Its pitch black dark, I can hear my alarm clock going off and while my hands try to find it and shut it off I try get my mind straigth, where am I? Bucharest, no the bed is smaller, Prague? no the room is to dark…
While I fumble aorund with my alarm I almost knock over a bed lamp and my coffee mug , ok thats a give away, I´m at home!
I finally manage to kill my alarm and switch on the lights, ok ist just noon my mind wakes up as well and I remember I`m off for the day…
A few month ago I wouldn`t have believed that this could acutally happen to me but apparently switching from hotel to hotel has had some impact.
The last few weeks or month have been pretty tough, with the winter kicking in at full force we had to fight delays, basicly every where and for every thing: loading, departure, arrival, or off loading…
At least the beginning of 2011 gave us all a little break, with temperatures rising a little and snow melting away we had to spent less times waiting and freezing, the delays dropped to allmost 0 and the operation smoothed out somewhat.
But still from time to time the winter comes back …
last week suddenly rain turned into snow again, so again we ended up beeing delayed because the de-icing teams where not really prepared for that sudden weather change. In the end we where able leave the ramp with just a small delay, However as we were taxing out to the runway we could hear one of our company airplanes returning to the ramp and when we where not handed over to tower, but stuck in queue of airplanes we started to realise something was going wrong…
A few minutes later we were informed that the airport is now closed for snow removal at least for the next 45min… That completely busted our holdover time (the time during which the deicing fluid on the airplane gives sufficent protection) and we ended up taxing back to the ramp for another deicing treatment and waiting for the airport to reopen its runways…
In the end we left with about 1.5h delays, but we where quite happy to be on our way. Approaching Basel the weather broadcast sounded promising with good visibilty and high clouds and no snow at all, so we where expecting a rather easy approach and then off to the hotel…
Again this didn`t seem to be our day instead of high clouds and no snow we ended up the middle of strong snow showers, very limited visibitlity and low clouds… Just above the minimuns we were able to pick up the runway and lights and continued for a save landing.
While shutting down the airplane we saw that the hole airport had gone back to winter wonderland and again they closed an airport for snow removal, but as it was off to the hotel for us we we`re lucky once that day…
And the waiting and delays where left for the daylight guys
