#3 of My Series: Behind the Cockpit Door
My work and
life mantra of being proactive and giving people the tools they need to do
their job has been uppermost in my mind on every one of my flights in my 27
years of flying as a Captain. Learning
when to open my mouth to be proactive soon became the third tenant of my now
3-part personal philosophy: Be
Proactive, Provide the Tools, and Timing is Crucial. I abbreviate it as PTT or (be) Proactive, (give
‘em the proper) Tools, and Timing (is crucial).
Using PTT
one day on a round trip flight from Houston to Orlando, I decided to take action
when I saw we would be late leaving Houston and suspected that would likely snowball
into a late arrival back into Houston on the return flight. I figured I could forward my request to the
dispatcher early for extra fuel to fly faster than normal on the return trip in
order to make up for lost time and hopefully get the airplane back on schedule
when it returned to Houston.
It was a good
proactive plan, but, as I was to later learn, bad timing on my part. As I talked to my dispatcher for the outbound
flight and asked him to forward a request for more fuel on the return flight, I
didn’t account for the possibility that there might be a dispatcher shift
change or that my message could easily get garbled or possibly lost. Happy to finally get on board our
late-arriving airplane, we began our preparations for the delayed outbound
flight. We were making good progress
through our checklist until we got to the item called “Flight Plan.” The First Officer (co-pilot) said, “Captain,
there’s something strange here. Our uplinked computer flight plan is wrong,
very wrong!” I took one look at it and
realized my error. I was looking at the
return flight plan FROM Orlando to Houston, not the one we needed to fly TO
Orlando!
In his
desire to help fulfill my “proactive request” the dispatcher had sent us the
wrong flight plan data, causing us an unnecessary delay and a flurry of
corrective activity at a time when we were already late and chomping at the bit
to get moving. It took us another ten
minutes to request a new (correct) flight plan which was the only way practical
way to delete the wrong flight plan.
Several cell calls to the dispatcher later, I realized that the real
problem was my desire to plan ahead into an area where the wrong timing on my
part could easily result in some unwanted and delay-producing results.
Had I kept my mouth shut and waited until we
were airborne, THEN made my request via our single-finger typing system used
for sending airborne messages, I could have save everyone a whole lot of
hassle. So now I’ve
modified my “Timing is Crucial” to include a footnote: Give ‘em what they need WHEN they need it.
Too much info at the wrong time is as bad as no info at all!
