Well, after being late in the morning due to boarding, late out of the Bahamas due to a malfunctioning left pack, and late in Atlanta due to maintenance on a tire repair, what else could have went wrong? Well, as it turns out, after I competed my walk around 40 minutes prior to departure, right before we closed the door, a ramp agent came up the stairs and said that I should inspect some liquid that was leaking from the aft fuselage body. I approached the area, touched the fluid, smelled it and knew that we were going to be a while. I called the captain outside to inspect the issue and from there on, it was only a matter of time before we were require to deplane, and re-board another aircraft, get it ready to fly, fuel it up and preflight it.

The issue that I had was that we were being told that the APU could be deferred because it had its own separate fuel line and therefore if we did not operate it, we should be fine. Now, let me just ask, would you be fine if you knew your plane had a leak and they still wanted you to ride in it. I mean, yeah, we wouldn't use the APU, but maintenance wasn't even sure, at the time, exactly what the problem was. Kind of sketchy eh? The maintenance guy told me that their policy had a loophole in it and it was 1) They were not allowed to defer anything on the aircraft if it was leaking any type of fluid but 2) If the item was leaking and stopped leaking being tagged inoperable, then the aircraft was okay to go.

That's that really besides that we got to the overnight (White Plains, NY) 2 hours later than scheduled and the captain and I went to an awesome Italian Restaurant in downtown Armonk call La Scala where I had some Veal alla Scala. It was tremendous!!! So fresh and so good! It cost a pretty penny but as I've always said, good food has no price. You can't eat your money either so at least enjoy it!

I read an interesting article tonight on Star-Telegram.com about the state of the the airline industry in reference to hiring pilots. I think that you might find it disconcerning, but I don't blame you. I want to assure you that I got some of the best training, but I did pay heavily for it.