Spontaneity!

Yesterday, I was assigned to fly the couch on the 6AM shift - I had to drive from Colorado Springs to DIA on snow-covered roads at 3:30AM...the roads were lousy on the first half of the drive. It was Friday the 13th, and the bad thing that happened was when a senior mama, who I had flown with in the past, confronted me and told me to stop telling people that she was rude to passengers. I cleared that up by telling her that all I was telling people is that she doesn't follow company procedure...and to be forewarned. Her response was that she should have told me about that procedure change ahead of time...interesting. I would have thought that she would have said that she has since seen the error of her ways, and is now doing what the company has asked her to do! I'm such a dreamer.

I got released and went home...but went to bed at 8:30PM, only to be woken up at 9:30PM by a phone call from crew scheduling. They assigned me to a 3-day trip...a turn to Phoenix and then an overnight in San Fran, followed by an overnight in Indianapolis - good trip!

Of course, it had a showtime of 6AM today. Deja vu...4AM driving on I-25 again, but this time in FOG. It was like driving in a tunnel with my eyes closed. I straddled the center dotted line and just drove. When I got to the crewroom, I was face-to-face with one of my hate mail writers...lovely. There was no bloodshed.

Before I knew it, it was time for my Phoenix turn. It had been 2/3 full the night before, but United cancelled flights (thank you!) and it filled our flight to overflowing. One of our trainers, Tyler, was on the flight with his wife and baby, and he spent part of the flight giving us some "recurrent training" - it was great! But when we landed in Phoenix, and all the passengers deplaned, the CPT came and told us that we weren't going anywhere. There was a problem with the windshield in the flight deck.

So we stood around in the airport for a couple hours waiting for crew scheduling to tell us what we were doing. They ended up sending us to a nice hotel for the day, and it looks as if we'll go back to the airport soon and ferry the plane back to Denver with no passengers (i.e. sit and watch TV or nap on our way home).

Sadly, we won't go to San Francisco, and I've already been taken off the Indianapolis turn tomorrow. Bummer. Instead, I'm back on reserve until Monday, and will be waiting for the phone to ring.