Position: ETP (equal time point)
Altitude: 34,000 feet
Groundspeed: 505 m.p.h. (440 knots)
Destination: Sin City
What a night, or rather morning... It is the deepest part of the night, when people sleep the best. If I were home, I would be cuddled up to my beautiful wife dreaming about the white sands of a Mexican beach, possibly... I am not home and I am not dreaming, although some aspects of my job feel like a dream; sometimes a bad dream.
We are five hours late! It all started en route to the JFK airport in the crew van. ( my cell phone rings...)"Hi Captain, this is Cindy in crew scheduling. Your inbound aircraft just diverted to Philly to refuel."
What?! Unforecast thunderstorms... Not good. I could feel it coming. There is no worse place to deal with weather than JFK.
Our inbound aircraft finally arrives two hours late. They re-fueled quickly in Philly, and then they had a 90 minute wait on the taxi way. The passengers disembarking are not happy. Myself and my crew are waiting in the jetway as they go by. Almost all of them are making snide comments as they pass; I would guess for my benefit, since I am clearly the outbound Captain. I briefly wonder why I turned down the freight haulers all those years ago, but then I can feel the wife of my youth poking me in the side from across the Empire, "Be nice and smile."
We loaded up 150 outbound passengers, most of them New Yorkers going to Lost Wages. It would not be an exaggeration to say that half or more were border line hostile toward the flight attendants. My number one flight attendant is brand new; number two and three are battle hardened vets. Uh oh... I've seen this combo several hundred times, and it's trouble... Number one will, most likely, be overwhelmed by rudeness and start crying in the flight deck. The two in the back will be up here, in short order, demanding that I throw a couple of passengers off that are "Ignoring their commands."
Five minutes later, the number one flight attendant is in the flight deck
asking (new flight attendants ask) me if I can do something about the passengers not cooperating. She is not crying, though. She must be a Mom. The intercom rings from the rear of the aircraft. I wonder who might be calling... "Hey Captain, you've
got to do (veteran flight attendants tell) something about the passengers. We've got several that are going to be trouble. If they don't calm down we want them off the plane." What a surprise... Not exactly as I forecast, but close.
I removed the P.A. from its cradle and began my standard issue
this is the Captain/we would like to get you to your destination safely/after we leave the gate you can expect a lengthy taxi, possibly in excess of two hours/please do not take your frustrations out on my crew/the flight attendants can't control the weather or any other aspect that is causing delays, etc. That calmed the passengers. Easy does it folks... This is the new age of air commerce. Everyone can afford to fly now.
We were number sixty (60) for take-off. On both sides of us, parallel taxiways full of aircraft, beacons flashing. Some of them were already low fuel and could not depart until they returned to the gate to refuel. They were trapped on the taxiway, though. What a mess! I loaded up three hours of taxi fuel and hoped that would be enough. West of JFK, about 50 miles, a line of thunderstorms crackling with electricity.
Two hours later, the co-pilot advanced her thrust levers to maximum take-off power. We weren't fooling around with reduced thrust tonight. Five miles ahead, a 747-400 heavy jet leaving dangerous wake turbulence in its six. We needed to climb above that wake trail.
And so it goes... To my left and twenty degrees above the horizon, my friends Sagittarius and Scorpius... Between them, the Jovian giant gas planet. Inside the dark flight deck, the ETP (equal time point) symbol is about underneath the little airplane symbol on my nav display. That means the inertial navigation units think they are half way on the clock, not necessarily distance, though... Handy to know over the water.
In the back, the flight attendants report that the passengers are mostly asleep. There are two more days to go before home. We can do this... Everybody take a deep breath and count to ten.
Position: 200 miles southeast of Anchorage
