birds on deck.

because of bad weather most of last week, we've been flying C-17 missions all weekend to try to catch up. a C-17 arrived and departed saturday, carrying the Today Show crew with it north to christchurch. the same aircraft then took off at midnight on saturday and landed at 0500, carrying only cargo and no pax. it went back to christchurch and launched AGAIN at 1500, arriving at mcmurdo 2019 with thirty-three pax on board.

I was grabbing dinner in the galley on sunday night and ran into my friend sharona. she asked what I was up to that evening and I told her I had to work the incoming flight. she mentioned that she and her boyfriend had been talking earlier about how life in the mcmurdo community (really, every community on the continent) revolves around the flight schedule. every intercontinental flight brings either pax, cargo or some combination of the two, and the effect ripples out through the station like shredded carrots in a lime jell-o mold.

as soon as a plane is in the air, a departure message goes out to a select distribution list, containing information on departure and arrival times (to the minute), weight and contents of cargo, names and affiliations of pax, and names and rank of crew members. I take the information in that e-mail and forward it in turn to another distribution list, but not before I change the subject line to Arrival Brief for AZM-019: Dining Hall at 1445 / Meet 'n' Greet at 1530. this lets pertinent parties know where and when to show up to meet their wide-eyed new folks.

the flurry of activity set in motion by an incoming flight affects:

fuelies (who need to be at the airfield to fuel the plane before it takes off again)

cargo handlers (who will be unloading and then loading the plane)

air pax service representatives (who are in charge of the passenger manifests)

loadplanners (who are responsible for tracking every piece of cargo on every flight)

surveyors (who measure the deflection of the sea ice when the aircraft lands on it and bends it out of shape)

aircraft ground equipment personnel (who haul 1,200-pound heating units out to the planes and hook them up to the engines to keep them warm while the planes are on the ground)

firefighters (who are on standby at station 2, the airfield station, in the event of an airplane engine going out or other unlikely snafu)

shuttle drivers (who transport outgoing pax and crew to the apron and pick up incoming pax to bring to town)

chalet staff (who conduct the arrival briefing for incoming pax)

crary lab staff (who prepare office spaces and key cards for incoming grantees)

housing and janitorial staff (who plot dorm room assignments, notify existing roommates, and leave packets of bed linens on beds)

galley employees (who have to plan down to the single individual how many meals to prepare)

all this activity, and probably more, caused by one little airplane.