San Francisco, Monday, 1995-05-29(2) 15:00 local (Z-7)
Change of plans, and how it happened shows the flavor of this job. I and the flight engineer showed up at Tower at 08:30 local in New York to sign in the the trip. They issued us our tickets for the deadhead leg to Miami. The captain, to give himself an extra day at home, had jumpseated direct to Miami from LAX (Los Angeles). We're about to walk out the door when somebody in Brazil calls and says “no freight”, so we hang around while they decide what to do. Finally, the trip is cancelled, and I and the engineer are in the process of negotiating our release with crew scheduling so we can go home before both of us are shipped off to Jakara in a few days. Crew scheduling agrees, and we're picking up our bags for the escape when somebody from operations calls across the room, “Don't let that crew go!” He thinks they can find some other work for the freighter.
We go to the break room, lamenting that if we had been a few seconds faster, we'd have been out of there and on our way home. Now we're worried that they'll find something else for us out of New York, but departure will be more than 24 hours from now, which means we'll have to pick up our own hotel rooms and per diem will stop. This time however, we luck out. Crew scheduling releases us when we go back there. Operations has failed to come up with a viable plan. We leave immediately, being careful not to discuss the best way of getting out of town until out of ear shot of crew scheduling.
The flight engineer is an old hand at jumpseating out of JFK, and he's trying to get to LAX. He says American has almost hourly flights this time of day to LAX, and that sounds good to me since my first task is to get to the West Coast. We hotfoot it over to American. Indeed, LAX flights leave almost hourly for awhile...and there's a single San Francisco flight in an hour and one half. I get the jumpseat on that, and there are few passengers. The captain and the chief flight attendant are very cooperative, and I wind up in first class eating seafood and watching a movie of my selection on an individual seat screen. Sometimes things work out well.
Arriving in San Francisco, I'm faced with the fact that United is the only convenient way out for me, and I have to go to their operations office to get a jumpseat pass. The office isn't, like most operations offices, at the terminal, so I have to get on the long term parking bus (baggage and all) to get that. So now here I am, back at the terminal, hoping none of the multitude of United pilots based in San Francisco and living in the Pacific Northwest are headed home. Over the next several hours I'll have about seven tries to Portland and Eugene, so I should eventually make it. It's to my advantage to take the first one I can get, which is Porrland, since it's more likely than Eugene.
Oh, yes, the captain who took the risk of jumpseating from home to Miami is now left sitting in Miami at his expense. The net effect is that he has wasted two days of his life for nothing. Sometimes things don't work well.
Okay, time for my first try...everybody take care.
Terry
p.s. Home now, made the second try...and direct to Eugene no less!