Scheduling had no clue.....

After my deadhead home cancelled I got to work on getting the crew a hotel. My crew was comprised of two senior flight attendants who have only flown day trips for the last several years and a senior Captain that has day trips as his line this month. Only one flight attendant brought clothes. The other had a laptop. The Captain had just his flight kit.

Being so senior and doing day trips, they don't deal with irregular operations often. Me being junior, I am slung all over the place. I quickly got to work on getting hotel rooms by calling scheduling to get hotel vouchers.

My airline schedules hotel rooms for scheduled flights and crews. We weren't scheduled to have a hotel room so we needed a voucher to give to the hotel in order for them to get paid and for us to get a room.

In the outstation we were in, we use a Marriott. Nice hotel.

After about 35 minutes of working the phone I got through to scheduling and secured the hotel rooms. Just our luck the hotel van was waiting upstairs!

Scheduling had no idea what to do with our crew. I checked my schedule before we left the airport and an hour after we arrived at the hotel. Nothing.

Being winter, this city was snowed in. The only food was the overpriced hotel restaurant or a Denny's next door. We all chose Denny's. Because they know we are a captive audience, they have no reason to offer fast service....and didn't. It was food.

When I got back to my room scheduling had gotten around to us. We were now working a flight back the next day at 11:25AM. The rest of the crew would be getting junior man pay as they had the day off. I was on day one of six....regular reserve pay.

The next morning my phone rang at 7:02 AM. I saw the caller ID..."Unknown"....it was scheduling. I am not obligated to answer my phone while on a trip. They burned me once badly when I answered the phone on an overnight. Never again. They left a voice mail and then called 4 more times over the next 4 minutes. I got an email of the voice mail (I love Google Voice! Free Voice Mail to Email transcription). The scheduler was wondering why I wasn't signed in for airport standby in base. Really? She had no idea where I was. On the 6th phone call I answered the phone, "Good morning, I'm not signed in for airport standby BECAUSE I'M ON AN OVERNIGHT. I'm going back to sleep, DO NOT CALL ME AGAIN." I then hung up the phone. One might question why I just didn't turn off my phone/ringer, well my wife might need to contact me so that's not an option.

Due to all of the cancellations, there were over 230 passengers vying for 70 seats. Needless to say we were full. I was surprised we didn't have a jumpseater, although with 70 passengers, 2400 pounds of cargo and 14400 pounds of fuel there was barely enough room for a jumpseater.

The flight back was fine. The Captain I flew with does IOE and knows a lot about flying in general and the plane I fly. He hipped me to a new technique on landing. It was a bit different how I normally fly, but worked out really nicely. Might work it into my norm.  I somehow was released from duty at 1:35PM even though there were a slew of cancellations and delays.

Today I was assigned at 6AM airport standby. I got a good hour of sleep in. Now hanging out in the crew room. The field is covered by freezing fog and 1/8 mile vis. Flights are diverting and no one is taking off. Who knows what's going to happen to me.