Highest Duty_ My Search for What Really Matters - Chesley B. Sullenberger [59]
At all airlines, there are many employees, including in management, who care deeply and try to make things better. But at some point, it can feel like a fine line between letting passengers fend for themselves and enabling the airline’s inadequacies. And so it becomes a decision whether to do the simple, easy act of walking a young couple and their toddler to baggage claim.
My way of handling these issues is to fight to improve the system but still help those I can.
There was another incident late one night at the airport in Charlotte. We were delayed because of weather and air traffic issues, and as my crew stood on the curb waiting for the hotel van, a woman saw me in my pilot’s uniform and approached me. She was around fifty years old with short brown hair. She had no purse, no luggage, only a cigarette in her hands.
She said she and her family had flown in on US Airways, and she was changing planes in Charlotte, on her way to another city. Her family was back at the gate, where their plane was delayed because of the weather.
“I asked an airport employee where I could smoke a cigarette, and he sent me out here to the curb,” she told me. But without thinking, she had left her purse and boarding pass with her family at the gate, on the other side of security. And worse, a few minutes earlier, at 10:30 P.M., the security checkpoints had closed. The Transportation Security Administration is a bureaucracy. When it closes, it closes. At 10:30 P.M., you can go through. At 10:31 P.M., you can’t. So she was stuck.
I could have told her that I was unable to help her, then gotten into the hotel van and driven off. But that wouldn’t feel right. I took out my cell phone and called a couple of people in operations. I gave them her name, her cell-phone number, and tried to see if they could somehow help her get back to the gate—or at least get her a voucher for a hotel room.
I don’t know what became of that woman that night. But I felt I had to try to help her. As a human being, I couldn’t just go to the hotel and leave her behind.
Again, it hardly took any effort on my part. Besides, I don’t want to go through life as a bystander.
WHEN THERE are maintenance issues or other delays, I believe in telling passengers exactly what is going on. Sometimes a plane has to be taken out of service after passengers are already loaded and ready to go. I don’t like to leave it to flight attendants to give the bad news. I get on the public address system, and offer up the details. I have stood in the front of the cabin, where the passengers can all see me, and I’ve said: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain. This airplane has to be taken out of service, so we’re going to have to change airplanes. We’ll need to get off this plane and the gate agent will send you to the new gate. I appreciate your patience, and I apologize for the inconvenience.”
When I do this I also want to protect the flight attendants from any kind of whining or abuse as people deal with the delay. “I’m the one responsible for this change,” I’ll say. I’ll stand at the door as each passenger deplanes, looking them all in the eye and nodding. I want them to know that if they have an issue, they should talk to me, not take it out on the crew.
I’ve learned that word choice is so important. When there’s a delay, I like to address passengers by saying: “I promise to tell you everything I know as soon as I know it.” I’ve found such language makes a world of difference. It’s inclusive. It tells passengers our intention is to give them the whole truth, and it lets them know we trust and respect them enough to share this truth. Not being honest up