Delays: the four hour ground hold from the crew side, what we know, what we cannot say, and why we look calm
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#1 Passengers ask, understandably, why crew seem so relaxed during a long delay when they are losing their minds. From the cabin manager's side, here is the four hour ground hold as it actually is, because I think if passengers understood it they would be less angry with us and more angry at the right things.
What we know
Usually less than you think, and it arrives in fragments. A slot time from the flight deck that changes. A message from the operations centre. The captain's estimate, which is honest and which is a guess. We are not hiding a secret departure time. We do not have one.
What we cannot say
The reasons behind the reason. 'Air traffic control restrictions' might be a French strike, a storm over Germany, a runway closure at the destination, or a computer problem at the airline. We are told the category, not the story, and we are not allowed to speculate on the PA because a wrong guess becomes a complaint. So we say the category. You hear a non answer. Both are true.
Why we look calm
Because a cabin reads the crew. If the crew are agitated, the cabin becomes agitated, and an agitated cabin on the ground for four hours is a safety problem, not a customer service one. The calm is a tool. Inside, we are also missing something: a child's bedtime, a connection, a day off that started at sign off and now starts at midnight.
What the four hours look like for us
Hour one: the water run, the PA every 20 minutes, the passengers who need to get off (medical, connections) and the process for that, which is not simple once the doors have closed. Hour two: the second water run, the snacks if the captain authorises them, the passenger who has decided this is our fault personally. Hour three: the duty time calculation. Every crew member has a legal maximum duty and a four hour delay can push the flight past it. The captain and the crewing department are doing maths that decides whether this flight goes at all. Hour four: either the slot comes and we go, exhausted and behind, or the flight cancels and we hand 180 people to the ground staff and go home eight hours after we expected to.
What actually helps
A passenger who says 'this is not your fault, is there anything I can do' is worth more than they know. Mostly, no, there is nothing. But the sentence gets a crew through hour three.
Questions welcome. The honest ones especially.
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#2 The duty time maths in hour three is the part passengers never see and it is the part that decides everything. I have watched a captain do the sums on a napkin and cancel a flight by six minutes. Legal, correct, and unexplainable on a PA.
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#3 Ryanair Dublin, and the 'we are told the category, not the story' line is the whole thing. I have been asked why a flight was delayed a thousand times and I have known the real reason maybe twice.
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#4 Delta Atlanta, and summer thunderstorms mean this is a weekly event for us. The calm being a tool, not a feeling, is exactly right. I have been calm on the outside and calculating my childcare on the inside for four hours at a time.
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#5 Paris, and the French strike version is the one where we genuinely cannot say anything on the PA, for reasons that are both legal and political, and the passengers know and we know and we all pretend.
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#6 @mattheworly the mutual pretending during a French strike is a cultural institution at this point.
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#7 Not crew, yet, and I will be a better passenger for reading this. The 'this is not your fault' sentence is going into my next delay.