Crew Tracking (EDITED)

Location:  Smelly Cat Coffeehouse, NoDa District, Charlotte, NC.

My love-hate relationship with crew tracking continues.  After my favor to them of doing an overnight and being at the airport during my time off because they were understaffed due to a snowstorm, crew tracking has returned the favor by giving me a 4:30AM show time for a flight, followed by working the 7PM-Midnight tonight.  Yes, that's a 20.5 hour day.  On a related note, I've become an expert at sleeping in my car in the employee lot.  (EDIT:  my 20.5 hour day turned into a 24 hour work day.  I ended up working a Charlotte -> Birmingham -> Charlotte -> Louisville trip that was delayed over 4 hours, so I got to the hotel after 3AM.)

The flight this morning was great.  The moon was full and bright, and the flight was empty.  I was able to stare out the window and look at the towns below go by this morning, and have breakfast at 20,000 feet.

I've been doing a lot of mainline deadheads lately, on different airlines.  I love these.  I fly as a passenger, stay in a hotel, and work one flight back.  Last week, during the snow storm, I flew an empty flight, zero passengers, to Austin, from Raleigh-Durham.  Shutting all the window shades, turning out all the cabin lights, and chilling on an empty plane is very relaxing when it's dark and there are no passengers.  Even better, they closed CLT for two days, and I was stuck in the hotel in sunny south Texas, for two days, while a snow storm was ravaging the east coast.

Seems like I had more to post, but nothing exciting has happened since the last post.  More of the same I guess.