I removed myself from an airline flight - long

"Maule Driver" wrote

The captain explained that he's sure that the
maintenance crew has it under control and that no, there's
really no reason for the crew to have to go out too.

The ground crew has a lot more training and experience with
the cargo doors than does the flight crew. Airlines have
specialist to work on each task and if I recall correctly, at
one time, one of the major airlines even had a line maintenence
foreman doing the aircraft pre-flight inspection instead of the
flightcrew.
Airline pilots are just that, pilots, they are not trained to
do the work of a maintenence crew.

Bob Moore
PanAm (retired)

In article ,
Robert Moore wrote:
The captain explained that he's sure that the
maintenance crew has it under control and that no, there's
really no reason for the crew to have to go out too.

The ground crew has a lot more training and experience with
the cargo doors than does the flight crew. Airlines have
specialist to work on each task and if I recall correctly, at
one time, one of the major airlines even had a line maintenence
foreman doing the aircraft pre-flight inspection instead of the
flightcrew.
Airline pilots are just that, pilots, they are not trained to
do the work of a maintenence crew.

Bob Moore
PanAm (retired)


Maybe not, but the pilots are responsible for the safety of the flight.
It's obviously up to the captain as to whether he trust the ground or
maintenance crew, but to say that he should trust them simply because he
doesn't know any better seems like a huge risk to me. If the captain
doesn't know any better maybe he should spend some time with the ground
or maintenance crew to better educate himself.

The bottom line is that the original author was not comfortable, and he
exercised his option to exit the airplane.



JKG

"Robert Moore"

The ground crew has a lot more training and experience with
the cargo doors than does the flight crew. Airlines have
specialist to work on each task and if I recall correctly, at
one time, one of the major airlines even had a line maintenence
foreman doing the aircraft pre-flight inspection instead of the
flightcrew.
Airline pilots are just that, pilots, they are not trained to
do the work of a maintenence crew.

That's exactly what the crew communicated to me (my quotes were from memory
but the sense I left the cockpit with was exactly what is said above).

Looking back, what happened was that I truly was spooked for a few minutes.
Once spooked, I reasoned to myself that I'd be a fool not to pay attention
to the fear.