My best day with EAL started with a call when I was at home on standby. "We've got a problem, can you hire car to Stansted and call us when you get there?" So I met the FO at Gatwick, we picked up the car and drove to STN. We checked in at the crewrooom to be told "Change of plan, can you drive on up to Manchester and do the afternoon Palma?" Off we went. Three hours later we checked in at Servisair MAN. "Great", says Ops, "the inbound aircraft is on finals."
We walk out to crew change, only to find that the aeroplane is a "standard" One-Eleven and at that time my FO and I were only cleared to fly the "super" (odd CAA rule). We phoned Ops who were terribly apologetic. They then had to pull in a MAN crew from their day off to fly the charter.
We climbed back into our car and drove back to Gatwick. Halcyon days.