On Again

A new day, a new decision. We'll fly to Fairbanks, clear customs, and then take commercial flights home while maintenance does a phase check and the replacement crew flies in. Someone must have factored in the airfares and that shifted the math. Airfares are relatively cheap in and out of Fairbanks, as they are for most big-city American destinations. We won't get to see the remote Alaskan spot we had hoped to visit, but the novelty would probably have run out before the work, and we will get to cross northwest into Alaska.

After I get that news, I go flying. If all goes well, this will be our last flight returning to this base -- although my Alaska charts still haven't arrived. Apparently this place has some sort of repellent force that prevents newspapers, courier deliveries, mail and airline passengers from arriving on time.

The last three METARs report cloud bases at 5900', 5800', and 5700', which is odd because I asked the specialist earlier and he said they didn't have a ceilometer. All cloud heights are estimates. How would they, in the absence of nearby mountains, determine a hundred foot difference just by estimation? On other days the bases have been given to the nearest thousand feet. I ask about it.

The answer is that today, because the clouds are all cumulus, they are reporting the bases not by visual estimation, but according to a formula. I understand. I know that formula. I didn't know anyone used it for anything other than written pilot examinations. Here's how it works: cumulus clouds are formed when rising air is cooled to its dewpoint by expansion. Rising air cools through adiabatic expansion at a rate of 3 degrees Celsius per thousand feet. The dewpoint decreases by about 0.5 degrees per thousand feet. Therefore the temperature approaches the dewpoint at a rate of 2.5 degrees per thousand feet. The reported surface temperature is 21 degrees and the surface dewpoint is 5.2 degrees. So at the surface the temperature is 21 - 5.2 = 15.8 degrees above the dewpoint. The temperature will reach the dewpoint 15.8/2.5 = 6.3 thousand feet above the aerodrome. (This doesn't match the earlier report because they have given me current temperature and dewpoint values and the temperature-dewpoint spread has evidently increased by a degree since they did their last calculation. Drop the temperature to 20 and do the same math and you get 5900'). METAR altitudes are given above aerodrome elevation, which is 1250', so I can expect bases to be at about 7500' above sea level, as displayed on my altimeter.

Another pilot hearing this conversation calls in to report bases at 7500'. Science! It works. Also don't you love Canada? We have formulae that combine degrees C with Imperial feet and we think it's just fine that way.

In Canada either a flight plan or a flight itinerary must be filed for a VFR flight of more than 25 nm. A flight plan is filed with Nav Canada but a flight itinerary can be filed with anyone responsible enough to report you missing. Commercial operations like mine generally file with company and when we inform ATC of this we say we are "on a company note." That shortcuts ATC asking if we want them to open our flight plan. In imitation of this practice, a small aircraft pilot taxiing out calls the FSS and says he is "VFR to Helmut on a note." He then decides that this needs more explanation, as the FSS knows he is a private owner and not a company, so he adds, "My wife."

Another pilot calls up "Looking for the airways to Ft. St. John." That's a non-standard way to ask for an IFR clearance, but seeing as the FSS probably has his clearance sitting there and is is waiting for him to call to ask for it, he could probably have said anything he liked and still received it. If you don't ask for it, they offer it, as when the tower says to a airline pilot after he makes a taxi call. "Grab your pen."

Then it's my turn. The wind is straight down runway 26 at 10 knots, so it's an easy taxi and take-off. As the airplane waddles up to altitude in the hot weather I call to report airborne, and my turn. The FSS does a shift change. It's a woman with an unfamiliar voice, and she comments to someone on air that she's just back after two weeks. I guess she's out of practice, because she keeps getting confused, forgetting which airplane is where, scrambling our types and needing constant position reports. I am ready with a position report whenever she calls me for one and make sure I am keeping track myself of where the other aircraft are.

Or Maybe Not

The reported weather across the north slope of Alaska has been solid IFR all week. I'm remembering when we were sent to work in Florida in thunderstorm and hurricane season, and southern California in fire season. "Did someone research when this place has a good season we could work there?" I idly ask my chief pilot.

"This is the good season," is the reply.

