Wednesday, August 10, 2011

S1 Nassau


                Hey everyone, sorry I’ve been slacking this past week on posting. Had the weekend off so didn’t really have any motivation to post. All this month I have the S1 shift, which if you recall from my post about schedules that means I have ready reserve at the airport from 6AM-2PM. It sounds terrible but really im sort of adjusting to it well. I normally still stay up pretty late about 12-1AM just because that’s what im used to and I work best that way. I’ll basically take a nap at the crash pad from the time I go to bed to 4:20AM when my alarm goes off. I take the 5AM shuttle to the airport and usually sign in by 5:30AM. Once I get signed in and to the crew room I go right to our “quiet” room where we have a couple of recliners, I’ll get comfy in those and finish off the night of my sleep, sometimes I’ll sleep all the way till 11-12 if im not called, so in the end I still get an easy 8-10 hours of sleep. It’s also nice because more often than not I get to sleep through about 6 of my 8 hours on duty.  All of this works great until your phone rings at 6:20AM.
                Yup that’s what happened to me last week. Just as I was getting comfy to finish off my night of sleep my phone rang at 6:20AM and it was crew scheduling. Apparently the plane that stayed overnight in Nassau was broken and I was assigned to ferry a new plane out to Nassau to rescue the passengers. Captain and I blasted off with an empty airplane and no flight attendants to Nassau at 7AM. After we were shutdown I learned I was being marooned in Nassau until the broken plane was fixed and they would fly a new Captain out later that day to take the fixed plane home. Not really sure why they just didn’t have the captain I flew out with also fly back with me but whatever, crew scheduling often times has a mind of their own. After getting things sorted out I learned I would be sitting in Nassau for about 4 hours. Took the time to get some breakfast do a little shopping around the airport and got some reading in. 
                The new Captain finally showed up 2 flights later and we quickly got on our way back to Miami. Flight went pretty smoothly, again a completely empty plane with no flight attendants. It was my leg flying home and was met with a nice 15kt crosswind, doesn’t sound like much but the ATR has a relatively narrow wheelbase and a high wing which causes it to become a handful in even a small amount of cross wind. We flew through a good downpour on final which quickly became a stout little cell with a lot of lightning which caused us to have to sit in the plane for an extra 15-20min due to the ramp closing once we parked.
                That was pretty much the excitement from last week. I’ve been keeping a photo album on facebook, here is the public link which should allow anyone to view this one album even if you’re not a member of facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150208132207880.318424.507817879&l=49a1206d98&type=1

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