Saturday, June 23, 2007

Way, way too much.

I’m sitting at DFW biding my time. My flight from SFO was delayed with not one but two electrical problems. First, a battery failed, and it took 45 minutes to replace it. We then taxi’d out to the runway when the flight speed indicator failed, so it was back to the terminal for another 45 minutes to fix that. I missed my connection to New Orleans, so now I’ll fly at 7:55 p.m. and arrive at 9:30 or so. Assuming, of course, that the flight is on time.

I’m online with my Sprint wireless card and saw that Neville posted that he assumed I’d have something here about my recent travels, so I figured I’d better not make a liar out of him.

I got home yesterday from St. John’s, Newfoundland. That flight started at 6 a.m., which meant I had to be up at 3:30 a.m...which was 11 p.m. at home. (I can never get used to locales where the time change is in 30-minute increments instead of 60. I was also befuddled at having to go through customs upon arriving in Montreal from St. John’s; isn’t Newfoundland part of Canada?) I got home around 2 p.m. and spent the rest of the day preparing to leave again today. But that’s not the part you want to hear about. This is:

I flew to St. John’s last Wednesday from Toronto, where I’d been since Sunday. We got to St. John’s, went through two aborted landings due to heavy fog, then diverted to Halifax. From there, we flew back to Toronto. I rebooked on a later flight, and instead of arriving at 1:30 p.m., I got in at 12:30 a.m. How many people fly from Toronto to St. John’s in one day?

On our way to the gate in Toronto, the pilot came on the PA and asked passengers to contact their MPs about St. John’s’ airport. It is, according to the pilot, one of the few commercial airports in North America that is not equipped to handle instrument landings, even though the plane was so equipped. Considering it’s the first North American airport many flights originating in Europe encounter—where planes land in an emergency—and since St. John’s is often shrouded in fog, it seems to make sense to have it equipped to handle low-visibility landings. If I were Canadian, I’d write my MP.

Anyway, this month I’ve been in London, Chicago, Vegas, Toronto, Montreal, St. John’s, and now I’m off to New Orleans, then Dallas next Thursday. Enough!

Posted by Shel in • Planes
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