[PilotMan]

This situation didn't really occur while I was writing this so I want to write about it today. So yesterday was a hellacious day. And it was all just trying to get home.

Started yesterday with a 600a wakeup call down in Panama City, Panama. I got ready and went to the Executive Lounge to have breakfast and download my paperwork for the flight back to Newark. The paperwork should have been done, but it wasn't. Oh well, frustrating. For an international flight the dispatcher is supposed to have it ready to go 2.5 hours before the flight. I need that to get my weather and load my flight plan into the Ipad.

I head down to catch the van to the airport and still no paperwork. We're now within 90 minutes of departure. The Captain uses my phone, via MagicJack, to call the dispatcher and finds out that they've been busy and he's working on it, should be done soon. Fifteen minutes into the ride, still not done. I call, and he tells me it'll be 30 minutes, with no real excuse as to why, but it's ready just as we roll up to the airport. I'll have do download everything during my preflight, which will eat up at least 15-20 minutes of time when I should be doing something else.

We clear security where for some reason, my shoes, which have never set off an alarm anywhere set the alarm off and I nearly have to disrobe before their happy. We're at the gate, preflight, and push back on time for the flight home. It's scheduled for 4 hours and 20 minutes and we're going to get in about 20 minutes early.

The weather yesterday was supposed to be light snow, no major issues and a little wind. Even when we were looking at the weather on the ride up it didn't seem that bad. They were reporting the the runway was just wet, deiced the full width and good braking action. We noticed that they had been taking turns closing the 2 main runways to clean them off, so it had to be worse than they were expecting.

FFW 4 hours and 20 minutes, and ATC never slows us, we show up and see that the runway is not just wet, it's covered in streaks of snow, and beyond the braking area it's downright snowy. The ground is covered and it's snowing way harder than *light*.

It's supposed to be 3 hours until my flight home. I check my phone and look at my flight aaaaaannnnnnd it's cancelled. It's a Saturday. I generally hate starting or ending a trip on Saturday. There are 2 direct flights home, one in the morning and this one, that was just cancelled. Disappointing, and now the game is on to try and get the hell out of Newark. I've got a crash pad, so if I get stuck I do have a bed I can sleep in, but it's my days off, and I really, really, really, don't want to waste any of it trying to get home. The next couple days are going to be hard to get out of there with the backlog of passengers from misconnects and cancelled flights.

So with Saturday already being a down day for availability, now I've got to deal with mass cancellations and every flight being crazy full. I clear customs and immigration, go back into the terminal and sit down with my laptop. Generally in this situation Charlotte on American is my fall back plan, almost religiously, due to the number of flights from Newark and to Cincy from Charlotte, but I knew that the weather was supposed to be bad there, so it seemed like a bad first option, so that had me thinking differently.

I use a combination of the app Flight Aware, the company listing information and Google flights to see the up to date times, scheduled flights and load information. My immediate options to get out were Chicago, Detroit, Charlotte, take a train to JFK to take a DHL cargo flight direct, or DC.

I'm fighting the clock to get as much information as I can about when the next flights go, how they look, and what options they leave me to get to Cincy when I get there. The first available flight out was to Dulles with 1 flight from there to Cincy, but it was on my company, and they were rebooking every freaking passenger out on the remaining flights. Every passenger who couldn't get a seat was standing by (ahead of me) and tons of crew were trying to do the same thing. I also figured that Dulles was a bit of a crapshoot based on what I knew about the weather forecast. Even at this point I had no idea that both Charlotte and DC had largely been spared as EWR was getting clobbered. Dulles also doesn't really get me closet to home, even though I've got a couple airports to choose from if I need to. I really never considered it. Besides, the options to get to Cincy were poor.

Same with DHL. The flight wasn't until 8pm and it was only 245p. I didn't want to abandon all my other options for that one shot then take a train across town for the first time ever in the snow and try and figure out how to get to the cargo hanger there to leave.

So in my head I had Chicago or Detroit. Lucky for me I could try for both flights, and Chicago was up first. I listed for the flight, with the hope that I could catch one of three flights from Chicago home. The issue was that the company had cancelled 80% of the Chicago flights and so everyone wanted on this one. I used a vacation pass to increase my standing and then listed for the jumpseat. I was officially #26 and #50 on the list for a flight that holds 170 people. I sat, paced, and kept thinking about what other options I might have. Nothing was good, but you never know.

I waited until the last passenger was boarded, and I was right. It wasn't even close. It was about an hour until the Delta flight was going to Detroit. I got on the Airtrain to head over and it broke down with me on it. Is stopped short of the concourse and then the doors opened with the cold coming right into the car. Awesome. It took at least 10 minutes for people to fix the issue then the train just bypassed my stop. I had to ride along, then get on another train going back the other way. Double Awesome.

Obviously, I don't have benefits on Delta any longer. So when I'm trying to fly on them, I try for the jumpseat first, then if there are seats in the back and every other non-revenue passenger gets on, then I get a seat. Same with American. Seeing other people in uniform when you're walking up to the gate can be somewhat demoralizing.

