Am I really holding a line?
Being that today is the second day of my new 96 and some change line, I haven’t had the chance to feel any different in terms of being used up by scheduling to cover flights throughout our system. I ended up dutying in for a trip to Baton Rouge and when we arrived, it was known that we were going to be delayed quite a bit for the oncoming weather. As we were maneuvering for an approach into Runway 31, we were advised that there was a microburst recoreded 1 mile off of the approach end and the winds shifted to favor an approach into 22 R. Of course, the ILS was out of service and the last 1000’ of the runway wasn’t usable either. It was happening a little fast but the Captain made an awesome touchdown and there we were. We were planned to have a 3 hour layover which then turned into a 6 hour layover due to the ground stop in ATL for the thunderstorms and rain showers that they were experiencing. I looked at the weather radar and I have to admit that I haven’t seen it that bad in a long time. It was ridiculous! I’m just glad that we didn’t have to divert like so many other aircraft that was flying into ATL.
Anyways, on our way back to ATL 6 hours later, when I called in that we were in range, they told us that the aircraft that I was on was going to be a spare and that the crew had to call operations when we landed. I was excited a little bit to find out that the Shreveport trip was cancelled so that I could go home to my crashpad, but once I called in the times, I was told that I had a trip that was going to White Plains. I was able to get my bearings a little bit and print out a schedule in the D concourse operations center (the printer sucks there by the way. And it just smudges everything!) I headed to the aircraft that I suppose to be on and met a very cool Captain that I ran into a couple of nights previous. I have never flown with him and he is one of the most senior here at ASA. Well, to make this long entry short, we landed in White Plains, New York around 3:00 in the morning and we didn’t get to the hotel until 4:00am. I woke up around 11:00 because just thinking of waking up early for breakfast didn’t seem doable and then got ready to deadhead back to ATL. Here I am now in the aircraft just waiting to see what I get from scheduling when I land. The website and everything else was down the entire morning and I was able to see my future trips, but I’m running into federal regulation time issues. We’ll see what they decide to do to me!!!
update: Looks like I was released from the airport and from duty but I bet that it was only because I'm going to have greater than 30 hours in 7 days before I get to finish my 4 day trip this week! It's going to be fun!