Company is working out how to schedule maintenance when we are in northern Alaska. Flurries of e-mail, (including attachements I can't open on either the iPod or the crippled business centre computer) go back and forth. Plan A is for us to fly to the job site, work until just before maintenance is due, then ferry south to Fairbanks and have company maintenance personnel fly into the large airport to do the work. Plan B is to do scheduled maintenance twenty hours early, before we leave here, and then try to do the ferry north, the work, and the ferry back to Canada, all within fifty hours plus an extension. That requires everything to go right: no diversions, no aborted flights, and no unscheduled maintenance requirements. This is highly unlikely. Airplanes are never that cooperative. Doing the maintenance twenty hours early essentially costs the company the profit that they could have earned on those twenty hours of flight. A ferry, at maximum three hours each way, costs the company the profit they would have earned on that six hours of flight, plus the fuel and wear and tear on the airplane. Those aren't the only costs to consider.

It is also at least twice as expensive to fly maintenance personnel to our current location as it would be to have them to fly to Fairbanks. Accommodations are probably about the same. Not doing what makes the customer happiest may cost future contracts. It's complex.

Management decides on option B. In fact they will add a multiplier to the expense of airfare out of here, by doing a crew change before the trip, and swapping pilots during the maintenance. I've flown home commercially from this airport once before and it was the most expensive one-way fare I've ever purchased. Recall that I've flown one-way two or from seven out of ten provinces from coast to coast, plus many states, including California and Florida. I don't care personally about the expense of the flight, but I was looking forward to flying to Alaska. We both were. And I'll bet you wanted to hear about such an adventure too.

OAG Flights2Go

A couple of months ago I received an offer from OAG, the company that puts out the Official Airline Guide, to try their online Flights2Go product for free. I am familiar with the print product from a previous life, so I know it is the source of information on what airline goes where when, and hey, free stuff, right? I accepted the free trial.

The online product is a minimalist interface, nothing to install, no javascript, no pictures, just click the URL and get four lines of text:

• 1. Flight Schedules
• 2. Flight Status
• 3. Inbound Flight Status
• 4. Airline Info

The minimalism is a good thing. There's no wait to load it, and it's clearly accessible through even the most primitive internet devices. I use it on my laptop, but they advertise it for web-enabled phones, too.

The flight schedules rejected my first request because I entered four letter airport codes, and it only wanted the last three letters. (If someone who maintains a weather, airline, flight planning or other aviation site wants to make me really happy, they could allow both three and four letter variants of airport codes). You can also just type in the name of the city. If I type "New York" I get a choice of Newark, Laguardia or JFK. Type in "Portland" however, and I get a dropdown offering the choice of "Portland," "Portland," or "Portland," with no disambiguation. I can't get it to accept "Portland, ME" or "Portland, Maine," and when I correctly guess which of the three Portlands is the one in Maine (the second) the only confirmation I get is that the offered flights depart from PWM. If I didn't know the airport code, I'd be stuck.

The results of a search are also in a very condensed format showing the airline abbreviation, the flight number, departure and arrival airports and times, the time enroute, aircraft type, and days of the week that flight is available, ordered by departure time. Each result is itself a link to details, spelling out the abbreviations and showing each leg of a flight with connections. On the result below, you have to click the 2 to see details of the YYZ-YAM leg on the second screen. Which you can't, because the one below is just a screenshot.

The database includes a lot of airlines, including one of the tiny ones I have worked for, but misses some not so tiny ones based in Saskatchewan and Newfoundland. I think every airline that codeshares with Air Canada is on the list. I didn't check every one, but the ones I did check are, and the ones I noticed absent don't. It also doesn't seem to be able to chain flights from different airlines that don't code share between each other. For example, it can find me a flight from Thompson, Manitoba to Winnipeg on Calm Air, and it can find me a flight from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay on Bearskin Airlines, but if I ask it for service from Thompson to Thunder Bay it returns "no records available". It's not simply rejecting itineraries that don't connect well, because when I ask for Toronto to Winnipeg it offers me a 24 hour 49 minute odyssey connecting through Thunder Bay. It also offers flights connecting through Ottawa (in the wrong direction) and Chicago (in a foreign country requiring passports). But those aren't OAG's fault. Those, I believe, are connecting itineraries legitimately offered by the airlines themselves.

Navigating through the screens is simple, but once you click on a possible choice and look at the details of the routing, you have to use the back key to get back to the results list, which may be quite a few screens. I found a few cases where it shows same flight twice: the same flight number, same airline same times, same date.

