Airline pilot gets flight cancelled for swearing up a storm

Some folks had to spend a little more time in Las Vegas after their flight was cancelled due to one of the pilots who couldn't control his f-bombs.

(CNN) -- Northwest Airlines canceled a flight with 180 passengers aboard after the pilot began cursing at passengers while the plane was being prepared for takeoff in Las Vegas on Friday, airline officials and witnesses said.

The cancellation disrupted Easter travel plans for many of the passengers.

From the moment the captain stepped aboard Flight 1190 to Detroit, passengers reported hearing him use "animated" language while talking on his cell phone, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor told CNN.

"He was having a fit, swearing up a storm," a passenger on the flight said. "He was saying 'F this' and 'F that.'"

When confronted about it by passengers, the pilot became "obscene" and began cursing at the customers, she said. "He made a big disturbance."

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and the local FAA flight standards office were notified, Gregor said. Police arrived on the scene, pulled the pilot aside and interviewed him.

He was not administered a field sobriety test. CNN was unable to immediately contact the police officers involved.

The FAA officials called Northwest Airlines headquarters. The airline decided to remove the pilot from the aircraft and fly him to Detroit for further questioning.

Northwest Airlines then canceled the flight, apologized for the delay and offered hotel accommodations and penalty-free re-booking on the next available flight out of Las Vegas, a spokesman for the airline said.

The airline said "a review of the matter" was being conducted and the decision to cancel the flight was made "due to reports of inappropriate language by a crew member."

Mike Fergus, an FAA spokesman, said the FAA's flight standards investigation unit was looking into the incident. According to Fergus, the FAA has the authority to send a "letter of admonition" to the pilot or, in the most extreme cases, revoke a pilot's FAA certificate, which would ground the pilot.

"I had to call and cancel two family dinners and we're stuck here an extra night," a passenger said. "We've been at the airport for six hours waiting -- it's chaos. It's Easter weekend...we want to be home."

Article from CNN here.

New Jet arrives into Calgary

Our newest jet was picked up in Wichita KS last week and a couple of our pilots flew it back from the Cessna factory. I managed to catch the arrival with my camera as I went to the airport to check it out.

The jet in question is a Cessna Citation XLS, registered as C-FWXL and is Serial number 560-0691. This is the latest version of the jet I fly. I look forward to getting to fly this aircraft, it has a slightly different interior layout than our others, but is otherwise the same.




My roommate Mike is actually flying it right now, and got to fly it's maiden revenue flight to Victoria.

Business is booming for us and so new airplanes are arriving quite frequently, so many that we have long since run out of room in our hangars. The good thing is planes are busy and so not usually all at home base at the same time, but every once and a while it does occur and the hangar is full of planes and with a few parked outside on our ramp as well.

Our next jet deliveries from the Cessna factory are slotted for December 2007 and March 2008. That's the quickest we can get them, as these planes are already bought and paid for!

No more Guadeloupe, Euros order cancelled

Dang. The schedule out east has totally exploded so the plane comes back from Guadeloupe almost immediately and does a bunch of eastern flights before going back to pick up the folks. As a result of all this extra flying it means that proper eastern pilots are able to take over and do the majority of these flights and so my services will not be needed much out there.

Tomorrow we simply head off to Montreal and Toronto as previous planned. Then Wednesday we do a trip down to Vero Beach Florida and back to Toronto. That's where it all ends now, as we'll fly back home commercially on Thursday back to Calgary and leave the plane in Toronto for eastern crews to fly.

Luckily I was able to cancel my order for Euros. I would have loved to have spent the next 13 days trying to communicate in French in Montreal and Guadeloupe, but no such luck. My 13 day trip has been reduced to barely 3!

24 - the drinking game - tick tock, tick tock...

I'm a big fan of the show 24, don't get me wrong. However, there are a couple of things that do drive me crazy and they appear in every episode of 24 I've EVER seen! So, why not make a great drinking game out of it. You're guaranteed to be plowed by the time the "real time hour" is done!

It's very simple too, there are only 2 phrases you need to pay attention for! Are you ready.. have you guessed it.. I'm sure you've all heard these gems:

"...within the hour." - are you kidding me!? Every single episode something is always happening within the damn hour! Haha, ok, so.. DRINK!

and...

