Commercial Fixed Wing
Communication Breakdown
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General Work Refused
Human Factors; Procedure
I am [letting] you know what happened with the crew this morning.  They called into operations and asked them to call maintenance control for them.  They were told that we do not call maintenance for crews; they have to call their maintenance control and they will dispatch maintenance to the aircraft.  They refused to call their maintenance control and kept insisting we call for them.  I went onto the aircraft to explain this to the captain; he was on the telephone telling someone that we are terrible here and are only out to hurt them because we refuse to help him with what he needs.  That he will make sure something is done about that.  I waited until he got off the phone and I proceeded to let him know that our policy here is if he needs maintenance he needs to call his maintenance control for them to dispatch them out.  He told me he has been with his company for 30 years and has never seen such a blatant disrespect for the operation.  I apologized; but told him we had to follow procedure.  He said my apology did no good because the passengers were still the ones suffering because we couldn't do our jobs.  He said he would just sit there until something was done.  I had an assistant call maintenance just to see; and they said we are correct but whomever he was on the phone with had already called them and they were heading over.  They said they would also reiterate to him the policy here about maintenance being called.  After this was taken care of; he asked our pushback driver to be pushed back at a 90 degree angle.  I have instructed our pushback guys they are only to pushback straight to avoid aircraft damage.  The captain came across the radio in operations asking for me.  I spoke to him and he said we do not know how to do our jobs and he sits in a very high place and he will see to it that we get some training here or something is done.  I told him that I have instructed agents to only pushback straight.  He said I just want you to know I am recording this conversation.  I said ok.  He then again said he would be sending us a whole bunch of trainers because we did not know what we are doing.  I said ok thank you and have a great day.
Local contract maintenance office had difficulty convincing a crew of the local pushback and maintenance communication policies.