Back to Work

It’s back to work for me.  Today will be my third visit to the small city of Narita, Japan, outside of Tokyo.  Hopefully this time I have something more interesting to write about when I get back than the fantastic, amazing, wondrous automatic-beer-dispensing machine in our hotel.

I worked yesterday. I was on stand-by, which means I sit in the airport and wait until someone misconnects or doesn’t show up. 

The hardest part about stand-by is the packing.  Stand-by trips can be up to four days long and in that time span the weather can range from Chicago Blizzard to L.A. heat- mostly because they’ll send me from Chicago to L.A. and usually back again.  

The contents of my bag last night (excluding the necessary socks and underwear) were: Gym shorts, bathing suit, jeans, shorts, flip-flops, wool socks, t-shirts, and sweaters.

I was a boy scout.  Always be prepared.

Yesterday, I showed up at the airport and was assigned a short trip to Hartford.  The original crew misconnected so the airline scrambled to replace everyone so the flight could get out on time.

Unfortunately, one of the replacement reserves assigned to our flight didn’t get the message, which means we had to delay boarding while they pulled a poor reserve off of his first flight to Frankfurt and assigned him the Hartford turn.  We boarded a plane full of grumpy passengers 45 minutes late.

Worst of all for Matt, the reserve pulled off the Frankfurt flight, the Customer Service Reps were making announcements about the delayed flight, blaming it on a tardy crew member- which was perfectly accurate- then they see Matt show up 40 minutes after they’re supposed to be on the plane and a few of them make somewhat snide comments to him. 

Not nice and certainly not fair to him.

Naturally this was all before the pilots realized that the plane had pressurization problems. 

According to the mechanics, the plane’s pressurization system was working fine but according to the cockpit monitoring system there was a major problem.

Your average pilot enjoys breathing and these two were no different.  They insisted that they fix the system, despite the mechanics request to defer the problem until the plane came back.

This thanksgiving weekend, I’m grateful for pilot’s discretion.  

Our already grumpy passengers weren’t so grateful. 

The pilots were being very kind, I thought, and giving frequent updates about the nature of the problem and the different things they were doing to correct it.  They eventually decided that it really was a computer problem and they were going to have to replace that computer.  An hour later they had no estimate about how long that would take- only that it would be a while.  

One first class passenger flagged me down as I was walking by.

“What’s the problem?” she asked.

“I know as much as you do ma’am.  There’s a computer problem.  Something about the pressurization system.”

“I know that,” she said huffily.  “But they also said the system is working.  It’s just the computer that’s broken.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  

“Well then why don’t we go?”

I fought the urge to say, “because computer is broken,” which would have been the most obvious answer but also the answer most likely to tick her off.  Instead I said, “If we develop problems at 30,000 feet, then we wouldn’t know it was happening.”

“Well is that likely?” she asked in a way that made me feel as if I had said something rude.

“No, ma’am.  I’d like to go just as much as you” I lied.  If we don’t know that we lost cabin pressure at 30,000 feet then we all die of hypoxia, giggling like babies while our brains are slowly depleted of oxygen. “But it’s up to the pilots.”

“Fix it soon,” she said.

I’m sure she meant to say please.

Another half an hour passed.  The mechanics were going to need to take the front of the airplane off and completely rebuild the system.  So the pilots decided to refuse the plane for a working version a few gates down. 

I got a call on the jet-bridge as the passengers were deplaning.

“Hello is this Flight Attendant Bingaman?”

“Yup.”

“The replacement plane is actually the aircraft that the original crew is coming in on.  You and the rest of the crew are released for the day.”

Awesome.  Let that crew deal with these people. 

I got to go home which I was glad for but Matt wasn’t thrilled to be pulled of his first Frankfurt for a cancelled flight and four hours of duty pay (at $1.50/hr).  I guess that’s just the way the airplane crumbles.