"...my name is Jack Bauer..." - if Jack gave out his business card to everyone that he introduced himself to in this show, he'd make Staples a lot of money! Where would he keep the cards though? Perhaps in his shoulder bag which can only be full of spare batteries for his PDA! Again.. DRINK!

So, by the hours end I expect to hear about a lot of drunken debauchery, as I guarantee you these phrases are uttered at least once in between each commercial break!

Poker Update

Well I haven't really been playing much poker over the past few months. My online account has more or less been left stationary. Prior to taking my latest break I recall I streak where I slowly hemorrhaged about $100. In the grand scheme of things, that is not too much when compared to my bankroll but it irked me nonetheless.

I've decided to go back to a similar system that I had last year, which was just systematically winning a set amount per day based on pure heads up tourneys. This worked well for me when I was not working much, and it added nearly $500 to my poker account.

I'm taking part in a slight variation of this now, and have already boosted back up by $130. My simple plan is just grinding it out. I play a $5.00 heads up tourney until I have won outright at am up at least that much (the 5 bucks). Once I'm at that point I switch to a $10.00 heads up game and if I win it, that session is over, if I lose it, it's back to the $5.00 game until I'm back up another $5 and can then attack the $10 game. Essentially this is repeated until I'm up approximately $15 for the session. Average session time so far has been 12-15 mins. So not too bad for just grinding it out. My wins heavily outweigh my loses and I seem to be able to really read these cheap games, as most people are complete idiots willing to throw $5 away. Another rule I have is to not play the same person more than once, no matter how easy of a beat they were, or how shitty/lucky of a player they were to beat me.

So the whole process is just about control, and the grind will, and has, paid off. I'm also not limiting myself to one session per day, but rather as many as I feel comfortable with. But not back to back, So I'll plan to play 2 per day, upwards of 4 if I feel I'm capable.

If I can grind this out for a couple of months, I might be able to justify adding some more performance parts to my car this summer during my holidays. I'd drive back to Vancouver to have the work done by Rocket Rally (not just all rally but other performance parts too)out in Squamish. These guys know what they're doing, as they are the old disbanded Canadian Subaru Rally Championship Team after Subaru decided that they no longer needed to compete because they kept winning everything :)

just call me Mr. Caribbean

Well it looks like I'm headed back down to the Caribbean for the 3rd time this year! The first was Antigua, then Puerto Rico and now I'm off to Guadeloupe. This Caribbean island is the next one down the chain after Antigua by about 100kms. So it will qualify as the furthest I've flown in the jet.

The island is also a region of France and therefore it's a French speaking island and also, it uses the Euro as it's currency! A bit of a pain in the ass, I will take a few Euros with me, but will rely on some American currency and my trusty Starbucks Visa to handle the majority of purchasing.

The trip starts with me spending 4 nights in Montreal beginning Tuesday. From there we will head down through Florida for fuel and then straight out the chain of islands overflying the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos, St. Marteen and Antigua finally arriving at Guadeloupe after about 6hrs of flying from Montreal. We will get to spend 8 days and 7 nights at what I'm hoping to be a very nice hotel/resort on the beach somewhere to enjoy another all expenses paid vacation. A nice little perk that I enjoy very much about the job. However, it's not all these peachy trips, so I'm glad when they happen but I still do put up with a lot of equally less enjoyable layovers too.

So hopefully this trip remains the same and I'll be sure to have my bags with me, as I won't be flying commercially to the meet the plane anywhere! I will however, be taking a commercial flight back from Montreal though, but at least when I arrive back in Calgary I have more clothes and accessories should the worst happen AGAIN, and they lose my bags.

and snow it did

yup, she snowed alright. Began around 8am today and hasn't really let up yet, the roads are ok as the ground was warm enough to repel most of the falling snow and most parking lots are just slush. The grassy areas are covered in a couple of inches of wet mess.

In a couple of days the temps should rise again and this will all be gone. I just can't stand all the freaking gravel and salt that gets laid down, the roads were finally starting to clear of all the windshield killing pea gravel and now it's back to being full of it. I want the snow to end!!! I need a new windshield, but don't want to have one installed until after the main snow season ends as I'm sure to pick up some chips throughout the year, I'd just prefer it not be within the first few days of having a brand new windshield installed!

