Home safe & sound! ^

We had snow coming into MSP this morning around 10:00, but no problem.

My 11:44 departure for BIL was delayed a tiny bit--but it was because the pilot wasn't there, not because of the snow.

SO GRATEFUL for FT! I knew that if I had problems, there were many resources even beyond the Plat line to help.

(Oh--and four people wrote down flyertalk.com after we chatted about y'all and after they saw my FT bagtag. Pilot, LFA, FA, and fellow traveler.)

Things don't seem to be too bad at MSP now. Not much extra snow is supposed to fall today.

Anyone at MSP today? How are operations going?

>>>>>Anyone at MSP today? How are operations going?

If no-one responds you can always cheat and peek here: ;)
http://tinyurl.com/37uge2

A Great Job by NWA
 

I got out of Vegas last night 1 hour 40 minutes late, but considering the thousands of AA passengers stranded at LAS, I wasn't complaining.

The flight went fine, and the only hiccup was that there was another plane at our designated gate. Plowing the new gate we were reassigned to took a little extra time as did waiting in line for a taxi to the airport, but NWA did a great job.

Way to go, REDTAIL!:D

So, "The Big One" draws near a close...and all I have to say is: That's all ya got for us???

Piece of cake. If the temps. were a little colder it would have been all snow, we would have actually received the 10"-15" predicted, and MSP wouldn't have had to close for a little over an hour due to iced-over taxiways.

Just 'nother weekend up north. :)

I agree. Without the ice mix, MSP probably would've had at least one runway open the entire time.

Congrads to the MSP snow crews for plowing and treating MSP's runways. It shows why MSP has received numerous awards for snow removal.

My little report:

Originally booked NW113 MSP-PHX Sunday 2/25, rebooked to NW123 Saturday. Left on time, a little deice (ok - maybe a LOT of deice) and off we went, got here a little ahead of schedule. So I had an extra day without snow.

Also, lots of people missed the connection in MSP, 4 pax were moved up to fc right before we left. Yay for gate agents that move people up once we're on board.

Mrs. GopherPuckGuy has to go BGM-DTW-PHX tomorrow - hope that goes well too, could be dicey from the looks of things.

Another little report: eventually made it back to MSP on NW185 -- delayed arrival of course contributing to the anxiety of a missed cxn to SFO. Props to an ATL G/A who arranged back-up coverage on NW355. ^

Of course, y'all know that NW357 was delayed, then canceled for crew time-out; and then NW355 as well. For a while, the best offer was to catch an early-morning route back thru DTW ~ kinda crazy, considering the weather was going that way.
Finally grabbed NW399 to SMF, & before the door closed, had managed to rearrange the car & hotel plans.
Got clear of the SMF car rental lot about 2am. & finally connected with the luggage (& fresh socks) about 3pm today in SFO.

What's the chances: we caught UGs into seats 1C-D on every flight of the day ~ even the two that timed-out. Look for the CE stickers! :D

Time for Zzzzzzz
/.

Well, it looks like the majority of the storm is behind MSP, just like this thread is about done.

Monday there is just lingering stuff left over from the storm, nothing to get too worried about. Even if it does turn to ice there is not enough of it to totally screw up operations.

On to DTW! :p

Was outbound on the 1:00 to IAD this afternoon. Was showing 6 mins late estimated departure, gate agent says they need to bring plane over from hangar. They taxi plane over, it sits just beyond gate for over 30 minutes while they try to get someone to move some baggage carts and then hovel away some snow.

Oh, and with engines running. How many cloth napkins do you think that costs?

We made it out two hours late.

How much fuel would they burn when they eventually turned the engines back on compared with the amount burned when at their lowest idle? :)

Watch when they run up the engines after they've been off. Those jet engines burn a lot of initial fuel when they get going.

Wasn't really thinking they should have shut them down, specially since they probably didin't know how long the wait would be. What I was wondering were:

(1) Cost of taxiing aircraft out vs. towing and
(2) Cost of having say an additional ramper ($20/hr?) rather than run engines for extra half an hour ($??). Or of being organized enough to send a workling ramper over promptly.