Holding Pattern

Q. How do you turn a one hour short-haul flight into three-and-a-half hours?
A. Fly from Chicago O'Hare to Toronto Pearson, with the slight possibility of rain.

If you're lucky, the plane will have AVOD and you can actually finish an entire movie. It appears the Thales i4500 system does sometimes experience bandwidth issues, when absolutely every passenger is trying to load something to watch. Good thing it saves your last location before it... unceremoniously resets (crash is not the best choice of words while on board). That way, you can simply resume your video after it comes back.

Some of the approach vectors for Pearson (presumably for runway 24L) pass over my neighbourhood. On these flights, I can look down longingly and identify my home during the descent. Then I can get back there an hour (or more) later.

Recently, the severely under-staffed ground crews at Pearson have made the delays worse than usual. One time, they even spent over an hour trying to move the new jetbridge into position, trying first one door, then the next, and back again.

Tonight, there just isn't a crew available. One is busy trying to push back a departing flight, while gates sit idle on either side. Our plane sits on the apron, blocking the path of a Cobus 3000, packed to the brim with hapless passengers, shuttling in from the hapless East Satellite Terminal.

Finally, a minivan with emergency blinkers (so that's what they're for!) arrives with a ground crew. They ready the gate, and a small CRJ sneaks in practically under our left wing, and up to the jetbridge. A collective groan is heard. But at least we all have relatively comfortable seats, unlike the poor, poor passengers on the shuttle bus, who probably disembarked their short-haul plane close to an hour ago. By the time we get our gate, all passengers can't wait to get into the terminal building. For everyone involved, it's been an unnecessarily long haul.