Started off my work week on monday with a nice late sign in at 3:00 pm... one trip to Lafayette, Louisianna and then a short leg to the overnight - in my home town. When the captain and i hooked up for the flight i told him i would meet him at the airplane in 10 minutes - when i got there an FAA inspector was waiting at the gate he was going to be doing a crew observation on us for the duration of the flight. fortunately everything was uneventful, the fed said good job and jumped ship in Louisianna... and the overnight in my home town was scheduled for 19 hours duration so i got to sleep in my own bed!
Tuesday we were scheduled to depart after 5pm so i stayed home nearly the entire day. Weather was a little cloudy and cold. DFW international was down to 2,000 ft RVR with 100 foot vertical visibility. There were not really any delays at the time. We took off and headed for the Big-D. i thought about how good the controllers were doing - we were all on top of an overcast layer that was getting well lit by the moon and i could see all the planes lined up neatly ahead of us and on TCAS lined up behind us. one would dissappear into the cloud deck... then get handed off to tower then the next guy then the next guy then it was our turn. Decision Height was 200 ft Radio Altitude for this ILS approach... we got the approach lights in sight at 220 ft RA... runway in sight at 140 - 150 RA. The fog was so thick at DFW ground was controlling surface movements by radar. It took a good 15 minutes to taxi to the gate. After a quick 25 minutes at the gate we headed for tuesday's overnight leg. weather wasnt much better at our destination...another 70 miles west we would have been into some snow. They were using an ILS as well but weather was much higher there.
Wednesday morning we cought the van out to the airport weather was nice... on the way into the airport i saw three of our regional jets on the approach along with 1 saab. i knew this wasnt right because there are only 4 or maybe 5 flights a day going into this place! when we got in the terminal we saW 9 regional jets, 3 saabs, and 1 737 sitting out on the ramp! DFW was under a ground stop - nobody comes in until it is lifted - they were all diverted aircraft! we got comfortable because we knew we wernt going anywhere for a while. That lasted about an hour and a half. which of course put us an hour and a half behind all day. we thought we could catch up to the schedule since we had a 2 hour break scheduled late in the day... after which we would take over an inbound aircraft and that crew would go home. Of course they were an hour and a half getting in. we were concerned that we would be illegal going to the overnight because we were going to be on duty longer than 14 hours if we landed at wednesdays overnight after 10PM... we called scheduling and they extended us to 16 hours - which is allowed if its because of weather. ::)
got into the overnight at about 10:45 PM - with perhaps 10 minutes of post flight duty... a20 minute van ride to the airport, and another 10 minutes of getting everything unpacked out of my bag so i didnt have to do it in the morning i was crawling into bed at about 11:30 PM. wake up call was scheduled for 4:45am :'(
Thursday, surely our luck would change... we just had a few flights and i could go home at 2:00 in the afternoon. NOT. everything went to plan right up until the last leg of the last day! we arrived at DFW 15 minutes ahead of schedule only to find all of our gates occupied... the good news was that the gate we were assigned was going to be pushing back soon so the late "shouldnt" be long ramp tells us. The guy getting ready to push - has an instrument failure and has to get maintenance called out. we wait for our gate and wait and wait. finally we get a gate change to the next available gate. you wont believe it but the next available gate couldnt push because their tug broke down. so now they have 2 working tugs having to accomodate 10 gates.... the result - GRIDLOCK! we sat for 45 minutes waiting for a gate to clear. bu the time i took the terminal train out to where the busses pick employees up - and rode the bus to employee parking i was getting off the airport property at 3:40 - a full hour and 40 minutes after i was scheduled to be on my way home.
i cannot imagine all of the misconnects and inconvenienced passengers that were the results of this weeks nationwide weather issues, and various mechanical failures and various air traffic control flow delays. I just know what was missed on my flights. 2 people missed or were late for funerals, 3 or more got stranded for the night in DFW trying to get to switzerland, 4 unaccompanied minors were worried they wouldnt get to california in time for christmas, i dont know how many got stranded trying to get to Denver, and the list goes on.
Im just glad im home now and can play flight simulator! HAHAHAHAHAHA SICK EH?!!?!
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