All in one day?

Yesterday was that day. The day where you wonder why you even got out of bed in the beginning. The day where it seems everything possible was conspiring against you to make sure you get absolutely nothing accomplished. Yesterday was it.

We had a late show time yesterday. We didn't even have to be on the van to the airport until 1745 (5:45PM for all those you can't subtract twelve hours...) and so we spent a long boring day at the hotel in Akron, Ohio. We finally leave for the airport but of course, it has been dumping out snow all day and the roads were horrible. For a 10 minute drive to the airport, it took almost 30 minutes. We make it to the airport get through security and start to head over to the gate and that's when we see what looks like the entire Akron, OH police department standing at our gate. Not only that, but there are also two people that had on CPS (child protective services badges). We go talk to the gate agent and figure out what's going on.

Apparently on the inbound flight from Chicago, which had just landed and would be at the gate in about 2 minutes, there was a 15 year-old runaway from Wisconsin and here 3 week old baby. The story was that her parents had refused to let her move in with her boyfriend (I wonder why) and so her boyfriend bought her a ticket to Ohio and so here she was. The boyfriend though had already been arrested. Why you ask? Talking to one of the deputies later that night and he listed off a few charges. The main one being statutory rape. Yes, the boyfriend was 29. Also, he was charged with child endangerment, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and a couple other charges I was unfamiliar with.

The plane arrived at the gate and the police swarm it like there was a terrorist on board. They go on the plane, get the baby and the girl and take them off. The deputy told us later again that the girl was take off to juvenile detention and the baby off to a foster placement. The parents had refused to come to Ohio to pick up the girl or the baby and so the girl will stay in detention for at least 10 days before getting transferred back to WI, and the baby may not be released to the girl again. A sad situation by a truly confused teenage girl.

Well, we finally get on the plane, get it boarded up and start to get pushed back. If you remember though the dumping of snow that was happening, you can imagine what happened next. The tug that was pushing us back out of the gate got stuck in the snow. No matter what the driver did, he was not moving our airplane anywhere. So the ground crew got a 'brilliant' idea to push the tug with a snow plow. It was like watching a donkey on roller skates. It just was not working. So we wait for the city to come over with a bigger tug and one hour later we are finally pushed back all the way.

We head out to the de-ice pad and then it happens. The number 1 engine spikes in temperature and shuts down. We trouble shoot and for the life of us cannot get it started. 90 minutes later we are pulling back into the gate the passengers are pissed, but luckily they are inside taking it out on the gate agents while we are waiting for contract maintenance on a Sunday night at 9pm. He finally shows up and gets to work. 2.5 hours later he comes on the plane and literally says "Umm, yep. This plane is broke." Well thank you very much. I am pretty sure that is why you were called in the first place. We call dispatch and they are going to bring in mechanics and parts from Chicago to fix it, but they graciously send us off to the hotel at 2330. What's the best part though? We have to be at the airport at 0545 in the morning so we can ferry the airplane back to Chicago. We get up and leave for the airport after 4 hours of sleep and as we all guessed, "the plane is broke."

So here we are sitting in the airplane, waiting for the mechanics to give us the go ahead to ferry a broken airplane to Chicago. I am living the dream...one nightmare at a time!