Before this one I never had even a close look inside a Dash-8 in my entire life! Who knew the first ever ride would be going to happen in the Caribbean! Instead of Canada, not to mention Russia. And to add more peculiarity to a set of circumstances surrounding this ride, - it was ’strictly business’; however, not without a touch of pleasure 
Yes, not only me, but our entire crew was on the ride which we took for purposes to be positioned before the next working day: we supposed to start it by going back to Canada from Saint Lucia, whereas on the ride day we ended up being around in Barbados, after non-stop trip from Toronto.
As a routine part of organizing and exercising schedule in the airline business, this type of crew transportation is not unusual at all. I guess, all companies in the industry do it in various ways. And, perhaps, most inexpensive one would be placing the crews into seats on the company’s own aircraft. Of course, if there’s some flights on schedule going on to necessary places, or, if it has a sense to organize an exclusive charter on its own fleet.. Otherwise the company has to consider either a ground transportation, or a ride for its crews on the planes of other carriers.
Sure, we were excited as we looked forward to seeing new experiences, and explore the business’ universe somewhere else ‘beyond our own turf’
(to be continued..)
March 18th, 2009 at 3:21 am
How come you guys didn’t do the return back to YYZ? Crew rest?
March 18th, 2009 at 6:17 am
Hi, Dave,
‘crew rest’.. probably not in our case particularly. We would have been able to return to YYZ, no problem. I guess, it is a pretty complicated matter of ’schedule composure’, and ‘crew positioning’ that governed our crew’s roster in such a way. However, there may be some other days, and flights, and crews, involved in operation to this part of Caribbean, and who’s roster could be more tight. In order to simplify some complex issues, and make them manageable, the system tries to bring up a bit of ‘uniformity’ to the patterns’ of ‘individuality’.
So, that would be my weak attempt to explain things (composure of schedule as a whole process) for which I have not much thorough understanding