Tuesday, Time to leave for home
Breakfast one last time at the California Cafe, I get snotty eggs, so I just eat the toast and ham.
We head to the gate, wait a short time and board, we push back from the gate late, but not bad. Then we sit on the tarmac for 1.5 hrs. Something about weight and runway direction and missing our scheduled time, and fuel. The pilot would come on from time to time and talk jibberish, about all the above. The plane is warm and uncomfotable. People are getting upset. Sharon starts in on me about possibly missing our connection, I say there is nothing I can do. Sharon doesn't talk much to me after that for about an hour. We sat on the runway burning enough fuel, we can now take off the direction everyone else is. So we get our turn and off we go. I'm hoping JMT can make some sence of what went on here.
So you wanted me to make sense of why Sharon starts in on you about connections then doesn't say much after you tell her that it's out of your control? It's not like you're gonna get stuck in Newark, take a bus full of goobers to an industrial park and catch a ride with a stranger and end up eating at McDonalds. Get real!
Seriously, we don't know what happened on your flight. I can tell you one scenario that makes pretty good sense...
There's a lot of little factors that come into play in your situation. Pilots make a lot of money because you don't understand them and they do. Many years ago, planes would take off and get stuck in a holding pattern over a bad weather airport. This led to diversions to alternate airports, planes running out of gas, and a waste of fuel. The simple answer was the ground stop. Controllers had computers that could calculate when your plane would arrive and plan your flight from departure time. Even if your destination had good weather, the big picture might involve traffic jams along your route. So the flight is given a time frame in which it can take off. If landing traffic at your destination is tight and you miss your window, you might have a longer wait for the next opportunity. So that's your "ground stop".
Then there is that pesky runway choice. Airplanes need a given amount of airflow over the wings to create lift. It comes in the form of speed of the plane and ambient wind. The more of a headwind they get, the less speed they need from the jet engines. And if there is a tailwind component, they need that much more airplane speed. So they need enough runway to get up to the speed they need to take off. But they also need enough runway to stop if they have to reject the takeoff before they get flying. Again, headwind is your friend in that component. So 99% of the time, you take off in a headwind. The major exception is to use a longer runway when winds are just light and variable or no winds. There are about 15 major runway configurations for LAS airport (and dozens of alternates), depending on wind speed and direction. Certain runways are for take off, landing, or closed. Each runway is actually two runways depending on which way you are going. An airport might have a runway 13 (which is 130 degrees on the compass when lined up) but if you are lined up to take off on that runway going the other direction it is runway 31 (310 degrees on the compass) Changing runways at a busy airport is no small task. A pilot can't chime in and say "give me runway 13". There are other planes taking off and landing too. Some airplanes may be 50 miles out getting ready to land, but they are setting up for landing at a certain runway with traffic all around them and they can't just go around. So while your pilot had a choice of runways. He probably wasn't happy with his choice.
Why wasn't he happy? Because he was too heavy. While you were being served snotty eggs and ham, a dispatcher in Atlanta decided that your flight needed X amount of gas for your flight. He assumed that you would be on time. The more gas you have on the plane, they heavier it is, and the longer your runway needs to be.
Also, the plane is hot because the air conditioner is designed to work in flight. It has limited capabilities on the ground and after about 15 minutes, those limitations are out the window. The pilots feel your pain on this one. Remember that the cockpit is a combination of an electronics closet and a green house. That's not the place to be on a hot day when the a/c is weak.
So I'm guessing that this is what happened. Your plane was prepared properly. It pushed back late and missed that window of opportunity to land in Cincy. While waiting for another release time, the local weather changed and they flipped the runways around. When a takeoff time was offered for your flight, the only runways available were the short runways. Your flight was too heavy to use those runways. Your plane probably had to wait for a longer runway to open, but there were several other planes waiting for a longer runway and most of them probably had tight release windows.
I don't know if pilots can do it these days, but we had an old trick at Braniff that beat the system. It might work like this. Your pilot is late and misses his take off window. He and his dispatcher recalculate the whole flight to overfly Cincy and go direct Buffalo or some other less busy airport. There are no holds, so away we go to Buffalo. After takeoff, the pilot changes his flight plan to land in Cincy. They can always squeeze one more plane in.
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