I used it to try and help an acquaintance who was looking for information on flights from LAX to HNL (Hawaii for Christmas, mmm) and found a whole bunch of flights that he didn't know about. I was all excited that I was being helpful but when I looked them up, the flights I had found were all routings like LAX-SLC-HNL or LAX-SFO-HNL. While this would be useful if you were desperate for any flight, it wouldn't work out well for him, because he was travelling on a non-rev pass and couldn't risk being stranded in Salt Lake City.

When I was stranded myself by fog I was able to search the database myself for possible alternate routings to my destination and thus ask for the flight I wanted by number. For a control freak it's nice to have that power. I know someone who booked two flights on an "open jaw" itinerary (outbound to one city and homeward from another) through a travel agent who didn't know you could book two one way tickets! Needless to say he didn't get the best possible deal.

It should be mentioned that this product shows you the schedules only, not the prices. Showing prices would violate the Pauli exclusion principle of airfares, that forbids customers from knowing how much their flight costs and what other flights are available both at the same time. (Or, as has been pointed out to me, perhaps that's more the territory of Heisenberg). Maybe that's not really a fundamental law of the universe, but OAG has wisely decided not to risk it. Nah, it's just that if there's an airplane going from Toronto to Philadelphia, all the seats are going on that route. The same consistency does not apply to airfares.

I use the OAG product in conjunction with Expedia when I am booking flights, but in December expedia.com was down so I checked on OAG to see which airline sites to go to. (I know there are other portals apart from Expedia, it's just the one I have bookmarked for both US and Canadian origins). With OAG I found a direct flight to Canada that bypassed the snowed-in US hubs and Christmas delays endured by my coworkers. "You're flying direct?" they asked, while pondering whether they were ever going to escape from their snowbound hubs.

It can also look up flight status and give you toll free numbers for all the airlines it lists. It's definitely a reference for the stranded or last-minute traveller who really wants to see what flights there are as opposed to which ones the airlines claim they have seats on. They don't always match.

I won't pay to subscribe to this service for myself, because I mainly fly between small centres and, checking my recent itineraries, it wouldn't have found me the combinations of airlines I needed to get where I was going. I don't think I'd get my money's worth. I do see this product as of great benefit to people for whom a reasonable schedule is more important than a rock bottom price, and who fly among major centres served by airlines that are not named after local wildlife. Its forte is to show you how to get from A to B with the most precise timing possible, where A and B are both served by the same airline. If your flight is cancelled or full, having this product to see all the flights that are available could really help you optimize the time spent running from airport counter to airport counter to beg for seats, and if it saved you just one overnight in a strange city, it would pay for itself. In my experience, frequent travellers do know their airport codes and would have no trouble using this product.

If anyone has a search they'd like me to try in the database, just ask. I'll report back.

On the topic of airlines and airfares, this amusing website for a fictitious airline appears to be advertising for Air New Zealand.

If the Seat Fits

The Sup reme Court ruling that Air Canada, Jazz and WestJet must provide an extra airline seat free of charge to persons requiring an attendant or who do not fit in a single seat has engendered a lot of discussion, even in other countries. Most public comment I have seen agrees with the concession for an attendant, but has been incredulous or mocking over accommodating the obese. The latter part of the decision is unique.

In a way I have no opinion on this. (So why am I blogging about it, eh?) I can see plenty of arguments both ways and don't pretend to know more about the laws of the land than the judges who rendered this decision. I see some odd issues in application though. Will there be a box to check on the online booking form if you need to be accommodated in this way? If you're not big enough to require two seats, what happens if you say you are? Is Air Canada going to look at you and say, "I'm sorry sir, but you're not fat enough to have an extra seat without paying for it"? Are non-obese people going to claim that they are being discriminated against because they can't get extra hip and shoulder room for free? I don't think anyone in the "almost" category is crazy enough to gain twenty pounds in order to make the grade for an extra seat, but I just don't know, do I?

The reason I'm blogging on this issue at all is to pass on a comment made on the Airline Biz Blog by someone identified as Jenny. She says:

To say that you should not accommodate a disabled obese person because they got that way themselves is ignorant. Would you then not accommodate someone with cancer if they got cancer from smoking? Would you not make concessions for a quadriplegic because they took known risks in a dangerous sport and got injured? What if they were paralyzed while driving drunk? Where do you draw the line? Many disabilities are the result of poor judgement. Disabled is disabled.

