A Bad Day to Fly

Yesterday started the beginning of another 4 day trip for me. I already knew it was going to be a long day, with my first flight starting at 1030am and not being finished until almost midnight. We have five flights to do, and let me tell you, nothing went right. The biggest problem was all our flights were around the east coast yesterday. There is usually nothing wrong with that, except if you have not seen the weather from yesterday, here is a peak of what we had to deal with:



I have been through some bad turbulence, but I am pretty sure that my stomach is still somewhere hanging over Rhode Island. On our worst flight from Washington, DC to Providence, RI, we had a person on board who was in a therapy program to get over his fear of flying. Part of his program was to meet the crew and be basically reassured that everything was safe. Then we hit an embedded thunderstorm and I am pretty sure there is not enough therapy in the world to get him back on a plane. He was supposed to be coming back to Washington, DC with us, but he wouldn't get back on the plane.

Of course with weather comes delays. We sat on the taxiways at every airport we went to yesterday. The shortest delay was 30 mins. The longest one, over 90 minutes. Fun, Fun. Then came the problem that I have written about before. The ATC system went down again. Thankfully, they got the problem back under control fairly quickly, so our delay was only about 20 minutes that time due to ATC, but then with the weather delay, we were over a hour late there. The weather nobody can control, but to have unnecessary ATC delays AGAIN.

The weather is supposed to be pretty bad today. We are in Norfolk right now, and end up in Charlotte tonight after another 4 flights. Hopefully, the turbulence calms down a little today. I don't want to scare more people away from flying.