Comair lost one this morning. LEX-ATL. Looks like maybe one person made it off (rumor mill is running that it was a crew member) but 49 didn’t. It always sucks when a plane goes down but when it is the same type that you fly it makes you think a little more. While it is way too early to speculate (again, rumors of departing the wrong runway) one thing I will say is that the “aviation specialists” that many network news sources use make matters worse then anything else.

CNN has some moron (he was an “expert” I guess because he used to fly some sort of heavy plane) comment on the fact that at this time of year they could probably rule out icing. Yeah Captain Obvious! Some other one was talking about how with all the checked bags these days due to the new TSA restrictions the aircraft probably had a CG problem. WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE. The plane crashed 5 hours ago. There is no way to know what happened, but if these so called experts didn’t say something they wouldn’t be “experts” any more and couldn’t justify their expense account. What utter BS. Hopefully the NTSB initial report will clear up stuff although the full truth of what happened probably will never be known.

A two day trip that should have been easy ended up being not so fun after scheduling pulled a fast one one me. I don’t know why I was surprised. I was supposed to deadhead to Charlotte and pick up my 700 trip with an overnight in CLE. Instead I somehow volunteered to work a bunch of PHL legs (DAY-PHL-ABE-PHL-ALB-PHL-ABE) and then go to Charlotte the next day to finish my trip. How nice for me. The days started out easy enough with a quick DAY-PHL leg followed by a 15 minute trip to Allentown at 4000 feet. I hadn’t flow the jet that low in a while and I hand flew the whole way there. Not a problem except for the two VFR Cessnas that wandered into the PHL class B and weren’t talking to anybody. TRAFFIC. TRAFFIC. CLIMB NOW. INCREASE RATE. Yeah for TCAS. After we got back from Allentown we sat for an exciting 3 hours (lunch was good at least) and then flew up to Albany. Again no big deal. I hadn’t been to Albany in a while and it was a nice change from the normal 700 stuff.

We got back from Albany and swapped airplanes (go figure) for the last flight of the night to ABE. Again a quick 10 minutes of air time at 4000. This time I let George (the auto pilot) do the flying and clicked it off once the airport came into sight. There was a Colgan SAAB340 and a DHL 727 in front of us for the runway. Tower cleared us for the visual and I headed on in behind the 727. Unfortunately I got a little to close and hit some nasty wake turbulence about 150 feet off the ground. We rolled right pretty good and by the time I had the plane stable the runway was well off to our left. Nothing like doing a go around on your sixth and last leg of the day after being on duty for 13 hours. I think I managed to call for just about everything in almost the right order and we went around the pattern and landed on the runway the second time around. A quick drive to the hotel and it was bed time.

Day 2 started out at 1pm. The plane was on time and we were all set to do a quick trip down to Charlotte where I would switch to my 700 trip. Interestingly enough my roommate was taking over the trip I was covering. I do my walk around and find a large gash in on of the main tires. It looks pretty bad to me and the captain agrees. I call maintenance and they send a contract MX guy to look at the tire. He shows up 20 minutes later and promptly ground the plane. We need a new tire. