too tired to post

But I'm doing it anyway!

To give you a quick insight into the life an airline pilot, here goes.

I had dinner with my buddy Andy tonight - he flies the Embraer 135/140/145 for American Eagle. He's based out of Chicago but lives in Des Moines, so he's a commuter. He commuted into work today on the 6:00 am flight and then went to work, flying to White Plains, NY and back in the late morning and early afternoon. He was scheduled to fly into Bloomington, Ill. tonight and overnight there (OVN), but because of scheduling and operations issues, Eagle "canceled" his overnight.

What does this mean? Well, Andy was on his own until his call in time at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. Too much time to just hang out at the airport, and not enough time to fly home and get back - especially with the impending ice storm.

So Andy had to pay $50 to rent a hotel room. That's tough on Andy, who has to report at 9:00 tomorrow to deadhead to Bloomington and fly the airplane back to O'Hare. From there, he's taking an airplane out to Rochester, then to LaGuarida, then to Syracuse, where he'll spend the overnight before trucking it all back to ORD on Wednesday morning.

The impending Midwest ice storm is really wreaking havoc with airline flight schedules, and I'm betting that Andy will be spending lots of time at ORD tomorrow waiting around for dispatch and ATC to give him a time to start go. It'll be a busy day...we'll see what happens.