are blue juicers unless its a fairly new a/c. Anyways, diaper in a vacuum waste system is about as bad as flushing quick-crete cement.
Airline management rule #2. Second way to cut costs is to not stock parts. Then when an aircraft is grounded borrow the required part from another company at hundreds of $$$ a day. Then when you get your own part, change it again and send the borrowed part back. Double the labor but it doesn't matter.
The enemies of a mechanic....Blue Juice, Skydrol and Management.