John Gradek, who teaches aviation management at McGill University, says the aircraft never should have been dispatched, given the "biological hazard'' on board.
Most airlines contract third-party “groomers” that clean the seats and aisles between flights and have access to spare cushions to replace soiled ones “in relatively short order,” Dee said.
“You’ve got toddlers, infants, even adults who have certain accidents … it doesn’t happen every flight, but it certainly happens every day.”
But specialists say tight-packed schedules and flight delays squeezing turnaround times can put more pressure on crews to get back in the air as soon as possible.
“You’d be extending the ground time on the airplane to do the clean-up,” Gradek said, noting that crews have strict rules on their shift time, or “duty period.”
I've worked lots of places where working late meant overtime pay, which was against policy and therefore led to battles, "administrative penalties" like getting lousy shifts, and occasionally even labour board intervention. So yeah, it's not unreasonable to think that someone might push the problem on to someone else.
I don't know much about airline regulations, but I would hope that there are also limits on hours based on safety regulations. In that case, the entire flight might get cancelled when someone exceeds allowable hours. Now imagine the pressure the employer applies to the employees in that circumstance. And the outcry from the passengers booked on said cancelled flight.
Not something sitting there hot and ready to go, but there to take the place of the flight. Maintain a one-unit queue of planes ready to board and launch so that each and every plane sits for 2 hours and is actually prepped.
Or, when that inevitable daily breakage happens and a plane needs to be taken off the line for the day, it allows time to bring in another spare to keep that queue full (of 1) when the rotation loses that active plane.