It’s approaching 11am and I’ve already been at the airport for 6 hours. Every 30 minutes a recorded voice announces the current time and by my calculations, assuming I don’t get called to cover a trip, I’ve got to sit through eight more versions of “the local time is….”

I’m sitting ready reserve (for the fourth time this month) and like the previous three times, I have no expectation of getting used. Ready reserve is one of the weakest areas of our contract in that it allows a crew member to be scheduled to sit at the airport, 15 minutes from a gate at all times for 10 hours. And get paid for none of it. The good news is we get $1.50 an hour in per diem, which after taxes doesn’t even cover lunch and the fuel to drive to the airport and back. It’s a fun time. The other frustrating fact is that it’s very rare to get used while sitting ready reserve. The crews that do it in Charlotte get called out pretty regularly, but because Dayton is such a small base now with very few flights (7 on this rainy Saturday morning) there isn’t really a need for the coverage. But here I sit.

I have a pretty standard routine down for sitting airport reserve. Now that the weather is nice I can sleep in my car for a while so after rolling into the employee parking lot at 5am I try to find a dark corner, push my seat all the way back and lean the seatback as far down as it will go. If it’s not too cold I’ll crack open a window for some fresh air and then do my best to fall back asleep. I’ve lucked out in the fact that that three of the four mornings I’ve had hot reserve this month it’s been raining so it doesn’t get light as quickly and the sound of rain helps me go back to sleep.

Normally I can make it until 7:30am or so before I just can’t sleep any more. At that point I’ll get out of my car, stretch my legs, straighten my uniform, try to remove any lint that may have accumulated from my blanket and then start dragging my flight case and rolling bag towards the terminal and breakfast. We do have a “quiet” room just off of the maintenance hangar, but it’s anything but quiet as you can hear everything from the mechanics break room (TV, microwave, snack machines, mechanics playing cards etc) and the woman’s restroom on the other side of the wall.

Once through security I normally stop by the coffee shop and pick up a cranberry muffin to eat. Every time the women behind the counter (in the 4 years I’ve been doing this I’ve never seen a man working there) seem puzzled that I don’t want anything to drink. From there I head over to the crew room where I check my vfile to see what’s accumulated since I was there last. After that I log in to the computer and check my schedule to see if they’ve got me assigned to do something. I really shouldn’t even bother as there is nothing ever there. The computers now actually reach the rest of the internet (before they only accessed Company websites) so I’ll check my email, CNN, a few forums and blogs and sometimes Facebook. With that accomplished I’ll normally go sit outside the crewroom and read a book for a while.

That’s how far I’ve gotten now. My book (a collection of travel essays by Paul Theroux), while interesting, is getting a bit repetitive. Visit a foreign place. Talk to the locals. Make a witty remark and compare and contrast with some well known figure in literature. Rinse and repeat.

Another 4 hours and I can go home….

The cockpit darkened very quickly as we descended into the clouds. What light was left from the setting sun behind our wings quickly faded as the first wisps of gray started flying by the windows, gently buffeting the wings and tail. The radar wasn’t showing anything interesting in front of us, but as the bumps continued to increase in intensity I reached up to turn on the continuous ignition and then pulled the power back slightly to slow to 280 knots, our best speed for turbulence. Ahead to the north were the runways at Philadelphia, but between us and them were 80 miles of swirling, wet and bumpy darkness.

We’d launched out of Nashville an hour ago, 2 hours later than planned; typical of bad weather days in the Northeast. After blasting off a wet runway we’d navigated around (and through) a small line of weather near the airport before turning east towards Philly, some 650 miles away. After 20 minutes of bouncing through the leading edges of the weather we’d finally climbed into clear air and for the first time that day I enjoyed a bit of sunlight. Our stay at altitude was brief and only 15 minutes after getting there ATC had us heading back down and eventually back into the clouds.

With the weather radar sending a constant stream of energy out the front of the airplane we kept descending through 18,000. Most of the radio waves continued on into infinity but a fair number found enough moisture in their path to bounce back and show up as green and yellow splotches on the display screen in front of me. With the First Officer using the second radio to call in range to Philly, I put a quick request in with ATC for a turn to the right to avoid a small cell. They gave me the turn and told me to report when we were back on track. By the time the FO was back working the main radio we were heading in the right direction again and were handed off to Philly Approach Control.

With the weather as bad as it was (low ceilings, rain and mist), Philly was landing on only one runway, which was part of the reason we’d sat on the ground in Nashville so long. Now ATC was vectoring us through the weather towards a radio beam 25 miles away which would eventually guide down to the ground. Passing through 10,000 feet I flipped on the landing lights and turned the No Electronic Device sign back on. As the green PA in use light came on I could hear our Flight Attendant running though her before landing announcement which involves the standard seatback and tray tables up and locked spiel. I’ve heard it a thousand times before and I’ll hear it a several thousand times more before I’m done. Out in front of the plane the landing lights were illuminating a swirling mass of clouds while thousands of drops of water appeared frozen in the air every time the wingtip strobe flashed.

One more turn and we were now heading towards the runway, unseen through the clouds and dark, 12 miles away. The navigation instrumentation came alive and the autopilot locked on the Instrument Landing System’s radio beam which began at the end of runway and ended some miles behind us in the gray, churning sky. 8 miles from the airport and descending at 1000 feet a minute I called for the first of the flaps. They were closely followed by more flaps and as our airspeed bled off, the landing gear. The FO ran the before landing checklist and as we passed through 2000 feet he put out the last of the flaps. As the flaps locked into place, trailing in the clouds and rain 45 degrees below the wing, the Tower controller cleared us to land.

As the plane called off 1000 feet above the ground we dropped out of the clouds and the dark waters of the Delaware River came into sight below us. 3 miles away, out of the murk, the approach lights for Runway 9R came into view.

I made a quick visual check to ensure everything was as it should be. The gear was down. The flaps were full. The “cleared to land light” (the taxi light switch) was on. We were on speed and we were descending at 700 feet per minute. Everything checked. By then the computer was calling off 500 feet. By 100 feet I could make out the damp concrete rapidly passing below me and quickly rehashed a wet runway landing. The power came out at 50 feet and as the aircraft called out “Ten” I gave a slight pull on the yoke and we settled to the ground. In the space of a second my mind switched from “flying mode” to “driving mode” and we started decelerating on the wet pavement.