The thing with Detroit is that it's where Delta moved a lot of their flying there from Cincy and a lot of their employees too. There's always a lot of crew going back and forth, but at least it was closer and only a 4.5 hour drive if I needed to. Delta was still selling seats on these flights so at least I know there might be a seat or two. It was one chance for one flight.

There were no more options for Chicago. If the flight left close to on time I'd have about an hour to make my connecting flight home. My last option for the night, if Detroit didn't work would be Charlotte and American. That connection would be only 50 minutes and with the weather and de-ice requirements in Newark might not even be possible.

It was still snowing in Newark, at least 5 inches had fallen by now. The Delta agent listed me and told me I had the jump seat which was surprising, she also told me I'd get on, and that they had seats, which also surprised me because they had cancelled a MSP flight that night. I figured they'd move people to this one, but good for me. It took forever to get cleaned off, but there was a sense of relief upon leaving.

It was 600p when we took off, which should have had us on the ground around 715, giving me 1 hour to connect to Cincy. I had no idea how the flight home looked other than knowing that Delta was still selling seats. Which could mean they were down to 1 or 2.

It was snowing in Detroit, because of course it was, and we were late getting on the ground. Then they moved our gate to the complete other side of the airport from where I needed to be. By the time I got off the plane with my luggage I would have had 15 minutes to go a forever distance, but like everything else this day, my prospective flight home would be delayed.

I decided to forgo food to get to the gate and get listed early. Along the way I ran into a flight attendant friend of mine who I worked with at Comair. He was now working as a gate supervisor there. When I get to the gate I find out that someone already has the jumpseat, there are 5 non revs listed ahead of me, and at the moment, if everyone shows up there is no room.

I'm going to digress for a moment and rant. The gate agent was new and she didn't understand the trials of commuting. I told her I wanted to list for the flight and she's like, do you see what time it leaves?! I told her that I had flown to Detroit for the sole purpose to take this flight and she looks at me like I've got 3 heads. I'm trying to determine if it's worth it for me wait this out and she's like to you want to go talk to customer service and see if they can help? Like there's just an enormous amount of flights to choose from to get home. Then there's the passengers.

This flight was running late because the crew wasn't there, but the plane was and passengers just couldn't wrap there heads around that. Now the operator of this wasn't Delta, it was my former company, Generic Airline 2B. A surely man asked if there was a chance that I would be working the flight and maybe my immediate response of "oh, hell no" was too flippant, but c'mon. I'm not working, I don't even work for that company. I heard him complaining that it was stupid that there was no crew, yet there I was, why couldn't they just have me go down and get the plane all cleaned off and ready for the other crew. Wow. Don't even know what to say to that. Yet in his mind, this was an incredible miscarriage of justice. To be fair, by now, the flight was going to be delayed by 2.5 hours. The crew was coming in from Rochester NY and they hadn't even left yet.

Driving was now a real option for me. The desire to get home is so strong. I had also looked at hotel options by using an app called Hotel Tonight. I could have gotten a room for about 40 bucks at a Travelodge, or 65 at a Wyndam. It would have been a short night. The next direct flight to CVG was a noon on Sunday, or I could fly to Chicago then try one of the many flights to home. Either way, the earliest I could get home was would be noon on Sunday.

Driving was going to cost me $125 for a one way, plus gas, which would have been another $30 for gas, and 4.5 hours later I would have been home, but I was also tired by this time. I would have been looking at getting home around 2am. Better than noon, but punishing on the end of the day I've had.

The Mrs didn't want me to drive. I could feel my body and mind wearing out too. So I decided to hang out and just see if I could get on this flight. If I didn't I'd be going to a hotel.

The crew showed up and my concerns about their available duty time were allayed. They didn't appear to be in danger of timing out anytime soon so that was good news.

I had gotten to talking to another gate agent who came up to help and she and I talked Steelers as her husband was a big fan. She also told me that there were going to be a couple of misconnects and that there would almost certainly be a seat for me. What a sigh of relief.

They started boarding up and indeed, they had a seat for me. The new agent told me to wait while she made a final announcement, then proceeded to unseat a no show passenger in first class and hand me his seat! Wow, was that a nice surprise at the end of the day. It didn't take long to fall asleep either.

I got to my car around midnight and my decision to try parking in the parking garage was good in that I didn't need to scrape my car. The company will reimburse me up to $35 in parking for a month, and since I don't bill them for my yearly parking and I don't have parking in Newark I figured that I could bill them for at least 1 trip a month in the garage. It was cold, and while it was very slow to crank my car did start.

Home by about 1230a, better than a hotel, better than driving, about 4.5 hours later than I thought I'd be and over 10 hours after I had finished working. My day was 18 hours in uniform and goes down as one of the longest days that I've had.

Commuting sucks.

I was scaring myself with how tired I was just on my 20 min drive home. I was slow and weaving like I was drunk, even though I was putting all my concentration into it, it was scary. It was a good thing I didn't decide to drive. From my own exposure to fatigue training in the airline business this was a clear example of fatigue. Self awareness is a big deal and the danger that comes with operating in a fatigued state is real. I was happy when I rolled into the garage, and my bed was never a more welcome sight.