A few weeks ago, a captain had asked me what my worst day on the job was like. I had to think
about it for a while, and nothing has been terrible. Sometimes there are delays, sometimes there are weather issues, sometimes mechanical anomalies, sometimes there is pressure to make up time, but rarely do you have all at once. This was the case on the final day of my three day trip. It consisted of five legs, most of them short hops with very little time in between for a break. The day began in Lansing with mechanical issues on the plane before it left Minneapolis. After the crew switched to a different aircraft and got to Lansing, we were over two hours behind schedule.
Normally, this wouldn't be a huge issue, but based on our original schedule, we would only have an hour between our last flight and the last flight home to LA . . . if we were on time. Things weren't looking good. After one of the fastest turnarounds in airline history, we headed up to Brainerd, Minnesota, did an approach to minimums and picked up significant icing on the way in, so we had to deice. While we had caught up by 30 minutes, deicing negated our gains...and the Spoilerons fault status message that popped up after taking off did not help our situation.
The captain I was working with was originally from Russia, but now lives in San Diego. He was also banking on catching the last flight out of MSP to Los Angeles. While I was flying, he coordinated with maintenance to meet us on the ground to fix the issue. This Russian efficiency paid off. A few circuit breakers were reset and the issue solved before the last passenger had stowed their bags. Now just an hour behind schedule, we headed off to Duluth. It was one of the hairiest approaches I've ever done in my life.
Regional airline pilots don't get enough credit for this nonsense.
At United Airlines, someone is flying their 777 from one 12,000 ft runway to another 12,000 ft runway while using their auto-throttles, auto-land, and CAT III approaches. Meanwhile in Duluth, ol' Brian is counting down the feet until he has to abort the approach in his Canadian-built regional jet with auto-nothing, picking up ice on all surfaces of the aircraft, ice caution chimes and bells going off, visibility close to nil, and snow and ice covering the runway. Touching down between the two rows of runway edge lights, no one could judge me for touching down on centerline or not because . . . it could not be seen. Now having whittled our delay down to 30 minutes, it did not take long to board all four passengers. Yes, 4. I made some snarky remark about how, "It's good to feel useful." Even the Russian cracked a smile. We again had to deice which slowed our progress. After launching out of Duluth, the Russian and the American set their sights on Minneapolis for the final leg of the day. The Russian's style of flying was different than what I was used to. Safe, efficient, but very brief with his statements. No fluff. DING. "Seatbelt on." That was the most the four passengers were going to get out of the Russian. He did not believe in lengthy briefings about the weather upon arrival, what gate we'd be parking at, or how much flight time remained. No time for this. After all, this was our fifth leg, it was a short flight, and it was busy. Maybe he had a point.
After pulling into the gate, nobody was around to move the jetbridge into position. The flight attendant made some remark to me on how we may not have a jetbridge operator, but we do have an angry Russian, who had already marched outside and into the terminal with a mission to find the operator. 30 seconds later, the jetbridge was flush against the main cabin door. I did my walk-around and we powerwalked across the Minneapolis airport to board a nearly empty flight to LAX. There was nothing more welcoming after a long stressful day than an open row of seats next to me.
