Woke up today at 2:20pm

And this certainly wasn't by my choice! This story begins one day prior when I awake to an email stating I have a flight later in the day. I open it up and go on to read about a flight up to Edmonton and then down to Palm Springs. However, that is it, and I don't see the return flight info. Normally this wouldn't peak my interest, but the next day was my day off and the flight landed in Palm Springs at 6:30pm, which would mean I'd just make it back in time if we turned the plane around and came home. That was not meant to be.

I eventually find out that this is a last minute flight change and only myself and another pilot (also to go on days off the next day) were the only available crew to do this flight. So the plan was for us to do this trip down and then we'd airline home to Calgary. I was sure we'd have to wait until the next day as there are no direct flights to Calgary from Palm Springs so I knew there'd be a connection. Fate would have it that there was a 9pm flight from Palm Springs to Vegas and then a connection from Vegas to Calgary at midnight Vegas time, which would put us into Calgary at 4am.

The flight down to Palm Springs was mostly uneventful, a few thunderstorms in the Vegas area that we needed to keep an eye on, but we managed to overfly most of the weather and beside some of the real nasty stuff. It was 41 degrees in Palm Springs when we landed. Holy moly that was hot. We raced around to get some dinner and then got to the airport just in time. We had a couple beers at the airport bar and nearly missed out flight, we had a view of the airplane and saw it come in and then hadn't seen anyone loading onto it yet, then all of a sudden we saw everyone load at once, so we went racing for it. We flew the short 35 min flight to Vegas on a US Airways Dash 8-100. A 37 seat turboprop which I hadn't flown on since my days of living in Castlegar, BC attended pilot training and taking the Dash 8 to and from Vancouver.

We then had nearly 2 hours in Vegas to kill, all of which was to be in the terminal building. But for anyone that has been to Vegas, you probably know they have slot machines in all the terminals there, to get that last few dollars out of you before you leave.. and also to snag those first few dollars for when you arrive! I managed to resist the call of the slot machines, and instead people watched the thousands of people coming and going, even at midnight.

I was pretty tired and didn't even think about it, until it was too late, about trying to get upgraded to first class. Not too often when traveling on business in Canada do we get the opportunity because we usually fly Westjet, so only when traveling Air Canada do we have the option for the upgrade. Aircrew are often allowed the free upgrade to business class, however I have yet to have it work out for me. Had I been on the ball, we could have had the upgrade. It was too late when we finally thought about it and even the CSR (Customer Service Rep) had told us if we had come by earlier she could have given us the upgrade. As it was, a couple of total skids were given the upgrade somehow. It wasn't all bad though, we had an Emergency row exit and nobody in the middle seat so it was quite comfortable. I did manage to get some sleep on the flight back.

Once back in Calgary I was totally messed up from the long long day I didn't even think about one of the other perks of aircrew when it came time to clear customs. If I'm traveling on pure business I can bypass the customs line and go to the "crew and diplomats" line which is never busy. Even the customs agent asked why I waited in the normal line, all I could reply with was "it's 4am". So, I'll have to remember that for next time. It's not like I was held up much anyways, maybe an extra 5 mins. Not much of a line at that time of the day.

After getting back to the hanger and getting my car, I was at home and in bed by just after 5am. I then started sleeping, and slept and slept and slept. I finally decided to wake up, thinking it must only be noonish, how wrong I was.. the clock read 2:20pm.