My day started in Des Moines, Iowa. We arrived to the hotel the previous evening around 11pm so I slept in a little until around 9am. We were scheduled to leave the hotel at noon for a 12:55 departure back to Atlanta. I got ready early and went for a stroll around the downtown skywalk. Many of the buildings in downtown Des Moines are connected via a network of enclosed, elevated walkways. Perfect for the wintertime. Here's a view of my hotel on the left and the Capitol building from one of the walkways.
I had an early lunch and headed back to my room. After checking the status of our aircraft, I learned our plane was still taxiing for takeoff in Atlanta. So I called my crew and told them we'd be pushing back our hotel departure by 30 minutes.
Our plane arrived at 1:11pm with a full load. After unloading, swapping crews, getting the plane ready, and boarding back up with a full load, we pushed back at 1:46pm. We arrived to Atlanta at 4:52pm, 46 minutes late. We were scheduled to leave for our next flight at 5:10pm. That works great if we hadn't been late arriving. We also had 4 passengers needing wheelchairs so we had to wait until they were taken care of before we can re-board. As is typical in Atlanta, it took a while.
The First Officer and I grabbed what would be our "dinner" at Atlanta Bread Company and headed back to the gate. 1 passenger was STILL waiting for a wheelchair upon our return. Lovely. It arrived shortly afterwards and we gave the gate clearance to board for Gulfport. On top of all this, there was a storm headed towards the airport so we were trying to get out before it shut everything down. We pushed out at 5:35pm, only 25 minutes late. Not bad all things considered.
Luckily we were only about 5 in line for takeoff and got off the ground before the storm hit. We had storms on both sides of us as we climbed out to the west. Then we played dodge the storm all the way to Gulfport. Here's our flight path including the radar return of the weather. You can see the storm just south of the Atlanta airport in the top right.
And now the real fun begins. We arrived to Gulfport at 6:06pm local, 32 minutes late. There was a Delta MD-88 already there that was supposed to have left at 5pm. The gate agent told us that since it was already supposed to be gone and would potentially leave first, they had transferred all our passengers to that flight and that we would go back empty. Good news for the flight attendant!
3 hours and 9 minutes later, we pushed back empty for Atlanta. The Delta MD-88 pushed back only a minute before us. So they sat for nearly 5 hours.
Delta hogs the jetway that we normally get if they weren't there.
My flight attendant and I "enjoying" our break.
Due to large number of aircraft around the country in the same situation, it takes a while for air traffic control to coordinate a massive plan to get us all back to Atlanta in an orderly fashion once the weather clears. So in order to fit us in to that big plan, we were re-routed from our original, more direct route, to one that would take us northwest, then north, then northeast, then finally towards Atlanta.
This means calling my dispatcher (aka flight planner) in Atlanta with the new route and more importantly, a new fuel load. The Delta flight was given the same route. Since they had passengers and were originally due out before us, they launched and we followed 5 minutes later.
Here's our flight path back to Atlanta. The big deviation over northeast Alabama is essentially a holding pattern without the hold. Air traffic control often does this in lieu of holding. It's more work for them to hold everyone than just give us vectors, as you see here. You've probably done this before on a commercial flight and just didn't know it.
We touched down at 12:01am and pulled into C42 at 12:07am. The airport was still busy with passengers waiting to leave on severely delayed flights. Our plane continued on to Lexington, KY and arrived there at 1:49am, right about the time I pulled into the garage at home, ending my glamorous day as an airline pilot. :-)
2 comments:
I had a glamorous day as a passenger yesterday. We left Steve's parents' house a little after 4:30 for Portland Jetport. It's about a 30 minute drive. When we left the house, we knew our flight was delayed by 30 minutes. No biggie. we expected a delay due to the winter weather in NYC moving towards Maine.
We board about when we were supposed to per the delayed departure time.
We pushed back, go the safety schpeal, and then stopped. JFK was closed until they got the taxiways and runways plowed and cleaned up. ATC told our hard working pilots that our new departure time would be 2 1/2 hours later.
A tug came and pulled us back into the gate. Then we sat. But I have to say, the Jet Blue crew and ground agents did an excellent job keeping us informed of all the changes and up to date on conditions and connecting flights at JFK. They deplaned some people who wouldn't make their connection, and one new passenger got on. Both the FO and CO talked to us using the flight attendant PA at the front of the cabin rather than from the flight deck.
After a good wait on the ground, they told us that working with dispatch and ATC, they got a departure time only 20 minutes from that point. So we quickly went through everything again - push back, safety schpeal because a new passenger got on - and rolled over to be deiced, because the storm had reached Portland in the time we had been sitting there. Then we took off and landed without any further holding or delays at JFK around 10PM. Our original arrival time was 7:30.
We took our time getting down to bag check, so they were there going around the carousel just waiting for us. Walked the half a mile in the airport to the Air Train, which then connected us to the A train to Brooklyn. After a transfer to the F train, we finally walked through our door just after midnight. Unpacked, ate some toast because we were starving, cooed over the cats, got situated, etc, and turned the lights off at 1:45, just about when you were getting home.
Long day for both of us.
Hi, I've read your blog with some interest. I appreciate Ellen's blogs as well. In fact , I care very much about Ellen and most anything she has to say.
Perhaps we'll all meet one day.
Regards, Stephen's Mom
Post a Comment