I am having a bit of a bad-luck streak. For those who are not aware, the last flight of a trip is fondly called the “go-home” leg, and it is absolutely cursed. You could be having the perfect rotation, avoiding delays, mechanical issues and weather for days with minimal fuss. All of a sudden, it is your go-home leg and that is when Murphy’s Law really takes over. In my case, low staffing levels for New York’s ATC facilities was one culprit; thunderstorms were another.
In the first case, ATC made things pretty simple for us: They called and told us that New York Center was no longer taking arrivals and we should divert. The following week, we had a more classic (and challenging) scenario. The weather was stubborn and we were told to hold with no end in sight. Now we had to calculate how much fuel we could afford to burn in the hold on top of all the additional steps required to divert. In the end, we hit our minimum fuel and diverted to a nearby airport, hoping for a quick gas and go. But we timed out and had to spend the night. That was my first time a go-home leg actually took two days. There was a silver lining, though: Both situations gave me the inspiration for this article.
