JFK, United Airlines terminal, Thursday, 1998-04-02 05:00 local (Z-5)
I have established a new personal best for abusing my body. I forced my mind to think a few minutes ago—had to use paper and pencil to get things straight—and came up with the fact that I got out of bed in Jeddah fifty-six hours ago. Of that fifty-six hours, forty-eight of them were spent on-duty, seventeen officially at the controls, fifteen truly at the controls, and five and one half deadheading...and I've got another eight hours of jumpseating to go to get home. I am really tired, and will be more tired, of being inside an airplane.
I can't say that I've been totally awake the entire time. I dozed for an hour or so while waiting in the airplane to get out of Jeddah. I actually spent an hour and twenty minutes in a bed in Tel Aviv and maybe got twenty minutes of sleep thanks to five incoming phone calls. Then I basically passed out in an upper deck seat for about two and a half hours at the beginning of the eleven and one half hour Tel Aviv to JFK leg. I accomplished that by putting in ear plugs, putting on a sleep mask, and swallowing three Excedrin PM tablets.
The circumstances have been most unusual. Tower Air has risen (fallen?) to new heights (depths?) of inefficiency. The five incoming phone calls that kept me from sleeping in Tel Aviv culminated in crew screw deciding that instead of deadheading from Tel Aviv to JFK—and hopefully sleeping—on one flight, I would operate another from Tel Aviv to Athens and then deadhead from Athens to JFK.
That almost happened. We were taxiing, and about halfway from our loading gate to the takeoff runway, when the tower controller said that we were to contact company for a message. We did, and were told that Tower's D.O., Director of Operations, in New York had ordered us back to the gate, that we had a crewing problem. So back to the gate we went, wondering which of us was the problem. It turned out the problem was on the direct flight to JFK due to leave shortly after us. The first officer on that flight would go illegal before reaching JFK.
The solution was for him and me to switch. He would take the hour and three-quarters leg to Athens. I would take the eleven and one half hour leg to JFK. However, that created the problem that it was one thing to ask a pilot—that's me—that had already at that point been up thirty-nine hours to operate for an hour and three-quarters but quite another thing to ask him to operate eleven and one half hours. They solved that difficulty by declaring that we would be an augmented crew, two captains and a first officer, and that the second captain would occupy the first officer's seat for the first two hours of the flight, all that he could without going illegal.
So, here I am, finally back in the U.S., and feeling pretty toasted. It will take a couple of days to recover from this one. When I cleared customs and immigration here, I called crew screw just as a courtesy to inform them that I was going home. I didn't ask to be released; it was not a matter of negotiation and they knew it.
Okay, time to go be first in line for a jumpseat to San Francisco.
Terry