Folk musician and noted union activist John McCutcheon just gave me a call from the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport. He tells me that the US Airways flight attendants are picketing, and intend to go on strike in eleven days. The Association of Flight Attendants have been negotiating with Piedmont Airlines (a corporation wholly owned by US Airways, serving the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport) for 15 months in an attempt to even up their pay and work hours with US Airways flight attendants. The AFA has been warning that strikes are possible anytime after 12:01am on September 16th. Piedmont Airlines provides the bulk of the flights in and out of CHO, including the daily nonstop runs to Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Philadelphia and New York. A strike would likely severely cripple CHO’s ability to function. For more information, see the AFA’s recent press release.
Sideblog
- Downtown tarot card reader Ed Rowe passed away on NYE; a memorial service will be held Wed. 01/07 from 5-8PM at Twisted Branch. #
- The DP illustrates a 30% drop in UVa's endowment with a graph that gets 58% smaller. Not a lot of statisticians go into the news biz, I guess. #
- There's an E85 station in Albemarle now. #
- Urban Outfitters to open up in the old Hardware Store. Ugh. The very worst of Old Town Alexandria, right here in C'ville. #
- Wistar and Darren's spider on frog on turtle photo keeps getting more famous. #
- Trish took some photos of an albino deer, or perhaps a piebald deer. In either case, it's an awfully rare thing and, incidentally, perfectly legal to hunt in VA. #
- David Maurer provides the address of some of the best Christmas lights around town, and I mapped them. In a nutshell, it's all about Meade, Holmes, and Agnese. Update: The DP mapped them, too. #
- Google Maps now provides CTS routes, complete with fare prices and scheduling. This is so cool! #
- The Downtown Mall overhaul might come in under budget, thanks to the lousy economy. #
- DMB is playing the JPJ in April. #
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This is a community news blog about Charlottesville, VA, USA, started in March of 2001. It's run by Waldo Jaquith. It has nothing to do with C-Ville Weekly, the newspaper. Feel free to submit a story.
Uhhh… I flew from CHO once and I never even noticed the flight attendant. She just sort of sat at the front of the plane. I’m sure they could continue to operate without flight attendants.
Yes, I can stand up and get my own beverages.
I’m a big boy :)
Except that I believe it is a federal law (via the FAA) that someone has to explain safety procedures to passengers before they take flight. The pilot and co-pilot are too busy preparing the plane for flight to do this, and the only other crew members on those little planes are the flight attendants. So if the attendant is gone, the airline will have to get very creative in order to continue flights, and they haven’t done so with past attendant strikes.
I don’t even know if they’re allowed to operate without flight attendants. Anybody know?
I think so, at least on smaller aircraft. If you fly out of here on one of the micro airliners (such as the Colgan Air flight to LaGuardia on a Beechcraft 1900C, which is actually a fun flight), there are definitely no flight attendants, and there are only 19 seats. There’s probably a passenger count threshold involved here.
Also, even on larger commercial aircraft, they’re now using those video safety presentations in many cases. The flight attendants still sometimes stand there and go through the motions, but nobody really watches them (of course, nobody really watches the video, either).
I checked the FARs, and here’s what they had to say:
135.107 Flight attendant crewmember requirement
So far as I know, USAir’s service to KCHO is entirely on Dash-8’s, which have more than 19 seats (United Express flies some of the smaller aircraft, which do not in fact have flight attendants), so this would effectively shut down their service.
-rpl
Ah…that would explain the 19-seat capacity common on so many commuter aircraft.
Thanks for the research!