Anyone who has taken an airline flight more than a few times has experienced the often puzzling, sometimes infuriating behavior of airline staff, particularly at the gate and while boarding and departing. Today’s diatribe is intended to help the flying passenger understand why airline staff members do some of the seemingly inexplicable things they do.

 Before I get into that, I would like to introduce “Carl’s First Law of Human Behavior” which goes something like this:

If people repeatedly do things that do not seem to make sense to you, even if they agree that they don’t make sense, the objectives, assumptions, or core beliefs they are working under are not the same as yours.

 This “law” was developed over nearly ten years living in Asia where cultural pressures prevent people from even saying when they don’t understand you, let alone when they disagree with you. The length of time it takes Westerners to understand this concept is directly proportional to their resultant blood pressure. The longer it takes, the higher the blood pressure…

 How does this principle apply to airlines? To understand the actions of the “players” in the “game” of air transportation, it’s important to understand some of the “rules” under which they play it. Today’s diatribe will examine two applications of these rules that puzzle the flying public.

 The first is why they will close the gate as much as ten minutes before departure time and then let the airplane sit there at the gate for a long time while passengers, who would like to board (and though cutting it close, thought they were to the gate on time), watch through the window, blood pressure rising. It would seem a simple matter to open the gate and let the remaining passengers on. Obviously, the plane hasn’t left and won’t for a while, but the agents refuse, sometimes gruffly.

 The second is why, when there is a weather or traffic delay, they load up the airplane, close the gate, push back six feet or drive to a taxiway and sit, sometimes for hours.

 The reasons are actually related. First, the airlines live and die by four “times” for each flight: The OUT, OFF, ON, and IN times or OOOI times. OUT is the official time the aircraft leaves the gate, OFF is the time aircraft takes off (as in OFF the ground), ON is the time the aircraft lands (i.e. ON the ground), and IN is the time the aircraft “clocks” in to the gate upon arrival.

The times that are most critical to airline management, because they affect government statistics for “on time” departure etc. and also contractual incentives with other airlines, are the OUT and IN times (especially OUT). OFF and ON are mostly important to maintenance record keeping and don’t affect passengers directly except how they help determine eventual arrival time.

 Flight Operations personnel from Gate Agents, to Ramp Supervisors, to Dispatchers, and others are judged, and indeed bonus programs often depend on, the ON TIME departure record. The airlines emphasize and indeed “incentivize” the ON TIME departure so vigorously that the concept pretty much replaces all rational thought.

 The departure time by which the “ON TIME” standard is measured is the “OUT” time.

 While some smaller airlines still call in their “times” by radio from the flight deck, most of the reporting is automated. For example, when all the aircraft doors are closed and the Captain releases the parking brake, a signal is sent by radio to report the aircraft as “OUT.” This will appear on the “big board” in the airport terminal showing the flight as “departed.” It also reports to the databases the airline and the government use to “keep score” on the airline’s and management’s performance vis a vis “ON TIME.”

 That haggard gate agent is under immense pressure to get that aircraft door closed in time for the Captain to release the brake for an ON TIME departure. Their professional life can withstand multiple customer complaints but if they have a lower than average rate of “ON TIME” departures, then they will have a problem. Frankly, they are much more worried about the consequences of missing an ON TIME departure than they are about a passenger letter to the company president.

 Actually, every LATE departure must be explained to the system and the gate agents get “first shot” at laying blame because they are expected to enter the “delay code” in their computer terminal before leaving the gate.

 As soon as the plane departs late, the system embarks upon the first step in corporate problem solving (Affix blame, preferably to someone else!). If it’s clear and unarguable, like a maintenance problem, it will be blamed on maintenance. If the ramp is slow loading the plane, it will be blamed on the ramp (baggage handlers). If dispatch is late issuing the dispatch release (legal authority for the flight to begin), then it will be blamed on dispatch.

 The gate agents work hard but sometimes the unexpected happens. Another flight will cancel and 25 people they weren’t expecting show up just in time to make it impossible to load the aircraft and close the door before the scheduled departure time. Most times, it’s truly not the gate agent’s fault but the delay does actually occur at the gate so it isn’t easy to convince anyone else to accept the blame.

 Here’s where the stress of a genuine ethical dilemma causes blood pressures to rise. It’s not the gate agent’s fault somebody else’ airplane broke and a bunch of people slowed his or her boarding but if he or she doesn’t lay blame on somebody else, he or she will be stuck holding the responsibility, and that can have career implications.

 The way the system is set up, the gate agent must choose between attempting to lay blame on an innocent colleague or risk having to find another job. Having to make this choice can make the best ones grumpy.

 At the “regional” airline level where I used to fly, it was pretty common for the first “shot” of blame to end up at the feet of the (mostly blameless) flight attendants (FA’s). This was the case for the simple reason that the FA’s, being at the bottom of the airline food chain, are in the weakest position to defend themselves. If the “system” reported a “Flight Attendant Delay,” the “In Flight” managers would most likely scold, threaten, and punish them without even asking for the FA’s side of the story.

