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.