Ahhh... The freight delay.

It is not uncommon for us freight dawggers to have long delays waiting on freight. The company will page us out for a trip and tell us "Get there as fast as you can, freight is waiting!". Only to get to the airport and find that there's a freight delay. Today the delay is coming from the shipper. Apparently we are to be shipping some Hazmat material, but the containers that the shipment are in are not legal for shipping by air. So while the Capt. and I hustled to get down to the pick up airport, it was all for nothing. We could have taken our sweet time and gotten here with plenty of time to spare.

Some delays are short, some extremely long. Depending on the airport and the facilities, the delay can be tolerable or excruciating. Today's delay, not so bad. The airport has a nice FBO with internet, a nice pilots lounge, a crew car and food nearby. The other end of the spectrum is when we go to the big airports and have to go to the cargo ramps. IAH and EWR come to mind. When we go to those airports, we usually go to the cargo ramp. At these places there is usually no pilot lounge, internet, food or crew car. Last week, I had a 6 hour freight delay in IAH at one of these places. After leaving the aircraft and going inside, they didn't have chairs for us to sit on. We had to go outside and sit in the grass. After a few hours of that, I had had enough and made them escort me back out to the plane. I'd rather go sit in the plane for a few hours than sit in the grass. In a Falcon you can make a comfortable little bed to lay on by putting the engine covers on the floor and laying on them. I've spend many an hour laying down that way. Well, freight is supposedly on its way. I'm off.