As I mentioned below, I had an air ambulance trip starting yesterday morning.
Well, at the last minute, and I do mean last minute, they added another trip to the front of the day. They literally called 10 minutes before we were going to start prepping for the trip and added the new legs and told us to leave an hour earlier. That just wasn't going to happen. What with the converting the interior to med, getting the flight paramedics, nurses, equipment loaded etc. we took off right on time... for the original trip. Well, with the new legs, we started out an hour and a half late and just never were able to make it up.
The remoteness of the place we were picking the patient up, transportation delays, ground power problems, communications problems, it all just added to the time deficit. We ended up landing back in MO with half an hour of duty left and still needing to get the patient transported and settled.
The day originally had been tight on the time, and sneaking the extra trip in just blew that all to hell.
Anyway, we land in MO and dispatch calls and says we're staying there. Of course, they knew this before we took off on that last leg, but do you think they arranged a hotel, or a taxi or anything during the 3 hours we were flying? Nope. We finally cleared the airport at 10:30.
Add the hour in the morning to get up, get dressed, and get to the airport, and the hour after we left the airport to get to the hotel, checked in and to the room and we had ourselves an 18 hour day with 7 hours of flying. Doesn't sound like much but when you're stuffed in a Lear cockpit, it gets to wearing.
The guy whose brilliant idea it was to stuff an extra trip into this day is known for doing this and continuously busting duty and flight time regulations. And blaming the crew and medics when it goes pear shaped. Nice guy. A real diamond.
Right, back to the trip. After minimum rest we're back at the airport this morning. The only fuel available is self service. That slowed us down a bit more. We finally got back home at 10:30 this morning.
Quick clean the airplane, taxi it over to the hanger. Jump out, jump in a Baron and fly up to Wichita to get one of our other Lears out of the factory and down to home.
Paper work, paper work...
I got home just before 4 p.m.
My Saturday lasted 34 hours.
If I could just get the fun days to last that long.
Overnighting in MO turned out to be a blessing of a sort. If we'd come home last night, they would have flown us up to ICT then to bring the other Lear back. That would have been fun... er.
On a completely unrelated note, I've had this Friday's mind game song running through my head all weekend. It's driving me nuts. There may be a flaw in my master plan to rule the world. Hmmmm.
1 comment:
The guy with the brilliant ideas, including 34-hour days, sounds like a jewel. The company will wind up paying far more than what he's supposedly saving in the short run.
Hopefully you'll get some rest.
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