I haven't been called

in to work all month until Sunday. I kind of get use to not working so when they call it kind of throws me off. They called on Sunday right as I started my duty period. I had to leave right away for the airport. I had to fly a trip for a Santa Barbara captain. It was a long day. We didn't get back into Santa Barbara until midnight. They had me sit reserve in Santa Barbara on Monday as well. Did I mention that Santa Barbara is one of the most beautiful places. Well it is. Tuesday they didn't call me so I spent the entire day cleaning and doing laundry. Then they put a two day trip on my schedule for Wed and Thurs. It was with a Carlsbad crew. Our overnight was in Redmond, OR. Do these people know that I have become accustomed to the weather in Southern California? It was so cold up there. The trip went fairly smoothly but every time we have to go in and out of San Francisco we would get one or two hours of flow delays. Don't ever connect through San Fran if you can avoid it.

The story of the trip was near the end of the day on the second day. We had a break in Fresno and we were waiting for our plane from San Fran. We thought it would be late but shockingly it arrived on time. We only had around twenty minutes until departure when they arrived. The customer service agent sent out a full load of passengers (the airplane fits 30 but due to weight restrictions we generally can't take much more than 28 and still have weight for bags). The last passenger to walk out was a pilot for Delta. He was on his way to work in LAX. He introduced himself and took a seat in the back. When the rampers handed us the paperwork we were already a few minutes late. We could hear the ramper tell the flight attendant that he thought there were too many bags and that we would probably be overweight. Sure enough we were over weight by around 168 lbs. Because the ramper didn't come talk to us nor did he wait for us to see if there were too many bags, we called operations. We let them know we were over weight and that we needed to pull off 6 bags. This type of thing happens all the time but the frustrating part is that the rampers weren't communicating with us. The gate agent tried to pull a Skywest employee off the plane. He said that he wasn't going because the Delta guy would be the first to go. So then they pulled the Delta guy off. On his way out I told him that we could probably make it work to take him with us if we could take 6 bags on the cabin. I asked him to send the ramper up to talk to us. The Delta guy explained to the rampers and they said "NO" and sent him inside. By this time I was a little frustrated. My first officer then jumped out of the airplane to ask the ramper to pull off six bags. The ramper said in essence "No, she's not the one that decides, we pulled off a passenger." Really?! That was the wrong thing to say. I am all about working together as a team but this guy was not trying to be a team. That made me determined not to leave until the Delta pilot was onboard. Finally a ramper came up (not the one that made the previous remark) and I told him to bring 6 bags up. He said there wouldn't be room for the bags. I told him that there were three empty seats they could put the bags on the seat and under. So they finally relented and brought the bags up. Can you see how much time was wasted. If they would have just come and spoken with us and done what we asked right away we would have been out in a few minutes. As I was finishing up the paperwork I saw the Chief pilot in Fresno had come outside and was standing by the ramper. I thought he was going to come up and talk to us. Luckily I finished the paper work, handed it out the door, and shut the door. So who knows I might get a phone call from my chief in LA later we'll see. The Delta pilot was very appreciative and we only arrived at the gate in LA 6 minutes late.