This MSN article outlines four options the airlines could take to determine eligibility for an extra seat under the policy. They include from self-declaration (but the author seems confused about the benefit, because suggests that skinny people would declare to be obese in order to save money), a doctor's note, body mass index, and actual measurement by the airlines. They've had those baggage-sizing devices for years; I'm sure I'm not the only one who has joked about putting a butt-sizing device next to it. On January 10th it might be reality.

But please don't eat too much over the holidays. I don't think the extra seat is worth it.

Not Ready for Prime Time

It's time to get out of here and go home for a break. There's only one airline that flies here, the one whose pilots held me up last week because they couldn't get their clearance right. I think I didn't blog about that, so I'll just passive-aggressively mention it now. I won't hold it against them. I can't, if I want to get out of here. They are to be the first page of my ticket home.

I go to their website to find and book a flight. The dropdown lists for the TO and FROM boxes for the departure and destination cities are amusing. Instead of reading something like "Toronto (YYZ)", numerous entries read "CITYNAMES: YOP (YOP)", yes with the word CITYNAMES in there, like it failed a database lookup.

Fortunately I know the local identifiers pretty well. I feel like I've been everywhere this month, so I navigate the drop down, but when I ask for YYE-YYC it returns with NOT AVAILABLE in red. I try YYE-YEG and YYE-YVR, with the same result. It doesn't make it clear whether the flight is cancelled, full, or not operating on this weekday. I try Prince George and Grande Prairie and everywhere else I can think of that might have connecting airline service to "out of here." I can't find a route map on the website. I interviewed with this airline once, so I studied the route map once, but I only remember: convoluted. They operate some flights for Air Canada Jazz and as a result aren't allowed to compete on the same routes.

I pick up the phone and call reservations. They are busy the first time, but I get throught he second time and ask for a flight out of Fort Nelson. "Where do you want to go?" she asks. "Out," I say. "Anywhere but here." And this being the north, she understands. She finds me a flight to Fort St. John (YXJ), which only qualifies as better than here because it's served by Air Canada Jazz. The 193 mile, 50 minute flight is $214.20 with all taxes. Everything else is full already. I guess I'm not the only one who wants out.

On to Air Canada, whose site takes my information then goes away for a long time to think about it, but eventually sells me a ticket out of Fort St. John. It costs $750 for a one way ticket, but it's getting me home and I'm being reimbursed, so that is okay by me. Onto the credit card it goes. Now if my co-worker arrives on schedule tomorrow, I can go home the next day.

Oh and they seem to have a lack of policies:

For a moment I thought that was an extreme version of the "click here to accept this policy" box, wanting the prospective passenger to type out the policy in the box, but then I realized they just forgot to replace boilerplate. Who doesn't check these things? Doesn't every store owner walk by the front door now and again to make sure it is inviting to customers?

Sounds Dirty

If you fly airline, you spend a lot of time waiting in hub cities like Toronto, Calgary, Chicago, or Dallas. If you fly charter, you wait in places like Regina. It's a reasonable sized city, pretty close to the middle of the continent. It's a good place to stop for gas on an east-west trip. It's also a good place to leave an airplane for a while, because it's optimally close to everything that might come up. Florida and BC are not so good places to leave an airplane, because they're both really far from many places and can block you in with hurricanes, tornadoes, squall lines, or mountains and fog. So this time I'm glad the airplane I'm getting is in Regina.

Today, for starters, I have to fly from Regina to Prince Albert, wait a few hours there, then fly back again. I didn't think that sounded dirty at all until a friend snickered at it. Now I'll always hear him saying, "Can I get my Prince Albert to your Regina?" I bet I could call up Winnipeg clearance delivery, say, "Looking fire far vagina with Romeo" and, assuming information Romeo were current, get back a squawk code and an IFR clearance via V304. I dare the next person to fly to Regina to do it. When I was a little kid I pronounced V and R pretty much the same way so that both the Saskatchewan capital and the body part came out as "vridge-EYE-na." I seem to recall the Queen's name inducing a bit of a giggle in class, so I wasn't the only one. (Foreign readers, remember that most Canadians pronounce R with their bottom lip against their top teeth, so they are similar letters to us).

All giggling aside, this one was my first flight as a pilot since landing in Nova Scotia in the Aventura, and these are important clients. Lets hope I remember how to fly this size of airplane. I have done the preflight paperwork, inspected the airplane, put cookies and water on board, and checked weather and NOTAMs. The customers won't be here for a while, so I go out and do a run-up, including testing the heaters, because I don't think this airplane has been used for passengers since the summer. It's hard to tell if the heaters are working, really, because the sun shining in the windows is heating it up pretty well, too. But I declare it working, as is everything else, and taxi to where I will pick them up. They arrive on time and ready to go, so I brief, secure the doors and start up.

