And Now I Am Stuck In Palm Springs

Between the time that I arrived at the airport at 2:30 and now, the weather turned. It has been seriously windy and raining a bit and as my experience a few years ago showed, landing at PSP is sketchy when windy. I was notified that my flight was delayed 45 minutes at the time I arrived (no reason given), but since then the news has gotten worse.

At first the two flights were circling (the Vancouver flight and the Calgary flight), but then they were diverted to Phoenix. Now the Vancouver flight is leaving Phoenix and the Calgary flight will leave Phoenix in a half hour. There still is no guarantee that either will be able to land here, but if they do, I won’t be home in Calgary until well after midnight.

More bulletins as events warrant.

Updated 

The Vancouver flight landed. That’s great news, since it implies my flight will be able to as well. I think the wind has calmed down. I just was walking around outside.

Updated 

They just announced that the plane is airborne from Phoenix and will arrive just after 9:00. 9:30 boarding time. So will probably get to Calgary around 2:00 am. Sigh. At least the guy on the PA sounded pretty confident that the flight would happen.

Updated 

The Vancouver flight was cancelled due to overtime rules for the pilots. That doesn’t bode well.

Updated 

I am on the plane. More details will be posted later. But I am not calling it until we are in the air.

Final Update

As promised, here are a few details about how all this ended. In short, I did get on the plane, and we did fly to Calgary, but it was a near thing. Throughout the evening, I was convinced that as long as the plane got wheels-down in Palm Springs, that I would get home. There were two planes, with very similar jobs, and when the Vancouver plane landed, I thought for sure that I was good to go. But then the Vancouver flight got cancelled: by the time the passengers would get aboard and the plane pushed back, there wouldn’t be time to fly to Vancouver and still obey the regulations on pilot flying time on a shift.

Given that the Calgary plane was a half hour behind the Vancouver one, I thought it likely that our flight would be cancelled too. But then they fuelled the plane and loaded the luggage. Then they asked us to board… and in a polite way asked that we be quick about it. Turned out that was important: the captain came on the microphone when everyone was aboard and thanked us. If it had taken a long time, then the calculations would have meant that the Calgary flight would violate the same regulations as the Vancouver flight. So it was that close.

So that’s how we got home, four hours late. We landed just about 2:00 am, and by the time we got through customs and I picked up my luggage and drove home, it was 3:00 before I hit the hay. Tammy was up when I got home: she’d set an alarm so she could get up and greet me. <3