A little behind again. I haven't had a good opportunity to really sit down and type this out until now. So I'm going to try and recall all of this the best that I can.
I started off again last Friday, Black Friday. I was able to be home for Thanksgiving for the first time in a few years. We have a very small family so it's no more than my Mom coming over to eat with us, but my wife always goes to great lengths to have a great variety of awesomeness to choose from. I swear that we could have fed 20 easy.
I took off around 215p in the afternoon. My flight was at 3:50p and all I had to do was commute to Newark. I had nothing until Saturday morning. I could've taken a later flight, and been home an extra 2.5 hours, but that would have put my backup flight as a two leg flight through Charlotte and probably not getting to the pad until after midnight. Not the greatest option, and not something that seemed worthwhile considering it was a Holiday weekend and all for 2.5 hours. It just didn't make sense so off I went.
The crew was very anxious to get going. It was their last leg and clearly they told the gate to get going because 20 minutes before departure and we were all boarded up. They still can't push until 10 prior, but they were fired up to get the hell out of Dodge. I was fortunate to have a seat in the last row, but the passengers all seemed on edge, almost rude. It was like nothing was quite good enough. I don't know. It was just an odd feeling.
We got to Newark quite early. I wasn't really hungry, but it was about 545p and dinner would be calling soon, so I opted to grab some Qdoba at the airport and take it to the crash pad. I took the train over and waited. The hotel van is on a schedule so you know when it'll be there. Except today it never showed up. I know I'm not the only one waiting for it. I just keep waiting and looking. I guess I could've called, but the reality is it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Twenty turned to thirty, turned to forty. Still no van. I decided that if I didn't see the van by the time I saw the next Embassy Suites van, that I'd try and hitch a ride with them. It's right across the street, and they are good to crews. So that's what happened. The hotel van never came and I hopped on the other shuttle. All in all it took over an hour. Traffic had completely broken down around the airport and the Jersey Gardens mall on Black Friday. The shuttle driver had to drive crazy and cut people off just to be able to get back to the hotel. I'm guessing that's what happened to the other driver. He simply got stuck in traffic and didn't have any other choice.
I was the number 3 guy in the pad and got the last bottom bunk. There would be one more before the end of the night, and that poor guy had to get up first, from the bunk above my bed. I didn't have to get up until about 645, but I was third. Guys had to get up starting at 430a. So you know, other than the semi-uncomfortable bunk bed, it was pretty busy in there.
I grabbed a quick breakfast in the hotel, knowing that I'd get breakfast on the plane, but not for a few hours. I downloaded my paperwork in the van on the way to the airport and looked over the flight plan. This was an international flight today. Just one leg to a new layover for me. I've been to Bonaire a couple of times before but it was always down and back out again. I was kind of looking forward to it. It's part of the ABC (Aruba, Bonaire, Cuacao) islands of the Netherland Antilles and is a very popular destination for scuba divers. We had 5 groups that were going down there on the plane. I was the first one down to the plane, about an hour before the scheduled departure. That gave me plenty of time to get the plane set up and meet the other crew members.
The plane had just come from maintenance and we had a minor issue to deal with before we left, but it didn't impact our departure. We pushed early and started up the engines. After start we had another mechanical issue having to deal with the redundancy for the temperature control system for the plane. You know it's something that is minor. It's a failure of a redundant system, but like everthing else there's a procedure for it. We had to contact maintenance, explain the issue then wait for further instruction while they look up the issue. In the meantime I've got to make sure that the ramp controller knows we are dealing with a mechanical. She wants us to move, but we need to wait to hear back in case they want us back in the gate. So both of us are busy up front while this is going on. We both look up the failure in the Minimum Equipment List to see what the procedure is going to be when they clear us to go. The failure has to be in the book for us to even be able to go. Luckily for us, we both know it's deferrable and we'll be ok to go eventually.
They have us taxi over to a ramp area that's sort of an overflow/parking area in Newark while we make sure that all the paperwork is in order for the flight. The Captain checks with the dead heading Captain who is bringing the plane back to Newark to make sure he is going to be ok with it, which was very smart. He was, but he might not have been and then the plane would have been stuck in Bonaire. All this takes about 15 minutes and we are finally ready to go. We climb out and make our turn toward the Atlantic. Most of the flight will be Oceanic heading south. Almost 45 minutes into the flight we were out of radar contact and had to begin the communications with the HF radio with position reports and all that stuff. That continues until you get north of the Dominican and talking to Miami again. We start off at 33,000ft but the rides sucked. The weather we reviewed showed a lot of turbulence most starting at 33,000, but the dispatcher was pretty confident that it was improving. Before we got too far, we decided to drop down to 31,000. It was a great choice. Our ride still had plenty of bumps, but I think we found the best ride possible. We were heavy enough that we couldn't go much higher.
There were scattered thunderstorms out there too. From north of the Dominican to almost to Bonaire we had to deviate and pick our way around weather. Normally on a flight this long (4h45m) I've got some time to study (read newspaper), but not this day. There was plenty to do and it was my leg to fly anyway. It was raining when we landed in Bonaire and it would continue off and on throughout the rest of the day. Never hard enough to get really wet while being outside, but wet enough that it was impossible to sit outside. Everything was plenty soaked. Bonarie is not the busy, well developed area like Aruba. It's still quite small and small town feeling. They do have more money coming in but the island only has 17,000 full time inhabitants.
This was the view from my room:
We got out and had a nice dinner too. Not far from the hotel was this 315ft yacht:
It just happens to be
Tatoosh, Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen's small boat. He was trying to sell it for 160M, 5 years ago. It's longer than a football field with 2 heli pads, and a big sail boat strapped onto the side of it and is currently the worlds 43rd largest yacht.
I slept pretty good. The ocean surf gently pounded the rocks below the room and it sounded just like those ocean sounds from those relaxation sound machines. One hour ahead of eastern time didn't feel too great this morning. We were up before 6 and out the door back to the airport. Bonaire is called Flamingo Airport, because of the native birds in the area. They really take pride in that here:
Pink is IN!
The flight this morning was to Houston, not back to Newark, and was actually longer than the flight from Newark. Wrap your head around that one. When we got to the airport, Operations immediately started pushing us to get the flight out early. We told them we'd be fine, just leave us alone to get our work done, but they just kept bugging the crap out of us. And since most of the preflight work is done by me, that means they were pushing my buttons. I'll get it done, when it gets done, and I make sure that I've done what I need to do to get going. Not before. I knew we'd still be on time, just leave me alone!
There aren't any parallel taxiways either. You have to taxi on the runway and back taxi into position. It's not a busy airport at this time, so we didn't have any delays. We took off and made out turn over the north shore of the island. Our routing took us on almost a straight path just south of Jamaica, over the west coast of Cuba, north of the Yucutan peninsula, and finally to Houston.
I cleared customs and had an hour and a half to kill. I got my shoes shined (for any travelers, I've found Houston and Denver to have the best) and grabbed some lunch. The next flight was just a deadhead over to San Antonio for the rest of the day. We got here just in time to catch the late NFL games. The Captain and I went out for some TexMex dinner and then I called it a night and started typing this out.
Tomorrow will be back to Newark after a short flight to Houston in the morning. I'd like to be on time, even though I've got a couple hours until my commute back home, I'd hate to get there any later than I already will be. Just so long as I get home on go home day. That's the most important thing.