There's a moment of uhh on my part because the Garmin 496 that is usually in here, isn't. Pilots get very lazy with toys like that. I have to scrabble for the 'file and forget' operational paperwork that I've filled out, telling me how to get there the old fashioned way. How primitive. I have to match up lakes and other landmarks with the paper chart.

The weather is beautiful. No turbulence, warm enough that I don't even have to turn on the heater and not a cloud in the sky. All I have to do is fly in a straight line and not run into anyone. There's not much traffic. I'm just watching for Prince Albert ahead. It's right on the bank of a river, but I note as I pass overhead that it is quite far from the town, and there are no other buildings close to the airport. I join the circuit and land, with a little prayer of thanks to the landing gods, because they might take vengeance if I take sole credit for the silky touchdown I achieved.

The terminal at Prince Albert is locked from the airside, and the code I guess doesn't work. Someone inside takes pity on us and lets my passengers in to meet their ride. I don't follow them, because I don't want to be trapped away from my airplane, so I get back on the radio and ask flight services where the gate is to get off airside. They tell me to come down to the flight services building. I walk over there, but don't see a gate either, so I go in and poke around the briefing room, looking for a code for access to the terminal. Nothing of interest there, but on my way out there is a flight services specialist going by on the other side of the locked door into his area. The door has a window so he sees me and opens the door. He tells me the code. "We're just not allowed to say it on the radio," he explains. I wonder about the added obscurity that he apparently isn't even allowed to say straight out, "Come to the FSS and I'll tell you the code," either. It turns out to be the same one that I guessed. I must have dialled it incorrectly.

I go back to the terminal and dial the code again, but it still won't let me in. Eh? I add one more digit to the beginning of it. An obvious digit if you know what I was guessing, but I won't give any of it away as it seems to be the access code to half the airports in North America. My extra digit works its magic and I'm in.

The only food in the terminal is vending machines, and they aren't very well stocked. Outside the terminal is a monument explaining that this was a training airport in World War II. From 7 July, 1940 to 15 November, 1944, 2467 student pilots trained here. Fourteen died. At first I think that's a lot but then I realize that 2467 is a lot, too, and now I've done the math and seen that it's slightly over half of one percent. In 2007 there were 2228 private pilot licences issued for airplanes in all of Canada. An equal proportion of deaths would be twelve. I don't know how many training deaths there were in 2007, but I would be surprised if it were more than three. This accident

claimed three lives but no one on board was a student pilot. The float instructor, airline pilot, and passenger were killed while the airline pilot was learning to fly floats. The seaplane licence, had it been completed, wouldn't be part of the 2228.

There's nothing of interest at this airport. I'm wondering what I'll do with myself for the next few hours. Someone arrives in a car and I ask him to confirm that there's nothing within walking distance to eat or do. He says yes, but that he's just bought a lot of pizza and he figures I could share. He's in management at Pronto Airways, an airline serving this airport, and has come to meet the troops. They are very interesting and competent-seeming people who told me lots of interesting things as well as unbegrudgingly sharing their pizza. There's plenty to go around and I cheerfully participate in dissing the competing airline that shares the terminal. It seemed like a fair payment for the pizza.

After my mooched lunch I went outside, back on the apron to enjoy the day. It was the most perfect weather imaginable. I was wearing long pants and short sleeves and it was neither cool nor warm, almost like my body wasn't there at all, with fresh air all around and leaves showing just the faintest tinges of yellow.

While I was on the ramp chatting to a Pronto employee (who I assumed was Dene, but turned out to be from Chile), an airport consultant came out to inspect the area. He asked some questions of the other employees, including asking one to e-mail him a picture of the mouse they had trapped. He had already noted the absence of food and entertainment. I suspect that if I come back to Prince Albert next year it might have a Tim Horton's and perhaps an airport cat.

The flight back to Regina was a little bumpier, so I climbed a couple of thousand feet to get into smooth air, which still wasn't cold enough to require me to switch on the heaters. The customers thanked me and left quickly. That's what charter flying is for: efficiency.

