I wrote and posted yesterday’s entry before we got on the plane because I had the strong feeling I’d be too tired to do it when we got home, and I was right.
We boarded the plane on time, but then we had to wait for our First Officer to arrive, about half-an-hour after boarding was complete. That seemed curious.
After dinner, I was talking with one of the flight attendants and found out what had happened. The crew that was supposed to be working the flight was stuck somewhere, so Delta operations had to assemble a new crew. All of them except the First Officer were already in New York; the First Officer had to fly to JFK, hence the delay.
They made up the extra half-hour in the air, but it was still well after 10pm Pacific by the time we got home, and we didn’t unpack everything until today.
It could have been worse, though. The JFK-SFO flight on Saturday was diverted to Minneapolis! Maybe that’s where the crew was….
I suspected a crew availability issue of some sort when I read the previous post.