All iced up

I thought the days of busting my hump for 16 hours a day were over, guess not. The other day was the longest day I've had in quite a while. It all started out in ATW. The forcasters had been calling for massive amounts of snow in the area starting in the morning. I rolled over and tried to slide out of the hotel before I woke the wife up. (She drove up to ATW to spend the night with me while I was working). It was 5:15am Central. I quickly checked the weather and saw that ATW had been getting freezing rain all night. The temps were right at 0 and the radar was painting an ugly picture. I checked Big Reds website and saw that the flight was still showing "On-Time". So I put myself on auto-pilot and did the shower, shave, get dressed dance. I headed down to the lobby to meet up with the rest of the crew to catch a 5:45am van. The first sign that things were nasty out was the ice covering all the cars in the parking lot. They all had a solid coating of freezing rain ice adhereing to all surfaces. The roads were just as slick. It was a slippery ride to the airport. Thankfully its a short ride from the hotel to the airport. As we pulled to the terminal and hopped out of the van we noticed some angry faces inside the terminal. That usually equates to cancelled or delayed flights. We grabbed our bags and asked the van driver to hang out for a few minutes in case our flight had canceled. It didnt, but we were told of an hour delay due to a ground stop into DTW. So the van driver headed back to the hotel and we went out to the plane to inspect the ice. The first clue that conditions were bad on the airport was the fact that the ramp was a complete sheet of ice. In order to demonstrate this fact to the disbelieving Captain, I took my flight bag and went flight bag bowling across the ramp. (For those who are wondering, it was out of sight from passengers and the only people who saw this were the Captain and Flight Attendant) As we approached the plane, we saw the full extent of the ice. The plane was covered in a solid 1/2 inch of ice. There were 6 inch icicles hanging from the wings and tail. We tried to open the door to the plane, but it was frozen shut. There was nothing we could do about it, so we headed back to ops. The freezing rain wasnt letting up, so the captain got on the phone with dispatch to inform them on the situation developing. Long story short, the flight was delayed indefinatly so the Capt. decided to head back to the hotel. Certainly didnt break my heart because Erin was still sleeping in the hotel room. I figured we could go get some breakfast. I called the hotel to have them send the van back, but to my dismay she said they were unable to do so. Appearantly the van slid into a snow bank and was out of action for the morning, so she called a cab for us. After about 45min the cab showed up and we headed back to the hotel. I managed to sweet talk the manager into giving us free breakfast coupons and proceeded to head back to my room. After filling up on the breakfast buffet, Erin and I proceeded to veg out in front of the t.v until the capt called and said we were heading back to the airport for another try.

Attempt number 2 was almost as comical as attempt number 1. The station managed to use an entire truck of de-icing fluid (700 gallons) trying to de-ice our plane. They then went over to re-fill the truck and while they re-filled, the plane iced over again. Most of their efforts were thwarted by mother nature. It wasnt until about an hour later when the freezing rain stopped and the heavy snow started that they were able to fully de-ice the plane. But by this time they had used all of the glycol they had and were now using Delta's de-ice truck. Glycol runs about $4.00 a gallon, so you can do the math on how much it cost to get our flight out. So after several de-icings, we finally blocked out 6 hours late. The domino effect has started. The rest of the day was just as eventful with an aborted take off and a drunk passenger smoking in a Lav, but those stories are for another day.

p.s spell check is inop on the blog, so please excuse my poor spelling.