Regina to Halifax
Opportunity of a Lifetime:
A Big Cross Country, DRCO, and other stuff
By Captain Dav1d 1998-03-10

Day Four (Saturday) ... The Return Trip

After reaching my hotel room the night before, I called my family in Toronto to close my "other" flight plan. Then I started calling the airlines trying to find a flight back to Toronto. I found a Canada 3000 flight at 1045 local, but was told to be at the airport for 0845 local to purchase the ticket. Needless to say, I arrived in plenty of time.

So, what can a pilot to do for 2 hours in a strange airport? Visit the control tower, of course! (But you already knew that, didn’t you?)

When I got to the tower, I introduced myself as the pilot that flew in during the snow squall on the previous night. One of the guys had been working then, but was on a break, so he had first-hand knowledge. The other guy had heard about it from the other controllers. By the time I left the tower, two other controllers has showed up for their shifts, and both of them had been working the night before, including the controller that had worked himself into a sweat bringing me down. I shook his hand and thanked him again for helping me. Then, I left for the flight home.

I visited the flight deck of the A320 on the way home, but I was only in there for a very short time.

Epilogue

In a nutshell, I covered almost 3500 miles in 4 different airplanes (B737, DH8, PA28, A320), logged over 20 hours cross-country hours in my log book, visited 9 airports (six for the first time), got the stamps to prove it, learned a lot about Canadian geography, actually used a DRCO, and visited two control towers.

Oh yeah, and I had some fun too!