Captain on the bridge - Handcuffs and tigers

Ok, this old naval idiom is no longer used when a flight captain enters or leaves a cockpit, but some captain prerogatives survived the time when they change from boats to planes.

Let me first be a bit disapointing for all romantic readers... a flight captain can not get passenger married. This stopped when the move from ship to boat took place... sorry.

Amongst his trendemous responsibilities, the captain is sole responsible for the safety of all passengers and crew on board. This means that he can take any action he think is needed to protect aircraft and passenger safety, even if this violates each and every other rules ! Be sure he would have to report to ATC, aviation authorities, and his airline, but this will be later on. In the action, the captain is really the one deciding things.

Now, something else we heard a lot in the media recently as a french TV producer created an incident on board a flight from South Africa to Paris. The captain of a flight can decide to put a passenger under arrest, and if deemed necessary, to have the crew restraining the passenger freedom of movement, by using handcuffs.

A final word to close this post, about policemen flying on airliners. In the industry wording, they are called "tigers". Even the crew does not know them, and they interveine only if the safety of the flight is endangered by unlawful interference. They won't move if something only looks suspicious, or if a passenger is misbehaving under influence of alcohol or so.

This restriction in their actions is to protect their identity. There are not so many of them, and if they had to act for any small incident, it would be easy for terrorists to identify them, even by creating incidents with the sole purpose of then neutralize the tigers.

Be sure that many airliner seats daily are occupied by tigers, and this helps passenger safety.

Set the context...

An airport can hardly be compared to any other activity center... there are thousands of people working there, for hundreds of companies, each with different aims, some can be state operated, other are purely private companies... but by the end of the day, all want to keep the passengers (we call them PAX) happy, and the traffic smooth.

There are certainly bigger companies employing more people, but remind that an airport is not made of a single company, but many of them, typically including:

-Airport authority
-Air traffic control
-Airlines
-Police
-Firemen
-PAX security
-Handling (check-in and boarding)
-Fuel companies
-Catering
-Planes cleaning
-Aicraft maintenance
-Medical services
- ... and I probably forgot many.

and for most of these activities, airports have various companies offering services. Moreover, most airports are now shopping centers as well. A typical mid-size european airport (taking away Heathrow, Frankfurt, Charles-De-Gaule and Madrid) has something like 10'000 to 25'000 on site workers. Hopefully not all at the same time, as many of the services work with irregular schedules, 24 / 7.

What a normal PAX sees is may be 5 to 10% of the total spaces arround, and has no idea of what goes on behind the scene... so I'll reveal some to you...

In the next post, more on three of the most important actors: Airline - Airport - Air traffic control. The three A, with A lot of conflicts.

Welcome to the airport

I've been working in air travel industry for years now, and disucssing about it with familly and friends always raises tons of questions, and a strong interest. Sometimes I also take them with for a visit of the "airside" part of the airport, and this is a great moment each time.

There is something magic in airplanes, airports, pilots, cabin crew, control tower, and air travel as a whole... To be honest, I feel this as well, despite being in this business for quite a while.

My purpose here is to share this magic with the readers, and to give them an insight view of daily life in an airport.

For obvious and sad security reasons, I can't give any people name, or place, date, company name, but the air travel magic is beyond time, so it should not be problematic.

So, I'm happy to welcome you on this blog, and hope you'll enjoy it.