A320
Flight Attendant Current
Communication Breakdown; Confusion; Situational Awareness; Workload
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Security; Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Other / Unknown; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Flight Crew Took Evasive Action
Environment - Non Weather Related; Human Factors; Procedure; Weather
Throughout the duration of this trip the Captain had poor communication skills and no perceivable thoughts as to the safety of his cabin crew. On the first night all three flight attendants were placed on separate floors; causing unsafe hotel conditions. The problem was only fixed the next night after I; as A Flight Attendant; asked that it not happen again. Although the Captain did state during his briefing that safety was most important; he failed to communicate when there was turbulence. I understand that there are times when it comes on unexpectedly but when it did come on he would not switch the seat belt sign on until we called up to have it done; and did not call back to alert or inform us. He also opened the flight deck door to use the restroom without informing the flight attendants so that we could pull out a cart to block off the aisle. There was a pilot jumpseating in the flight deck; but blocking protocol should still have been followed. I quickly pulled a cart out when I saw him and blocked off the aisle as per procedure. During the last flight of the night we were experiencing extremely moderate turbulence; due to the storms on the East Coast; and as A Flight Attendant I determined that it was unsafe for the B and C flight attendants to be out in the aisles at all; let alone with a cart; so the C Flight Attendant called up to the Captain to ask if he could make an announcement that the last water and coffee service of the night would be canceled. When he did he told the passengers to ring their call button if they needed anything. While the flight attendants in the back were still experiencing turbulence the Captain asked for coffee; which is a hot beverage. As the water was shut off in the front galley the only coffee was in the back where they were experiencing the brunt of the turbulence that was already communicated to the pilots. Several landings were more rough than necessary; one caused several passengers in the cabin to scream; while another got aborted by ATC for coming in at the wrong angle. We had to re-ascend and do it over. We also had an on ground delay during the trip; and the Captain failed to update the passengers every 15 minutes as per protocol. When I asked him if there were any updates he was very short with me.It would seem to me that most of these problems could be solved by this pilot communicating better. The conditions of this trip were such that the flight attendants felt as though lines of communication were lacking between the Captain and cabin crew. This creates an unsafe work environment when the cabin crew does not feel comfortable communicating their conditions to the flight deck. On several occasions throughout the trip the flight attendants expressed to me their feelings of un-safeness. If an emergency were to happen we weren't sure that we would be given all the information we would need to properly keep passengers and ourselves safe.
An A320 Lead Flight Attendant reported a Captain's poor communication skills made the crew feel unsafe after he refused to turn the seat belt sign ON during turbulence; disregarded the cabin crew's other requests and then requested hot coffee during turbulence. Poor landings and a go-around also contributed to the sense.