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I've frequently said that 95% of the time this job is absolutely the
best. That continues to be true but, as with many things in life, it's
the 5% that gets all the press. Here is no exception.
Every winter we get our first inauguration into the usually snowy
drill of dealing with de-icing. Frost is common and requires a quick
de-icing that doesn't slow things down too much. But when its actively
snowing, things get a lot worse. We do a two-part de-ice where they
spray us down first with a de-ice solution then again with an expensive
green slime that I've talked about elsewhere. In Baltimore one truck
goes around de-icing while the slime truck follows behind.
Morning started out in Fort Myers with a quick, easy flight to
Orlando. We swapped airplanes, a common inconvenience that stems mostly
from the need to get airplanes into scheduled maintenance. In this case
it wasn't so bad since we were giving up our older -300 (737-300) for a
spanking new -700 to fly our remaining three flights MCO-BOS, BOS-MHT,
and MHT-MDW.
Flying to Boston was rather nice until descent into its gray and snow.
We did a normal approach and landing to a nice, on-time arrival. That would be the end
of on-time.
Here is where the fun begins.
We fueled up, loaded up, pushed back and headed for the de-ice pad.
This large ramp at runway 15R's approach can accommodate probably 5
airplanes up to widebody size with room for circling de-ice trucks.
When we got in line for de-ice, a line that wasn't moving very fast,
we were number 12 or so. The snowstorm had come early so the company
didn't have its full complement of trucks ginned up. Slower movement
meant that it took us almost two hours to get to the up-next
position. When we went to start one of the motors, there was a problem.
Oh no, no, no...not now. Not now!
In spite of what I consider the best maintained fleet in the
industry, problems happen. In this case, a fault with our Auxiliary
Power Unit (APU) prevented airflow to start the motor combined with an
unusual indication that left us not wanting to do experimenting using
air from the other motor. We had to return to the gate.
You can fly without an APU but, for reasons that are beyond my pay
grade, they elected to swap airplanes. Probably because they didn't know
how much time it would take to troubleshoot the whole thing.
As you can imagine this was, by now, one unhappy group of passengers.
How can you blame them? We were just doing our best with the conditions
at hand. Our flight attendants did a great job and most were in
surprisingly good spirits, taking winter in stride.
We headed over to the other gate to await the arrival of our new
ride. My F/O had wisely put our name in the pushback hat which was now
running about an hour, meaning that, when you called for push, you were
put in a queue that was taking about an hour. That's just to push back.
Welcome back, Jeff. I'd been off for over three weeks of vacation and
this was my return-to-service trip.
The new plane came in and we loaded up. Then the ground stop to
Boston went into effect. Great. Somewhere in there we realized there
were no bags on the plane. In the melee, nobody had realized the bags
hadn't been moved yet from our other plane. The ground guys went to work
quickly and got the bags transferred.
Finally, the ground stop was cancelled, bags were loaded and we
headed out for de-ice. This time it went faster as they had all the
trucks running. We got de-iced, slimed and soon took off in pretty short
order for Boston. The starlight flight to Boston was uneventful with
another landing in an increasing snowstorm. At this point, though, we'd
been working for 13 hours and would soon "time out." That didn't matter
because our last flight to Chicago, scheduled hours earlier, had been
stubbed, meaning that another airplane flew it so that it would leave on
time. That left us to deadhead (ride in the back) to Chicago.
I arrived in MDW almost 16 hours after starting in nice, warm Ft.
Myers. My F/O was lucky in that he lives shuttle-drive distance from
Boston and just went home.
Ahhh the life... |
