The week of Christmas...not so merry!

On Monday the 22nd of December Brandon was still up at Mammoth. I received a call to go to work. They told me that it would be a six leg local trip and that I would be home that night. As I arrived at the airport they called me back to tell me that they were changing my schedule to a two day trip that overnighted in Redmond, OR. I had no overnight bag and no coat. I called to see if there was any chance that I could stick to my original schedule because I had no coat and Redmond was -15. They said no. Luckily before I had to catch a flight to Portland I ran into a flight attendant who was just finishing work. She let me use her black overcoat.


Portland was like I have never seen it before. Skywest had just started operating flights again at 3 pm that day after not having service for two or three days. It was the most snow Portland has seen since 1968. There was only one direction to and from the terminal on the taxiways. Not much was plowed. Even just trying to get to the taxiway from the terminal was crazy. Redmond wasn't much better. It was freezing but I survived.

I arrived home Tuesday night after midnight. The next day was Christmas eve. Crew support called me to do another two day trip. Brandon was ticked! Guess where they were sending me...back up to the Portland system. I was suppose to ride to Portland then fly to Seattle and Spokane. I was going to have a short overnight in Spokane then back to Seattle and Portland then home.

The night was a pure mess. There was freezing rain in Portland. When we deice the airplane we have what is called a hold over time. This is the amount of time that the deicing fluid remains affective with the particular type of precipitation occurring. For freezing rain the hold overtime is 3 to 5 minutes. The time starts right when they start applying the fluid. So they would have to spray the whole airplane, then taxi, and take off all within that time. We tried. There was no way. We couldn't even get completely sprayed and get the checklists completed before the time expired. We had to call operations to see it they could send United operations to apply anti-icing fluid. We waited forever. Then the operations manager came out to talk to us about it. He wanted to see if we really needed it because if we did it would take a couple of hours. Man! Luckily the weather changed right around that time so we were able to deice one more time and be on our way. Shortly after takeoff we entered icing conditions and turned the deicing equipment on. The wing boots failed. We ran the appropriate checklist but it didn't take care of the problem so we had to return to Portland. They brought us another airplane but that took awhile. Then we had to wait forever for a fuel truck. I guess there are only two that service the airport and one was broken. Needless to say we were suppose to be out of Portland around 8:50pm. We didn't leave until after 11:00pm and didn't get into Seattle until after midnight.

Legally I can only be on duty for 16 hours which meant that I wouldn't have enough time to get to Spokane before I timed out. We had to get a hotel in Seattle. I felt so bad for our passengers. Here it is Christmas Eve and some of them missed their connections others were suppose to go to Spokane with us and couldn't. It was not a great night. In the morning they had us do the round trip to Spokane then return to Seattle and Portland. I wasn't legal to fly until around 10:20 am. Unfortunately they told our passengers that the flight to Spokane was leaving at 9:00 am. So when they arrived at the airport they saw the flight was delayed. I have no idea why they did that. I was scheduled to catch a flight back to LA that was leaving at 2:50 pm from Portland. We knew that it would be close. Everything on the ground takes ten times longer when the weather is bad. We pulled into the gate at 2:47 pm. We called operations in the air to tell them that it would be really close and to please print my boarding pass out and check me in for the flight. I literally jumped off the airplane before the passengers and ran to the LA flight. I asked the rampers to transfer my bag for me. When I arrived in LA I didn't see my bag anywhere. They had grabbed my first officers bag and he had mine. Merry Christmas to me! The one cool thing about the trip was that I was flying with my buddy Scott Isaksen who I have known since I started flying. He went to Big Bend with me. It was hard to enjoy it because we had so many issues we were dealing with the whole time.

I was so happy to get home. I drove straight to my In-laws. Brandon gave me my Christmas gift. He gave me new running shoes. I needed them desperately. I haven't gotten new running shoes since before I ran the marathon. Brandon's gift had not come yet. That is a whole story in and of itself. On Brandon's side we draw names for gifts. His sister Natalie drew mine and she gave me some of her favorite recipes.