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Originally Posted by calcapt  Sounds like the captain made the right decision. Does he get any credit or do you just chalk it all up to dumb luck? Your decision would of resulted in timing out at your alternate and stranding a plane full of passengers which in your words you "didn't really care." If this was you first leg off OE, I would like to think that I would be saying something like "Hey captain, I realize I am new here so please explain your thinking to me" rather than just assume he is a dumb a$$. Typically, new regional FOs do not know everything, but I guess you could be the exception. |
To be honest, there wasn't much discussion happening. Right about as I was going to speak up and say, "Hey boss, we've hit decision fuel, we're actually PAST decision fuel and the longer we stay here the fewer options we have to get to our alternate. There's a monster thunderstorm sitting on top of the airport, nobody is getting in and ATC keeps telling us they'll get us in, "In a few minutes," but it isn't happening. We've gotta make something happen here and kinda soon. I don't think we should be here, dispatch doesn't think we should be here and we've gotta make something happen here by either getting into our destination or making it back to our alternate," ATC finally got us in. To be honest I chalk it up to dumb luck. I have no idea how long he was willing to sit there and wait out the storm after we had blown past decision fuel and had dispatch telling us that we shouldn't be deleting fuel out of our flight plan because of weather out there.
I might be fresh into the 121 world, but I'm not an idiot. This captain had already proven to me on previous legs that Doug's phrase, "The skipper will kilt you dead," isn't a joke. We've got dispatch, decision fuel and a bunch of other great things behind us to protect us from ourselves so we don't simply keep saying, "Well get in after a few more minutes, we'll get in after a few more minutes."
Remember that United DC-8 that crashed in Portland because they ran outta gas while troubleshooting a problem? The engineer and FO knew they were running on fumes, but because of an intimidating captain they couldn't, or wouldn't speak up. I'm all up for listening to what the captain has to say, and I've been learning A TON from 99% of the captains I've flown with, but every once in a while you run into somebody that you really wonder if there's anything going on upstairs.