Narrative:

I am tired of filling these reports out due to our airline's lack of commitment to aircraft/dispatch communications. I will sum this up because apparently nobody wants to do anything about it because the higher ups making all the money say its too expensive to have the proper communication devices in a 20 million dollar jet. So; anyhow; the forecast for the flight's destination was amended and required an alternate due to 2 mile visibility in forecast. I quickly added an appropriate alternate and called operations to notify them of the change. I called 50 times and nobody picked up. I called the tower multiple times and nobody picked up. I tried to cancel the ATC strip; but by the time the message got to the aircraft they were rolling down the runway. The captain and I then discussed the situation on company radio and came to the conclusion that the flight could be safely operated as long as they called me enroute for weather updates. Somebody or someone is going to get killed if this is not dealt with swiftly. And swiftly means not having 25 meetings on what to do and then not working on saturday and sunday because it is your day off. These are real problems that need to be addressed and I would like this report to go to the head of the FAA so that the top brass can make mandatory changes because we don't need all the department failures at the bottom not doing anything about it especially when my ticket will be on the line when it is all said and done. Suggestions are listed above and it seems like nobody cares anyway. Outstations still have operations agents outside working flights and; hey; who cares.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A frustrated Dispatcher comments regarding his companies perceived lack of commitment to required timely communications capability between dispatchers and the flights under their control.

Narrative: I am tired of filling these reports out due to our airline's lack of commitment to aircraft/dispatch communications. I will sum this up because apparently nobody wants to do anything about it because the higher ups making all the money say its too expensive to have the proper communication devices in a 20 million dollar jet. So; anyhow; the forecast for the flight's destination was amended and required an alternate due to 2 mile visibility in forecast. I quickly added an appropriate alternate and called operations to notify them of the change. I called 50 times and nobody picked up. I called the Tower multiple times and nobody picked up. I tried to cancel the ATC strip; but by the time the message got to the aircraft they were rolling down the runway. The Captain and I then discussed the situation on company radio and came to the conclusion that the flight could be safely operated as long as they called me enroute for weather updates. Somebody or someone is going to get killed if this is not dealt with swiftly. And swiftly means not having 25 meetings on what to do and then not working on Saturday and Sunday because it is your day off. These are real problems that need to be addressed and I would like this report to go to the head of the FAA so that the top brass can make mandatory changes because we don't need all the department failures at the bottom not doing anything about it especially when my ticket will be on the line when it is all said and done. Suggestions are listed above and it seems like nobody cares anyway. Outstations still have operations agents outside working flights and; hey; who cares.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.