What It’s Like Flying on the Bruin’s Team Charter || Extra Time
for 20 years actually the anniversary of my first um appearance on air is in August it’s it’s August 5th uh 2004 was when I made my onair debut in Portland Maine as a weekend Sports Anchor reporter so uh I’ve been doing this for two decades and obviously have covered the teams uh over the years uh a lot and during playoff runs and you know when you work in in local news you don’t travel with the team you don’t uh well not only do you not travel with the team obviously but you don’t travel to cover the games right unless right they get into the postseason that’s when you start to see right like all the local news outlets are sort of jump on board expand their coverage of whichever team and that’s when you’ll travel so I had covered the Bruins Red Sox Celtics and Patriots in that capacity where I would all right they’re in the playoffs or you know they’re in the championship and we’re going to go we’re going to travel book a commercial flight book a hotel do all that stuff so that was my experience traveling covering Sports get to nessen start doing the Red Sox sideline gig and they’re like oh yeah we travel with the team so we’re not flying commercial they used to fly commercial back in the day all the way back in the day teams used to fly commercial but now they they charter flights and so Charter flight flights basically private flights and it’s just the team the team personnel and a couple of members of the media right and that includes nessen and in the case of the Red Sox it’s Wei and in the case of the Bruins it’s sportsub and it’s Bob Beers and Jud SRO with the Bruins and obviously you know Jack and brick and either you or me or or Razer at times a photographer and our uh director Rose and there are times where producers some extra people travel Brian’s Jello I want to make sure I say his name because he’s probably listening make sure you include me uh P dub will have a score buug operator when we go to trips in Canada uh for some technical reasons I won’t get into right now but anyway um it’s it’s quite an experience and I I want to get your take on um flying uh with the team your first experience flying with the team what that was like and and and everything that goes along with it you can take it whatever Direction you want to go yeah I mean I’ve never i’ never traveled either I covered um I covered well I worked for the rights holder in Canada when I worked at sportset before I came to nessen and then I worked at CBC the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation um and so we used to travel for big events like the All-Star game with Sports Net we had behind the scenes access when you’re the rights holder you have all the access which was really fun really cool like being on the bench first access to everything because you paid for it as the rights holder but still we never traveled uh with a team because we didn’t cover a particular team we covered the entire NHL um so all economy um not first class like people might think definitely not and then I actually went to Korea in July of 2019 I moved to Boston in August of 2019 so a month later but my final contract with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation I went to Korea for a month to cover the World Championships of swimming and diving in Guan to Korea for Fina um and that was a crazy experience also not first class so as you can imagine I think we took two flights we from Toronto to Soul which was direct which was nice and then soul to we guu um and that first flight I can’t remember but somewhere in the 12 to 14 to 15 hour range middle seat very uncomfortable for 12 hours yeah middle seat I mean but yeah CBC was definitely not paying a first class government it’s it’s run or it’s partly funded by the Canadian government so um you know you can check all that they they wouldn’t be putting the taxes to us flying first class uh to cover the World Championships but such a cool experience but yeah I mean basically what I’m trying to say is I’ve I’ve traveled economy so many times to cover the snowboarding championships in Utah all this all this kind of stuff and that’s just what you’re used to unless you were born into a lot of money which I was not I never I still to this day have never flown first class um uh on a on a plane but the chartered experience feels like first class for sure I think my favorite thing about chartering a plane and it feels like first class because the seats are bigger they’re more comfortable you can recline way further um you’re not in these pods where you can sleep uh like you see a lot but so none of that but just bigger seats more space and two two to an aisle so there’s middle seat business lots of leg room which is great but I think my favorite part is just not stressing about security you get checked you know you get they check your bags you get your passport checked all that kind of stuff but you’re never worried about is the security line going to be an hour is it going to be you know 15 minutes and like rushing to get there early which is my biggest source of anxiety it’s just have a given myself enough time because you have to factor in like when you’re traveling anywhere traffic uh check in lines cuz you know putting your bag through then airport security and you always give yourself so much time that or if you’re like me you’ve been late before but you usually try to give yourself so much time that you end up just like twiddling your thumbs at the airport um so I love that part you pull up to the to hand scum where they fly out of you park your car we used to get valeted at them which was really cool before covid we would drive our cars to the plane to the on the tarmac and they would take them and park them for you and then when we landed at so uh you guys probably assume this maybe you don’t know this but after a road trip it’s very rare that where unless you’re on the west coast flying out the next morning you’re getting home as soon as possible if you’re in Washington or Toronto or Philadelphia or whatever even Chicago you’re flying out the next morning so or sorry that that night so you’d be landing at 2: 3 a.m. depending on the time as you know but our cars atam in the dead of winter the hockey season used to be turned on and warm and ready for us in the parking yes see your face in the parking lot so the players get off the plane first uh staff after that and then media last we would go and your car would be warm and ready to go and you would basically like walk off the flight and your car would be right there and uh they would also shovel if there was snow they would shovel it off for you whereas I know so like oh now I’m sounding so privileged because we don’t get that anymore you got to walk all the way to the parking lot oh I know it’s so tough
What’s it like flying on a charter flight with the Bruins? Sophia shares the experience and gives you some insight into the perks of the gig.
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