DTW Snow

During the winter, I usually overnight in warm places- Florida or the
Caribbean. I figured that by late April, I could safely bid the northern
overnights without having to take my trench coat. Wrong....

We broke out at 300' on the ILS at DTW with RVR of 1800'. The snow was
blowing horizontal. "Whiskey tango foxtrot?" At least the snow made for a
greaser landing.

During the turn, my helper pilot performed a wing contamination check with a
ladder and a long stick just because it is required. We already knew we
would have to de-ice. We pushed on time and headed to the de-ice pad. The
de-ice truck hit us with Type 1 to clean the snow off. Then they started
with type 4 to keep it off but stopped half-way through. After several radio
queries, we finally were told that their type 4 fluid wasn't working (WTF
again). They had to call another vendor who had to start the type 4 process
all over because we have only 25 minutes from the time they start de-icing
to the time we are airborn. Before they could start, we had to verify with
company operations that the outside vendor was approved to service us. They
were and they started. Then they ran out of fluid. They had to go back to
re-fill their truck. After they returned, they had to start over from the
beginning because of the hold-over time. Meanwhile, the tower was reporting
that the departure runway had 1 inch of wet snow with Mu readings of 36, 32,
&26 (under 40 is not good). The braking reports didn't stop us from
departing, but we have a limitation prohibiting take-off with 1 or more
inches of wet snow on the runway surface. We finally taxiied off the de-ice
pad and headed for the runway which was handling the arrival traffic as that
runway's report didn't mention 'wet' snow (go figure). On the taxi out, the
ground controller mentioned that we would have to wait until Center opened
up a slot in the arrival traffic to accommodate our take-off. He asked us
how long our hold-over time was. I replied that our hold-over time was 20
minutes but that if we didn't get off in 10 minutes, we would have to return
to the gate for more fuel (and another de-ice).

With just 100 pounds of fuel over minimum required at take-off, we were
airborne. Push-back to take-off was just under 2 hours. We were exasperated.
Our passengers were frustrated. The cabin crew held their smiles, but they
wanted to vent maniacally.

I think I'll just stay south for the summer.

D.