Somewhere in the middle of this, the plane gets all the mandatory maintenance checks completed and certified for operational readiness to take off again.Īll the while, the pilot has his eye on the takeoff window as scheduled with the airport tower for an on-time departure (airlines get fined for late departures, by the way). Towards the underbelly of the airplane, the cargo handlers are busy, first unloading, and then loading up the correct bags (and sometimes the wrong ones) tagged to make it to the new destination.
This is the point at which passengers will deplane (“Please take all your belongings when you deplane, please collect your luggage from carousel nine in the D Concourse, please check monitors for connecting flights”) and the ground crew unloads cargo (and makes sure the bags actually show up on carousel nine in the D Concourse), clean up the airplane (“As a courtesy to the cleaning crew and the folks boarding after you, please do not stuff used tissues, newspapers, coffee cups, cans and whatever other garbage you have in the seat pocket in front of you – instead hand it to the flight attendant when she comes to collect”), make sure a fresh pot of coffee is ready for brewing and the soda cans and peanuts (or pretzels) are stacked and locked.Īt the ticket counter, crews make sure the new set of passengers are all checked in and ready with the right sized baggage (“No, the third bag is not allowed,” “No, you cannot stuff that oversized bag in the overhead locker,” “No more First Class seats are available for free upgrades,” “Yes, it’s a middle seat … I don’t have a window or an aisle seat to offer you”) to board the plane.
From the time an airplane lands at an airport, to the time it’s turned around for departure, there are a large array of synchronized activities and handoffs. Now, consider a situation that most of us have encountered a time or two. This is especially true in today’s world, with matrix-ed and virtual project teams comprised of people in different continents with desperate cultural backgrounds coming together to form a singular project team
Newly-formed project teams are not unlike the blind men – every member comes in with a different specialty and role, and with it, a different perspective of what needs to be done, in addition to how and what the end result should be.
We all know the parable “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” and the moral behind it. “The Blind Men and the Elephant” by John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887)
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