Oh, Lord, Stuck In Anchorage, Again...
02 October 2006: There is a very good reason that the Aleutian Islands have a reputation as a nasty, difficult place. In three words: the weather sucks.
Alaska Air no longer flies out to Dutch Harbor in their large, fast 737's. Instead, a small partner named PenAir flies smaller, prop commuters out on a three-hour trip, a three-hour trip.
The fog never lifted in Dutch Harbor. We who watched the internet saw a forecast of gusts to 60-knots, but the truth was the fog never lifted. Apparently, those regulatory tud-balls at the FAA require that pilots be able to see the ground before they can touch it. What, and deny the rescue swimmers an opportunity to make the front page?!
I was scheduled to take the third, and final, flight of the day out of Anchorage. But PenAir already had two planes gone, and neither could land in Dutch. The first circled for a while, waiting for a sucker-hole in the ground-level cloud cover. When it reached bingo fuel, they climbed back to cruising and diverted 75 minutes back the way they came, landing at King Salmon. The second flight, launched as the first was turning around, headed straight for King Salmon, to wait and fuel.
From what we gathered from the customer service folks at the counter, nobody was going anywhere close to Dutch. Our 2:00pm departure time came and went, and we hung on, waiting for the top of each hour for the update from their operations manager.
At 5:00pm, they informed us we were not leaving this day. The good news (?) was that they were adding two extra flights to tomorrow's schedule, to handle the folks who tried but failed to get to Dutch Harbor.
But wait, they cancelled three flights... where did that leave me? Good question, call Alaska in a few hours because the extra flights won't show up in the computer for a while. My only consolation was that I didn't have to sit in a loud, prop-driven can for 6 or more hours so that I could have two hours standing on the tarmac at King Salmon.
Retreat to hotel, after waiting for my checked bags to get pulled off the plane we had watched sitting on the ramp outside the window for the past 4 hours...
Later that night, the very nice woman at Alaska promises me, no doubt, I can fly to Dutch Harbor on Thursday afternoon...
The weather in the Aleutians sucks.
I get up at oh-my-god-four o'clock on Tuesday, get to the PenAir counter third in line when they open at 5am, and get on stand-by. The 0600 flight is full, but I get a boarding pass for the 0930. A very short nap, an expensive airport breakfast, and a long flight in a noisy, prop-driven tin can, with a refuelling stop in King Salmon (just in case). We emerge from the overcast, into the rain, but we can see the ground.
I am in Dutch Harbor, and the weather sucks.
KML
Alaska Air no longer flies out to Dutch Harbor in their large, fast 737's. Instead, a small partner named PenAir flies smaller, prop commuters out on a three-hour trip, a three-hour trip.
The fog never lifted in Dutch Harbor. We who watched the internet saw a forecast of gusts to 60-knots, but the truth was the fog never lifted. Apparently, those regulatory tud-balls at the FAA require that pilots be able to see the ground before they can touch it. What, and deny the rescue swimmers an opportunity to make the front page?!
I was scheduled to take the third, and final, flight of the day out of Anchorage. But PenAir already had two planes gone, and neither could land in Dutch. The first circled for a while, waiting for a sucker-hole in the ground-level cloud cover. When it reached bingo fuel, they climbed back to cruising and diverted 75 minutes back the way they came, landing at King Salmon. The second flight, launched as the first was turning around, headed straight for King Salmon, to wait and fuel.
From what we gathered from the customer service folks at the counter, nobody was going anywhere close to Dutch. Our 2:00pm departure time came and went, and we hung on, waiting for the top of each hour for the update from their operations manager.
At 5:00pm, they informed us we were not leaving this day. The good news (?) was that they were adding two extra flights to tomorrow's schedule, to handle the folks who tried but failed to get to Dutch Harbor.
But wait, they cancelled three flights... where did that leave me? Good question, call Alaska in a few hours because the extra flights won't show up in the computer for a while. My only consolation was that I didn't have to sit in a loud, prop-driven can for 6 or more hours so that I could have two hours standing on the tarmac at King Salmon.
Retreat to hotel, after waiting for my checked bags to get pulled off the plane we had watched sitting on the ramp outside the window for the past 4 hours...
Later that night, the very nice woman at Alaska promises me, no doubt, I can fly to Dutch Harbor on Thursday afternoon...
The weather in the Aleutians sucks.
I get up at oh-my-god-four o'clock on Tuesday, get to the PenAir counter third in line when they open at 5am, and get on stand-by. The 0600 flight is full, but I get a boarding pass for the 0930. A very short nap, an expensive airport breakfast, and a long flight in a noisy, prop-driven tin can, with a refuelling stop in King Salmon (just in case). We emerge from the overcast, into the rain, but we can see the ground.
I am in Dutch Harbor, and the weather sucks.
KML
posted by Ken at 9:19 PM
1 Comments:
ken i know you don't want to hear it but the weather here in pdx is still nice and 75 with fall colors!
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