That was an amazing and occasionally heartbreaking video to watch. I don’t regret the time spent. Watching those folks figuringing it out as they went was eye opening, particularly where they mention just having gone through a simulated disaster, training for a major event two weeks previous, yet still being confused at ground level.
I really felt bad for some of those folks considering the junk they were breathing. When the word went out over the radio to put on their hazmat respirators, the guy listening just said, “Yeah, if I had one.”
I think it was AI compiled but all the clips presented quite a picture of what was going on. And I was thinking the same thing as Pork_Rind. It must have been a real mess breathing all those chemicals.
Some questions for the airline pilots among us. (I happen to know that LSLGuy is probably incommunicado for the next few days.)
My wife and I are about to leave for a long-planned and anxiously awaited trip to Hawaii. Our first flight from BOS to ATL is scheduled for 5:35 am on Tuesday, and they’re predicting 12-15 inches of snow to fall on Monday, tailing off to 0.10 inch per hour at 7 pm and ending by 9 pm.
What with plowing the runways (which I assume Boston knows how to handle) and previous flight being delayed or canceled, what do you think our chances are of leaving on time, eight and a half hours later? How much of a delay should we expect? Any other thoughts? (We’ll be at an airport hotel the night before to avoid being unable to reach the airport.)
TBH if it were up to me I would be ordering as much high-altitude training in contrail-favorable conditions over places like South Carolina as I could get away with. And not jist circles. Golden Ratio spirals, figure-8/infinity symbols, alphas, psis. Really make the nets blow up!
WAG you should be fine if the forecast is correct, although you will almost certainly have to de-ice. 7-8 hours is plenty of time to get BOS ship-shape.
You’ll certainly have a 20-30 minute delay for airplane deice. That will be after departure & before takeoff. So you may well depart the gate on time but still arrive late.
BUT …
To depart at all you need a jet, pilots, FAs, and enough of every kind of ground staff from fuel to catering to baggage handlers to ticket counter to gate agent to TSA.
If the airplane never got there last night: problems. If the crew supposed to work your flight got in 3 hours late and need to sleep in 3 hours to compensate: problems. If they never arrived at all and are in e.g. NYC: problems. You might have what was supposed to your jet diverted in NYC, your pilots diverted in PHL, and your FAs in Atlanta after their fllight up to BOS was cancelled. Big problems.
If air crew or ground staff need to drive to work: problems. Depending on how good Boston’s road dept handles a dump like this. How does Boston’s transit MTA, busses, etc., do in a dump?
Of course Delta will be scrambling to repair the problems that arise overnight. Swap planes, crews, etc. But some flights will end up cancelled or deeply multi-hour delayed for lack of resources.
As a general matter hub to hub flights have extra priority to not be disrupted. So that at much is in your favor. After that it’s a dice roll. Some flights will go as planned. Some will go on-time or nearly so but with lots of replanning / ad libbing you’ll never notice. Others will be a shambles.
I was supposed to fly to Las Vegas from BOS on Monday morning to teach an all day class on Tuesday. I’m now heading out tomorrow (Sunday) morning instead to make sure I can get out.
Maybe I’ll finally visit the Hoover Dam with my extra day.
The E-11A is an airborne communication/network hub to coordinate and connect operational comm in a battlefield setting, so it would be expected to orbit over its operating area. Hence, the circular track.
It is typical that planes, pilots, and FAs are scheduled separately. So when one plane arrives into a hub, that plane will depart again w different pilots & FAs while the pilots who arrived will depart again on a different plane with different FAs, and the inbound FAs will depart on yet another plane w yet another set of pilots.
Which means that one screwed up inbound spoils 3 outbounds. And any given outbound requires 3 successful inbounds for it to also succeed outbound.
That 1 to 3 fan-out isn’t universal; sometimes planes & crews transit a hub as an unbroken threesome. But it’s kinda rare.
So as it happened, Delta canceled our Tuesday morning flight and rebooked us on a Wednesday flight that leaves and arrives about 7 hours later in the day, which is a bit of a pain. We had to rearrange our activities in Hawaii to make up for the lost day, but now we don’t need the Boston airport hotel in which we were going to sit out the storm, and one night of the Honolulu hotel, so, we’re saving some money.
