The Big Chill, Part Two

YYZ. Up until now, my only experience with it was listening to an instrumental performed by Toronto's Rush on the fantastic album Moving Pictures. Now, I've been initiated at the source of Rush's inspiration.

Toronto Pearson International Airport. Big, Canadian and cold. We landed on Saturday afternoon with light snow flurries and freezing cold temperatures. We settled in for a nice overnight at the YYZ Travelodge (I wish the room was a nice as the elevators) hoping that the next day wouldn't be so bad.

I thought these airport police vehicles were pretty interesting. They look like Segway meets Robocop. Canadian GST at work!

Overnight, two feet of snow had fallen in Toronto. When it was time to head to the airport, it was still snowing and visibility was less than 1/2 mile. Things improved, but getting to the airport was challenging. Due to icy roadways on the ramp, the safety mounties decided that the inter-terminal buses weren't running. It took an hour for the buses to resume their schedule and get us to the international terminal...where...our aircraft sat all night long with no nacelle covers. Yes, the engine nacelles had 2 feet of snow in them and that, among other things, kept us from an on-time departure. Every other flight to JFK had been canceled. That made us the only game in town and nobody was complaining about delays.

A cold soaked airplane with snow in the engines requires a few extra steps. Takeoff weights are reduced by contaminated runways as well as the need to use anti-ice for the engine cowls and wings. To make matters more challenging, ATIS kept changing every 7-10 minutes between freezing rain and snow. We can depart with snow falling, but not freezing rain. Making the necessary calculations, communicating the max gross load to customer service agents so they can determine who stays and who goes and getting in sequence for JFK arrivals on a bad weather day meant pushing back 90 minutes late. The ATIS changed to snow and we headed to the de-icing pad.

At Toronto, de-icing is a very well orchestrated operation. They use Volvo boom trucks that can be driven from the truck and watching them do the two stage process is fascinating. After 15 minutes, Type I and IV had been applied and our holdover time had been issued. It was finally time to leave The Great White North.

The flight to JFK went smoothly. When we arrived, a message from crew scheduling informed us of a few changes. Our deadhead to Boston was canceled, which canceled our flight to Halifax. We were spending the night in New York. The new schedule called for a deadhead to Boston on Monday with legs from BOS to Nashville to CVG.

Monday morning, we headed to BOS as scheduled. In BOS we were having lunch waiting to operate the Nashville flight, when the flight attendant received a call from crew scheduling. She was informed that our Nashville flight was canceled and she was released and going back to Cincinnati. The captain and I gave each other a high five, thinking we were to be released too. Nah. We were going to operate a flight to Baltimore and then deadhead back to Cincinnati on the last flight of the day.

The weather in BOS kept deteriorating and it started snowing heavily. When we got to the gate, we found out that our flight attendant was sitting ready reserve at JFK and was just boarding a flight to BOS. Her departure time at JFK was our departure time from BOS. We would be delayed...again. We finally pushed back and had to be de-iced...again. The winds were howling and it was pretty turbulent in the terminal area around BOS.

A nice day in Boston...NOT!

Things smoothed out en-route and a nice tailwind got us to Baltimore 10 minutes ahead of schedule. The winds in Baltimore were worse than Boston, much worse. Winds were 300 at 28, gusts to 43. It was really bumpy on short final, but a few extra knots for the gusts helped bring us to the runway firmly, but smoothly.

Unfortunately, we arrived 15 minutes after the last flight to Cincinnati and had to spend the night. Our normal crew hotel was overbooked and it took an extra hour for company to find us rooms. Finally they found rooms for us at Amerisuites, which was just days away form becoming a Hyatt. All of the rooms were remodeled including 42 inch plasma televisions. Too bad it was late and we had a 5:15 report time for our deadhead back to CVG.

One day five of a four day trip, I finally made it home. I had been away from home for ten days and it was wonderful to see everyone again. I can't say enough how hard it is being away from home.

Unfortunately, due to having four legs canceled, I didn't get enough hours to complete IOE and will have to complete one more trip. That is scheduled to start this Sunday. Thankfully, I'm off until then and get to enjoy time with my wife and kids.