Crazy weather in Calgary

I'm driving down to head out for a walk down by some of the river paths here in Calgary because it is such a nice day. It was sunny, 9 degrees, light winds, just a great day for a walk down by the river. Many other people had the same idea as me too, it was almost summer like out there today.

However, as I drove I hear on the radio the weather forecast for the next couple of days, a winter weather warning?! Yup, an advisory that 15 cms was expected to fall overnight and into tomorrow morning. I did a doubletake as I looked outside at the great weather. This unfortunately has not been an unusual occurance. It seems like this has been happening nonstop over the past couple of weeks. We'll have a great day like today, and then get a bunch of snow, it will then all be gone within 12 hours and we'll be back into the sunshine summer weather again.

Here's the current weather and the storm watch warning on top:

And here's the forecast showing some snow, and then boom, right back into summer weather!

6 am call out

Got called out at 6am this week on Wednesday when another pilot's wife went into labour and therefore couldn't do his flight that day.

So it was an early morning off to Edmonton, to hang out there for most of the day, then back to Calgary and pickup some more folks and head down to Palm Springs for the night. Only got to spend 12hrs there and it was back up to Calgary the next morning.

We've been having really crazy weather here in Calgary. It goes from being a nice sunny and warm 13-15 degrees, and then it's a blizzard outside the next morning, and then the cycle repeats. Unfortunately it was during the blizzard cycle that I drove to work at 7am. Took about 3 times as long to get there, and then we had to deal with snow and ice and all that crap with the plane too. We required anti-icing and then as we went to go we got in a HUGE lineup of airplanes that took 20 mins to taxi for takeoff. Then we had a problem on our takeoff roll, just a flap setting that jumped out of place and sounded an alarm, so we aborted the takeoff (only going about 50km/hr) and had to taxi back and get in line again for takeoff. In the end, after all the delays, the clients could have been in Edmonton in the same amount of time had they just driven!

This weekend looks nice, 16 degrees and sunny so I'm looking forward to it!

Cochrane Rally

It was a pretty chilly morning with a light misting of snow and freezing drizzle when I woke up today. Bright and early after only 4 hours of sleep, I was off to Cochrane (30 min drive towards the Rocky Mountains) to check out the morning stages of the Cochrane Winter Rally.

It was a hoot, I got to see my old rally friends compete in their car #11 and a lot of great other machines ranging from old old Volvo's to brand new Subaru WRX STi's. It has really got me thinking Rally again.. such an expensive sport, but oh so much fun.

Here's some photo's I snapped from a spectating area which had the competiters travel through twice, once in each direction. Just click on the album below, and selecting "slideshow" works best for viewing.

Cochrane Rally

Rally Nostalgia

After talking with some friends I used to Rally with back in the day, I have started to reminisce about all the fun times I used to have driving sideways in the gravel and snow.

Most of you know that I used to compete in "TSD/Road Rally" events. These are precision timing and navigational rallies and are not the 'go as fast as you can' rallies. They were a lot of fun, my main co-driver John Ma was probably the best of the best during his time making the calculations and calling out the route book for me. It was my move to Calgary and the selling of my old Subaru Legacy that finally quashed my Rally fun, but I did go out on top, having won championship in points for my class of vehicle.

The friends I made when doing these rallies have continued on and most have jumped up to the "Stage Rally" circuit which is the type of Rallying you see with cars with roll cages, drivers with full fire suits and helmets, and the cars 'going as fast as the drivers dare push them' sideways down gravel logging roads. I have recently been in contact with an old rally friend Christa, and she and others I knew from back in the rally days, are coming out to Alberta to compete in this weekend's "Cochrane Winter Rally". I will be heading out to say hi and talk of rallies past, as well as watch them compete in some designated spectator areas this weekend. I'll take my camera and hopefully get some good shots of the cars in action.

It's just too pricey of a hobby for me to get back into at this point and time, but wow, what a blast I used to have, even just with the TSD/Road Rallies. The last rally I competed in (wasn't with John Ma, but another co-driver) was a winter rally held in and around Merritt and Cache Creek BC. It was my first snow event, for which i bought purpose snow tires thankfully, but it was also the first time I ever had an "off". The "off" meaning, that I went off the road, and more directly.. into a ditch. It was on a straight section of road after a slight turn in which I applied to much gas after exiting and begun fishtailing uncontrollably, I eventually just let the car slide to a stop, but it took an extra little swerve and we ended up in a ditch! It was a pretty wide ditch, filled with snow. I was stuck and had to drive opposite direction to the traffic in the ditch and hop up and out of the ditch, I quickly got out and checked the car for damage and continued on without incurring too much delays thankfully. The car actually did have a little bit of damage to the rocker panel on the passenger side, it made it difficult to open the right rear door, but nothing a little rubber hammer couldn't fix a few days later.