My next port of call is Grande Cache, Alberta, but I'm not taking this airplane. There's an airplane there already, and a pilot I have to relieve. Grande Cache doesn't have airline service, so I need to get the airlines to Edmonton and then drive. There are no Westjet flights leaving Regina until tomorrow afternoon, and Air Canada has only executive fares left tonight (how do you justify charging $800+ for a ninety minute flight between cities in a CRJ?) but they have a seat sale for the morning, so I choose the latter. After I've booked the ticket the website pops up as usual asking if I would like to rent a car or book a hotel. I usually ignore all that stuff, but in this case I do have to rent a car. So I click through and book a car. From Hertz. This will become relevant in a later posting.

Instant Internet

I go places on short notice. When I'm at home, I get an e-mail or a phone call saying, "Go to such and such a place," and I put my computer in my already packed bag and I go. It takes me maybe 20 minutes to get to the airport. Minimum check in time for an international flight is 60 minutes, so if there's a flight leaving two hours from now it's reasonable to want to book it. And I may be sitting in an FBO, five minutes walk from the terminal when I get the instruction to leave the airplane here and fly to some other place. So I may want to book a flight that leaves within the hour. But it's tricky.

When you try to book a flight on Expedia within two hours of departure, as soon as you click on "book this flight" it puts up a splashpage saying that due to the amount of time you have spent making the selection, it is necessary to reselect the flight to confirm availability. It then cycles back to the search results page. This is an infinite loop, no matter how fast you select the flight.

So you go to an airline site, having figured out from Expedia who flies to where you're going, and written down the flight numbers. It always amuses me the date that some airlines assume you are travelling. Air Canada makes no assumptions, just gives you a calendar to click. United, I believe, assumes you're booking two weeks in advance. But convince it you want to fly today, now, and it may not even display the flight that you know is going out in two hours. So you have to just jump in the cab and go to the passenger terminal and ask them to sell you the ticket. And I suppose this is reasonable to them, to prevent problems with people booking flights they can't get to. But when you consider how much they will eventually charge me to get that last minute flight, you'd think they'd make it a little easier to do.

Once I have checked in and found my gate, I then pull out my cellphone and cancel all the appointments I have for the next week or so. "Hi, it's Aviatrix. Sorry I'm not going to be able to make lunch tomorrow. I have to go to Florida." This sort of thing never elicits much sympathy, so sometimes I just say, "I've been called in to work." I love my job because it teaches me to live each day to the fullest. For tomorrow I may be in Texas.

Today I discovered a new way that my last-minute lifestyle messes up systems designed for normal people: online hotel bookings. I thought that would be easy, but sitting on a bench next to an airport baggage carousel, waiting for my luggage to tumble down the chute, I went online to Holiday Inn (I'm going to earn free baseball tickets for staying there eight nights this month, and I couldn't care less about baseball, so some lucky Cockpit Conversation reader is going to win the tickets in a contest to be thought of later, but I digress). I suppose I should have booked the hotel from the departure lounge back in Canada, as soon as I knew where I was going, but I wasn't sure if I would be continuing on with the airplane the same night, and besides that terminal didn't have free wireless. So it was at destination that I went online to the Holiday Inn site, found the nearest hotel to the airport and attempted to book a room for the night. "Your check-in date has passed," it tells me. "Please select new dates." It wasn't even midnight yet. I called the hotel directly and yes they had a room, and yes I could check in. How weird is that? I wonder what the cut off time is for the online check-in.

I tried another hotel chain and got the same kind of error message. I wish they would at least have reasonable messages. "We're sorry, it's too late in the evening to make this booking online [because we have moronic software], please call the hotel directly," might work well. And it should be documented, so I know the limits of the system.

I'm also smart enough not to admit to people at customs that I have no clue where I'm going. "I'm just going to go find this airplane, you see, and then go where my customer tells me." Not so smart. I confidently tell them the name of a city and of a large chain hotel, and everyone is happy. As long as I do eventually get a hotel.

Special Services

Fairly frequently I'm asked to leave an airplane parked somewhere and to take an airline flight to somewhere else. I'm reimbursed for the airfare, and I can't be too picky about fares when I buy them for same day travel, but I do try to get the best fare for my employer or customer. I'll accept an awkward connection to get a significantly better price, and just check one bag to avoid incurring extra baggage fees. (Yes, in the US and on Air Canada you pay excess baggage fees for the second bag now).

