Winter flying

Position: Turning an 8 mile final, runway 30R @ MSP
Speed: 170kts and slowing
Outside Air Temp: -20 C (or -4 for those who speak Fahrenheit)

The first rays of sunshine are starting to fall on the frozen city of Minneapolis as we descend through the smooth, cold air with 76 sleepy passengers on board. It's 0815am, and I've been on duty for 13.5 hrs. 7 hours on the ground in ORF (Norfolk, VA) yielded about 5 hours in the hotel room, and maybe 4 hours of sleep... but I slept some during the day, and my plans include another nap before repeating the process again tonight.

2:47 minutes and 994 miles earlier:


The clock reads 11:17 UTC, or 06:17 local time in ORF, or about 7 hours since blocking-in the night before. We pushed on-time seven minutes ago, but are now sitting perpendicular to another gate with our engines shut down. Norfolk operations requested that we empty the potable water tanks on descent into ORF a few hours ago, a feature this fancy little airplane has to prevent water from freezing while it remains on the ground in below freezing temps overnight.

Unfortunately the gate the plane was parked at overnight did not have access to fresh water to fill the tanks for the three hour flight ahead. So here we are, engines shut down while the ramp personnel attach a potable water hose to the tail section for a few minutes. Oh well, the clock is ticking, we're getting paid...