Here are some pics from that event that I managed to find online from the RallyBC website.

Here's the old Rally Car in action!




My encounter with the ditch was also caught on camera


You can see the tire tracks in the snowy ditch on the left as I inspect for damage





Ahh memories, maybe someday soon I'll get back into the sport. For now, I shall watch some downloaded World Rally events to see some of the truly amazing driving they do.

Puerto Rico pictures

I finally got all the pictures organized and labelled in a photo album. Click on the picture from Old San Juan below to view the slideshow album!

The previous post has my trip report from Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico Trip Report

Well, aside from the whole trip starting out with my missing bags, the Puerto Rico trip turned out to be a huge success. We got to stay the entire trip down there for 4 nights and 5 glorious days in the beautiful 30 degree heat of San Juan Puerto Rico.

The hotel we stayed at was defiantly upper class, very fancy and no young kids were seen running about that's for sure. There were even signs posted everywhere about a dress code. I had to bend some of those dress codes as I was very limited in my clothing. The San Juan Hotel and Casino located on Isla Verde just minutes from the airport itself was a great place to relax and enjoy our trip. We were right on the beach, the hotel had many shops and restaurants, even a Starbucks right in the lobby, and 3 separate pools outside. I would never have been able to afford it except for work picking up the tab, it cost the company $350 USD per night!

Our first day we traveled into Old San Juan, which was about a 20 minute drive away. After waiting nearly 40 minutes for a bus to come, we opted to take a taxi and split the fare with 3 college girls who were going into Old San Juan as well. Unfortunately this is not one of those stories that branches off with me saying that I took the 3 Florida State College girls back to my room later for drinks and some Canadian hospitality. Haha, they were a fun bunch of girls and we chatted them up all the way into town. They were on their "reading break" and by the looks of their sunburns; they were getting lots of "reading" done.

At this point I had not purchased any replacement clothes and was borrowing a pair of shorts, socks and shoes of the other pilot Jim. Jim is a bit bigger than me, so my belt was required to keep his shorts from just sliding down haha. We had a good time once we got into town. We went straight to Senior Frogs for a couple of drinks and a light lunch. Senor Frogs is a very famous chain of bar/restaurants in the more exotic vacation destinations with many in Mexico and the Caribbean. I found out when reading the menu, that the bar/club that I had been to during my week long trip in Cabo San Lucas (El Squid Roe) was part of this whole chain.

We then walked around and checked out the town, very historic with old houses, small alleys, cobblestone roads and many monuments. The biggest thing about Old San Juan is the huge naval fortifications that surrounded the area. A very impressive structure that was hundreds of years old that helped protect San Juan's shipping harbors. I got a few pictures of the area and I'll post them all up in a photo gallery soon.

After having a couple more beers we headed to the bus station to go back into town. Low and behold we met up with same 3 girls as they were heading back at the same time too. The bus was quite the experience, it was very very crowded and that didn't stop people from continuing to cram at EVERY stop. Just one of those experiences!

The beer of choice for this entire trip was a Puerto Rican beer called "Medalla". It is actually a light beer, which is all they produce, but it does not taste like a light beer. It was very good, low in calories, and cheap cheap cheap! We were having a few of these "cervesa's mas finas" each night - nothing like a cold beer in the 25 degree warm night air of a Caribbean island. I even went as far as to bring back a 12 pack of this beer home. I will be consuming these on my days off which are approaching quickly.

I did manage to buy some new clothes to tide me over for the rest of the trip at the hotel gift shop (touristy Puerto Rico clothes haha) and I found a pair of shorts, actually a pretty good pair of shorts, at a Walgreens down the street from the hotel. I also managed to buy some socks, underwear and other essentials for the rest of the trip.