 This leaves to their Captain that day the duty of standing up for the FA’s, if he or she is so inclined. Whenever we departed late for a reason that wasn’t the fault of the crew, I would call my dispatcher as soon as we landed to see who had gotten blamed for the delay. Most times, blame had been laid upon the (innocent) flight attendant, a situation I would then argue to rectify. Many Captains, losing the fight with the system, would agree to accept the “blame” instead of the flight attendants (i.e. make it a “pilot delay” vice an “FA Delay”) for the simple reason that our union was (only slightly) stronger than the FAs’ and it was more difficult for the company to punish us.

  Anyway, that’s enough of airline politics. The point is that NOBODY wants to get blamed for a late departure and once that door closes and the brake is released, the clock starts on the flight. If the door opens again, the first “departure” is cancelled and the “new” one is entered in the system once the door closes and the brake is released again. The hard-earned ON TIME departure is lost if they open the door to let another passenger on the aircraft. That’s why you virtually never see an agent open the door once it’s closed, even when the aircraft sits there at the gate for an hour, because they will carry the blame for the late departure.

 Never mind that it might get more paying passengers on the plane and on their way. There is no incentive for that! The simple fact is that airline management has decided that the “On Time” departure statistic for that flight is more important than getting another passenger (or another ten!) onboard, and the system is set up to make that a reality for the people buying the tickets.

 If this has ever happened to you, perhaps you stood at the gate for an hour waiving at the pilots, trying to convince them to let you on their plane, furious they were just sitting there talking on their cell phones. Believe me when I tell you that the pilots want to let you on as much as you want to get on and, more than likely, he or she was on that cell phone (at personal expense) arguing unsuccessfully with operations to open the door again and let the remaining passengers board the aircraft.

 Pilots (and FA’s and Gate Agents too) have this strange idea that they are in the business of moving PASSENGERS and not just making statistics look good, but airline management doesn’t agree. Virtually every incentive airline managers know is predicated on that OUT time and they aren’t interested in the practicalities of the situation.

 Even the gate agents want you on the plane, for more reasons than one. Most of them are just hard-working and underpaid professionals who think you ought to get the transportation you paid for, but are hamstrung by the system. Furthermore, as a practical matter, they would like you to be on the plane because then they are finished with you. If they deny you boarding, there is a good chance that not only will you be mad, but that they are going to have to deal with your angry self again, both situations they’d like to avoid.

 If you get on the plane, they can move on to the next challenge, and there are many.

 Mostly, all involved resent the fact that the airlines have set up the system so that they have an incentive to be uncollegial to each other and dishonest with the passengers followed by a session of finger pointing after the fact. For pilots, this distracts from other important duties they could be performing, like examining the weather for the next flight….

 As for why they close the door and keep you prisoner on the aircraft for hours and hours, you understand half of that already. Besides triggering the “departure” time of the aircraft, that OUT time also starts the clock on pilot and FA pay. Ever read a newspaper article where an airline executive in a labor dispute says, “We pay our junior pilots $25 an hour, which seems reasonable for an entry-level position.”? What that executive is NOT telling you is that the crews only get paid for flight time, or more accurately, “Block to Block” time. The clock starts with the OUT time and ends with the IN time.

 The rest of what that airline executive is not telling you is that while a pilot can only legally fly, and thus be paid, for a maximum of 8 hours in one day, he can be required to be on duty for up to 16 hours. Where I used to fly, the contract required that the Captain agree to exceed 15 hours, which they seldom did (agree) so that was the de facto limit. For regional airlines, it’s not uncommon to be on duty for 12-14 hours and only actually fly for four or five hours, because there is no incentive for the airline to make the schedules more efficient for pilots.

 If duty time is considered, there are many regional airline first officers who barely earn minimum wage and if they have a family, they definitely qualify for FOOD STAMPS!

 My last job as Captain of a regional airliner paid $42 per flight hour. So if I was on duty for 12 hours, and flew five, my compensation would look like this:

 5 hours X $42.00 = $210

 $210 ÷ 12 Hours on Duty = $17.50 per hour

 The airline would argue they also paid me $1.35/hour “per diem” (“per diem” per hour; I’m not making this up!) for the time I was away from home base. True, just as any other business traveler either gets per diem or can claim meal expenses, pilots receive an hourly meal allowance to which their employer applies the misnomer, “per diem.” That’s not payment for services. It’s reimbursement for expenses (for meals).

 That same airline executive will look at you with a straight face and see nothing wrong with “major” airline pilots receiving $1.75/hour “per diem” and “regional” airline pilots receiving only $1.35, as if lousy airport sandwiches are somehow less expensive for regional airline pilots!

 So, friends and neighbors, the reason the Captain backs the plane out on to the ramp and then acts surprised when he says, “Sorry folks. Air Traffic Control says we won’t be able to take off for Chicago for another two hours.” is that the airline refuses to pay him for his time if he sits in the gate with you, waiting for departure.

 And the airlines’ refusal to pay flight and cabin crews a reasonable rate for time on duty is what gives him the incentive to do that. Can you imagine if the rules were the same for city bus drivers?

 “From now on, you will only be paid for the minutes the wheels are actually turning. Time spent at stop lights, in traffic jams, breaks to use the toilet or between scheduled trips, etc. are on your own dime. Keep those wheels rolling!”

 It used to be that corporations had leaders, who set standards for corporate culture and ethics, and did their best to ensure that working conditions were conducive to collegial relations among staff, efficiency, and good customer service. Nowadays, the bean counters are all in charge and their only ethic appears to be,

 “A place for every bean, and every bean in its place…”