Cloudy Sky

Hey everyone, writing this one from the crash pad tonight. Luckily this is the first time i've spent the night here in a couple weeks and only the 4th time since the start of November. It's been a lot nicer getting to fly more and having more over nights. I'll take a comfy hotel bed over my lame bunk bed here any night.

Woke up to beautiful weather in Shreveport yesterday. We had an afternoon departure so i took advantage of that and slept in till about 11:30, i was going to get up and go for a run but that bed was way to comfy. Brought my log book with me on that overnight so that i could start getting it updated just in case i need to apply for any jobs in the near future. Quick note on all that, im sure most of you have heard the parent company of my airline filled for CH11 bankruptcy a few days ago. It's really to early to know whats going to happen other than rumors flying around the internet and cockpits. Right now all the info we've gotten from management hasn't painted a pretty picture but well all have to wait and see. I have about 500 other pilots below me on the seniority list right now which is a pretty good number unless they decide to make big time cuts. I'll keep everyone updated as i hear new information. Anyway after working on the log book for a while i showered and got ready, we had a 1:15PM hotel van and 2:05 departure time. As i was getting ready i checked the latest Dallas weather on my phone and to my surprise the weather was really bad. They were reporting 1/2 mile visibility and 300ft ceilings.  The good thing is the reported weather was better than what we needed to shoot an ILS which is normally 1/2 mile and 200ft ceilings.

It was the Captains leg since i had flown us to Shreveport the night before. We took off in beautiful clear sunny sky's and headed for Dallas. Wasn't long before you could see the cloud bank that was covering most of Texas and Oklahoma. I was pretty excited about the weather since this would be the lowest visibility and ceilings that i have flown in since being in the airlines. We got vectored around for the ILS approach to runway 17L at DFW. The weather was as advertised, submerged into the cloud deck at about 4,000ft and didn't come out till about 250ft above the ground. Its an incredible feeling to see absolutely nothing outside the wind shield then all of a sudden there's a bright lit up runway right in front of you. (here is a taste of what im talking about  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNDImUfSN8Q  " After landing we were giving a taxi route that isn't used much at DFW, takes you aroud the perimeter of the south side of the airport. The reason this was significant to me is we taxied on a specific taxiway that the old "founders plaza" was located on. As a teenager i had spent hours at that observation area watching planes taxi past in front of me. Was kinda a neat moment for me although i wished the observation area was still there(its been moved to the north side of the airport) so that i could have waived at the plane watchers as many pilots did to me years ago.

After we got to the gate i called crew scheduling and was able to get released at 3:15PM. This is what i was hoping for so that i could catch a flight home to Oklahoma for the night. Went over to the departure gate of the 5PM flight and got my boarding pass for the jump seat. Only about 10 minutes before the cut off time i see a pilot from American walk up to the counter, i knew i was screwed since they have priority for the jump seat on American flights. Yup as i expected they called my name and i have to go hand back my boarding pass, flight was oversold so there was no chance of getting a seat in the back. Had to wait till the next flight at 7PM, luckily no other jump seaters showed up for that flight and i got home to the house about 9PM. I was due back in Dallas today at around noon but its worth it to me to get home any chance i get even its only for 12 hours. I decided to drive down this morning instead of catching a flight, main reason was the fact it was supposed to rain all day in Dallas and i didn't want to have to walk to my crash pad from where the bus drops me off.

They ended up calling me in to sit airport standby at 2:30 till 10:30 tonight. Ended up being an ok day, i updated some of my manual with a new revision that came out then took a nice 2 hour nap. As i was walking to go get dinner in the terminal i got a call for a last second turn to Wichita Falls Texas. Turn was pretty non eventful, flew through a lot of rain coming and going but the clouds weren't to low. Tomorrow im on call starting at 8AM but im hoping to get released sometime in the early afternoon so that i can drive home and enjoy my single day off given to me on Monday. The way the schedules transitioned this month i had more then 6 days on straight so they have to give you a day off somewhere in between to break it up.

Thanks for reading, i know this was a pretty long entry but i figure i've been skimping on you guys the last couple of months. Hope you enjoyed the read. Until next time...