The rest of the trip was spent sampling many little bars near the hotel, some on the beach, some on top of the hotels, another one right around the corner, all of which provided tasty cold Puerto Rican libations. I spent a bunch of time out on the beach too just relaxing, even getting a little bit of a tan. I did lather up quite a bit with the sunscreen as a precaution from previous warm destination sunburn memories, so my tan is not everything it could have been. But it was great to just sit out on the beach reading a magazine, watching all the beautiful scenery and people on the beach and in the water. Especially after having just gotten over a horrible cold a few days prior, this trip was exactly what I needed.

We did have one run in with a "Puerto Rican Lady of the Night" as we took a shortcut through an alley to go to one of the beach bars. She was yelling at us from across the street asking us if we wanted to have an orgy. It then progressed for the next 5 mins as she tried to chat us up. It was another "experience" talking to "Christine", needless to say we did not take the same route out of the bar back to the hotel.

I was very impressed with Puerto Rico and everything it had to offer. You can quickly find some seedy areas of town, but that's just like any city, I'm quickly reminded of ending up in the wrong areas of town in LA a couple weeks ago! The Caribbean is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. I'm not big into all the water activities, but the views, scenery, lifestyle, weather – it just can't be beat. I believe this will become a vacation destination for me in the future. I still really want to go and visit St Martin as it has all the great Caribbean features, plus that very famous airport which provides some crazy views of landing and departing aircraft right over one of the beaches.

I'll try and post up a photo gallery soon, there are not a lot of pictures, but a couple of them capture Old San Juan well. As mentioned in my previous post, I did in fact write this blog entry in the back of the jet, I'm currently 56 minutes from Casper Wyoming on our way to Santa Ana California (by the way, that's the freaking OC!). Cruising at 43,000 ft with the sun warming me from the left side of the aircraft this clear sky morning, this truly is the way to travel.

"Should I get a Blackberry?"

I have been asked this question quite a few times since I first obtained a blackberry thru work a couple of years ago. People who have stolen mine and played with it think it's a cool little gadget and like the idea of being so connected to the world wherever you happen to be. However, I have to tell everyone the same thing, and I'll repeat it here in this posting.

While the Blackberry is a very handy tool, which I use daily, it comes at a great cost. Currently the data packages that all the main carriers offer are ridiculously expensive. Most offer their "unlimited data package" at around $60/month. They do offer smaller data packages, but most people will find that unless they are ONLY using the email features, and never using the web browser, they will exceed the allowed data usage and therefore find that the unlimited package is really the only way to go. Also, that is JUST for the data, you still need the usual phone package, plus network access fees etc.

I get some pretty good discounts thru my Telus plan, and still pay approximately $100 per month for my plan which includes: 250 weekday minutes, unlimited evening and weekends (6pm-8am), 5 cents per min Canadian long distance, voice mail, caller ID, unlimited Blackberry data plan. Without the corporate discounts that I have, the average individual could expect to pay closer to $130-$150 for the exact same package. I also get money from work however to help cover much of this expense.

So does that cool gadget factor really justify the expense? I guess it really depends on what you'd like from a phone.

Another con is when you're talking on your phone it's just like talking on a freaking calculator. Haha, so I tend to tell people forget about the Blackberry unless you're work is helping to pay for it and you really need the "connection to the world". Besides, you can access a lot of the same content from your own cell phone these days (albeit a little trickier).

I am looking forward to upgrading my Blackberry once the new 8800 model is released in Canada, and becomes moderately priced. It will be smaller, have built in GPS with moving map displays, WIFI connection possibilities, camera phone and all the normal Blackberry goodies.

Westjet Seat 06A

Written onboard my Westjet flight from Edmonton to Toronto March 3rd

Enroute from Edmonton to Toronto on my Westjet commercial flight and I've come to a rather interesting conclusion.

I have been in this same seat before, and on this airplane twice before! It seems that I always get assigned or end up picking this seat all the time as it's a window seat and I prefer to sit closer to the front of the plane. At least 4 times in the past year of travel I can recall having seat 06A.

How do I know that I've sat in this particular airplane in seat 06A a couple of times prior? Simple, because the damn seatback television sucks in this seat and is continually turning itself off and on, there's obviously a bad connection here somewhere, and I can recall this same frustration on past trips!

So, if you get booked on Westjet, beware of seat 06A, there's a slight chance you'll be disappointed in the performance of the seatback television system!