ATC Memes
Story By: James Wandhand
Allegiant Airlines Rolls Out New Maintenance Strategy
Allegiant Airlines (The Company) announced a new pilot program to reduce maintenance costs for the fleet. Jake “The Snake” Snakewood, a representative for the pilots union, elaborates; “Yeah it’s a pilot program alright…a fuck the pilots program! Not only does management expect us to fly these rust buckets, now they want us to take parts home, and wash them”. Airline spokesperson Tiffany Tyler went a little more in depth with the company’s intentions; “We do not intend for the pilots to be the only ones participating. Flight attendants, gate agents, and even some here at corporate are all helping out. We have a bad reputation for maintenance, and we needed a radical change in how we do things”.
Some industry insiders have shared with us, that other airlines are taking note, and implementing similar initiatives. Spirit Air has announced (in internal company memos) that they are toying with the idea of having passengers provide similar maintenance work. How they would roll out the program is the biggest road block. One of the ideas floated past the board of directors is to have passengers show up to the airport 9 hours early, to get a maintenance shift in before their estimated departure time.
Not all airlines are as interested in the cost cutting measure. Soutwest said in a recent press release that they; “Will never make paying customers preform any kind of maintenance (preventative or otherwise) on our aircraft. Although, customers traveling on points may from time to time be required to participate in de-icing, or lavatory cleaning”.
Experts feel that these policies will be the genesis of Senate inquiries. Some fear that even more government oversight of an already over regulated industry will be the death of air travel as we know it. Retired PanAm pilot, Joe McCourt weighs in; “You gotta keep the government out of this. We have to let the airlines run themselves, and the NAS. It’s this kind of revolutionary thinking that creates innovation. I just wish we would have thought about it back when we were in business”.
It’s too soon to tell how this will be digested by air travelers. With the rise of low cost carriers, I feel that there are enough cheap skates out there, that would take a 50% discount on their fare, if it meant getting a little dirt under their fingernails. We will continue to bring you updates as this story develops.
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