The last week’s ups and downs

I came out on this trip on Monday the 6th. It’s roughly half over now. Normally, I could say it’s had more ups and downs than the stock market, but the Dow set its biggest single day point gain ever while I’ve been on this trip, and it followed several record setting losses. I guess I don’t have so much drama compared to that.

I was originally supposed to go to Dover to start the trip, but that changed to McGuire (in New Jersey). I previously wrote of my good hotel deal in Philadelphia (among other places).

The trip out of McGuire got complicated right around departure time. We had a maintenance issue that I had seen before. I forget if it was on this same airplane or a different one. Fortunately, the mechanic got it fixed just in the nick of time. Unfortunately, we were then plagued with over an hour of ATC (Air Traffic Control) delay due to a little tiff between Washington center, New York center, and our dispatch. Finally, we were on our way to Ramstein. We limoed to Frankfurt and I already mentioned the hotel issues there…

Then we commercialled from Frankfurt to Istanbul to Adana. I hit the lounge on the way out in Frankfurt. It turned out our ISM (Inflight Service Manager – basically the lead flight attendant) rode with us on those Turkish Airlines flights. They were actually okay, though the transfer in Istanbul was kinda a drag. Fortunately, the engineer (formerly Captain who has been here longer than I’ve been alive) knew to ask for our handler to help us in Istanbul. That expedited the visa process.

The layover in Adana was actually fairly nice. I napped a bit, then hit the happy hour, then went out with part of our flight attendant crew to a restaurant that stayed open really late. We had a table on the sidewalk and they brought us what food they had left. It was basically flat bread and a bunch of different things to put on / in it (hummus, etc.). There were 6 or 8 of us and food and drinks all together was about $60. Not a bad deal, especially for after hours dining.

The next day, I wandered around town a bit, but didn’t really do much. That evening, the F/O and I met for happy hour (again), and then took the bus to where he thought the flight attendants were. Yes, it was the ‘city’ bus – a short bus crowded with locals that cost ~$.70 to ride. There’s a street right outside the base with lots of shops and restaurants that cater to the military people. Sure enough, we found them there in one of the restaurants. Adana kebab, salad, and a couple drinks = $13. Not too bad. A couple of the shopkeepers that we visited drove us all back to the hotel. I did enjoy that flight attendant crew. They were quite senior (several with more than 30 years with the company), but were .. much nicer to be around than some of the other really senior ones I’ve worked with…

The flight to Bishkek and back was the next night. That was a total of 3 days delayed from my original bidline, but we did operate it on time according to the new new schedule. We had an electrical problem on the way back that we wrote up. After we went back to the hotel, apparently things got much worse. When we went back to the airport 12 hours later to ferry another airplane to Leipzig, the one we wrote up was still sitting there. They wound up stealing parts off our airplane to try to fix that one. Fortunately, we were still able to go, though late.

On that ferry flight, I started to have a little ‘extra’ allergy issues… or maybe it was a touch of a cold? I’m not sure. The F/O thought it might have been from the smoking flight attendants (as in cigarettes). I was getting a little concerned that I wasn’t going to be able to fly anymore, but I got some rest and felt well enough to go on the next trip, a Kuwait turn that was added on due to all the cancellations.

Before leaving, I called dispatch. I got an unenthusiastic briefing from my least favorite dispatcher. During the briefing he mentioned that the weather forecast for the destination (Kuwait) was below landing minimums with visibility temporarily as low as 300 feet around our arrival time. But not to worry, he said, he’d just get an updated forecast. Hmmmm… I called back before leaving the hotel and he said he had found a better forecast indicating 1 1/2 miles visibility. Legal? Yes, technically… But we’d have lots of extra fuel (we were tankering so we wouldn’t have to get as much in Kuwait), so we could hold a long time and then go someplace else if we had to.

We got out to the plane and discovered that there was a maintenance issue. Many things that break can be deferred, meaning they can fix them later. Those deferrals usually have a time limit. This airplane had a deferral relating to a cooling fan that was set to expire while we were enroute to Kuwait (don’t even get me started on why they’d send it on the trip that way). They tried to get an extension but couldn’t. There were no parts in Leipzig. While I was in the process of coordinating with maintenance control and everyone else on what to do (they were using phrases like “go back to the hotel”), one of our mechanics had an idea. He climbed down and did a bunch of work on the broken parts and, somehow, fixed it. Atta boy for him!

But, of course, it couldn’t be that simple. Fortunately, we had enough time left to get the passengers on and all our work done so we at least had a chance for an on-time departure. Then, yet another thing broke (this time an indication on one of the F/O’s instruments). We finally made it out 13 minutes late, which just barely avoided a (controllable) delay that would have been charged to us. I’m sure the people back at headquarters have no clue how heroic all that really was…

About halfway into the flight, we got a message from dispatch. “Do the passengers have their weapons on board?” Indeed they did (M-16s and the like). The weather in Kuwait was looking worse than when we left. They were planning a diversion but with armed passengers, that limits us a bit. Meanwhile, we worked on ironing out our exact strategy should the weather be below minimums and stay that way. After coordinating with dispatch and the flight attendants it was just a matter of waiting and seeing. Miraculously, while we were on the descent it started to improve and we were able to land without holding at all. By the time we were a few miles out on final, we could see the airport, though the fog at the far end of the runway was still thick. Apparently our ‘sister airline’ decided not to even try and was still sitting in Leipzig. I guess occasionally the long bomb works…

We unloaded, fueled up and blasted off to come back to Leipzig. It was a ferry flight with only the flight attendants who worked on the way down. While we were still over Iraq, one of the flight attendants got sick. I wound up, for the first time, using my handy little medical emergency form that I put on my note pad. We use a service called Medlink that allows us to contact doctors who are trained to deal with these kinds of situations for advice. After relaying all the information, they recommended getting into the medical kit and giving the flight attendant a particular medication. When we opened it up, it turns out that medication isn’t in there anymore. Called them back and they found the up-to-date list of what we had and recommended another one. An hour later, she felt better and was sleeping. Probably food poisoning, but after Edi’s nightmare experience with uncontrollable vomiting for extended periods I thought it’d be better to be safe than sorry. Fortunately, we didn’t have to divert and she felt better…

So here I am, back in Leipzig, feeling better myself, but still not perfect. I’m on an almost completely backwards sleep schedule now due to the Bishkek turn, Adana-Leipzig ferry, and Kuwait turn all being all-nighters. The next couple of trips go late, but not as late (mid-day departures with middle-of-the-night arrivals). Gotta do laundry today (during the day, while the place is open), and then jazz tonight (one of the two nights a week I’ve found good jazz in Leipzig). Tomorrow I commercial to Budapest for what’s almost sure to be another grand adventure.

And so it continues…

V-