Travel Problems due to “Bad Weather”
After a fast week in Cook Minnesota spring break is coming to an end. I had better back track a bit and tell you how this whole thing got started….. Erin was scheduled to leave for home on Wednesday of last week. The day started out really nice. The sun was out, and the wind was, well normal for Brevig. At noon, it was still beautiful out. As the afternoon progressed, the clouds started to move in, and it was starting to spit some snow at us. Erin had a ticket with Bering Air. Unfortunately they didn’t have a full flight, which for Bering Air means that the weather might just be too bad to fly. The weather wasn’t bad at all, and if Bering had decided to show up things would have been great. They however canceled their flight “due to weather”. So we frantically called up Cape Smythe Air, they have an evening flight that comes into Brevig. They said they would come out to get her. Unfortunately they weren’t scheduled to be into Brevig until around 6:30 in the evening. By then the weather was questionable. The plane was on a rout from Nome to Shish, Shish to Wales, Wales to Brevig, Brevig to Teller, and Teller back to Nome. Well, they landed in Shish, decided the weather in Wales was too bad to fly in (they have some pretty crazy wind over there). So they were coming directly to Brevig. We went out to the airport, and watched the plane fly over, and leave. They decided Brevig was too bad too, and just went to Teller where they did land. The snow was blowing pretty good in Brevig, but I think the pilot could have gotten in just fine. We raced home and tried to get the pilot to wait in Teller for us, but did not succeed. So we then called up Alaska Airlines to change her ticket to the next day, and they said she could get out on either of the morning flights to Anchorage but it would cost us 50 dollars to change her ticket (they don’t honor the weather delays of the little airlines that fly in our area). So we called up Northwest, and they moved her ticket to the following day as well. They however looked along her flight plan and said the weather was questionable in Minneapolis, and changed her ticket at no charge. We then got on the phone with Cape Smyth, and booked a flight for the morning from Brevig to Nome. The next morning, the weather was much better, and she got out without any troubles. And after a couple long layovers she made it to Northern Minnesota. I was scheduled to fly out on Friday, and after seeing the troubles Erin encountered, I changed my 4:00 flight to a noon flight. I didn’t want to chance the weather turning sour on me in the afternoon. So I flew into Nome at noon, without any troubles. I then had the 10 hour layover in Nome. I tried to hop on Bering Air’s WIFI network, but they had locked it down in some fashion in the past two weeks, and I couldn’t get on. So I took a cab to the Aurora Inn. I didn’t have a room there, I just wanted to sit in their lounge area, and pick up the WIFI network from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (Nome branch). So I checked my email, and surfed the web a little bit, basically killing time. I then went to the Twin Dragon for a little Chinese food. From there I headed over to the bar. I knew Jim would probably be heading their after he finished up school business in Nome. I went in, sat down and ordered a beer. Jim came by about 20 minutes later, and we visited and had another beer, and then went to Fat Freddies for a piece of pie. By then it was about 6:30 P.M. We decided to head out to the airport to wait out the rest of the time. While out there Craig showed up (the principal from Wales) and we chatted for a little while.I have to get on a plane. I’ll post more later…
Recent Comments