This time "somewhere" was Birmingham, Alabama, a location my company chose using a method about as scientific as blindfolded dart hurling. I know this, because I accidentally picked it. See, we didn't want to park the airplane for a few weeks on the Florida coast, because of salt air corrosion and hurricanes. This had been decided for a while, but nothing further. So with the Florida work complete, I called Person A to find out what my next assignment was. He told me to hang on, he was going to call Person B. I arranged for a late checkout, and while I was packing up my stuff, Person B called me to ask where we were going to park the plane instead of Florida. I told him Person A was working on that. Person B wanted to know where was a good place. Knowing virtually nothing about the surrounding area, but having in my possession a copy of USA Today (or The USA Today, depending on whether or not you're a pedant or a Stephen Colbert fan), I said "Uh, I have no idea. How about Birmingham?" Birmingham had the advantages of being (a) on the map I was looking at, (b) about an hour away, (c) easy to pronounce, and (d) a place I'd heard of before. Nothing more. It turns up in John Grisham novels, and I believe it features prominently in the history of US civil rights, but whether it is a location where great advances were made in human dignity or horrible wrongs were committed, driving others to action, I could not say. I picked it because being big enough for me to have heard of, it was going to have a decent airport, with security and services, but, being in a low-income state, was not likely to be too expensive. Fifteen minutes later Person A called back and told me to go to Birmingham.

The flight was quick and easy. Alabama is flat and green, with extremely squiggly lakes. More familiar names turn up on the sectional chart: I think Montgomery is where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, and the name Selma stands out, too. (I tried to look up more about the history of Alabama and civil rights, before posting this, but I had to do a four hour internet course on icing avoidance). I'm VFR into Birmingham, approaching over hills that bristle with very tall antennae. Definitely a place to pay attention on a night or IMC approach. ATC vectors me around for a bit, so I have to add power and level off, rather than making the smooth continuous descent I had planned. Final approach takes me right over a building several stories high with at least two wings. I guess at first that it is a hospital, and send mental apologies for the engine noise, but then I see that it has a huge Christian cross up the front. It could still be a mission hospital, but it also has a big parking lot, so I change my mind and decide it is an enormous church. Land on a hill aligned with the runway was probably cheap, and there isn't much air traffic on a Sunday morning, so I guess it works out well for them.

I'd like to stay and see something of the city, but because of my late checkout it's well into afternoon now, so if I don't get the next flight out of here, I may not be able to make the connections I need to get home. I juggle all my paperwork and my laptop in the FBO to send all the required information to the people who need it, and open up a browser window to Expedia and ask it about flights. I quickly find one that strikes the right balance between ridiculous price and ridiculous connections, and try to book it. Expedia immediately comes back and tells me that because availability is always changing, I'll have to reselect the flight in order to book it. I didn't take very long to choose one, but whatever. I go back to the search page and reselect. Same message. I check my watch. I don't have time for this. I go directly to the airline site and try to book there. I find the same flights, but when I try to book them, I get a message that the site is too busy, try again later.

I leave the computer on a table in the FBO and go and make sure everything is in order in the airplane for the next pilot. I come back to the computer. United.com is still too busy to take my booking. Screw it: I don't have time for this. I pack up my computer and get a shuttle to the terminal. I know that they normally charge a $20 "special service" fee for the special service of selling me a ticket to get on their airplane. I ask them to waive it because the site won't talk to me. They are contractors so "don't have that authority." Instead I accept contact information for the customer service department that does have that authority.

United customer service won't refund my $20, but decide to send me a $50 credit towards my next flight. That works for me. I get on the plane and a few connections later, fly back to Canada.

On the cross-border leg the flight attendants hand out customs declaration cards on the plane. Canadian ones are a trifold form, one part English, one part French and the third part bilingual instructions for filling it out. I've filled these out so many times that I don't need the instructions or care what language, so it's my habit to just fill it out which ever way up it lands on the table. Today it's in French. At the airport in Canada the customs officer looks at it, says "Bonjour," and starts to ask me a question in correct but painfully memorized French. I quickly tell him English is fine; he looks relived and welcomes me home. "Welcome home," I always love that part. Do US Customs say that to Americans when they come home? To me American customs agents are always either scarily suspicious, or suspiciously informal. They don't strike the middle ground of formal friendliness that is more standard to the Canadian ones. But again, maybe it depends on what is embossed on your passport.

If this tale isn't funny enough, or you need more diversion today, try this air travel thread from the cartoon User Friendly.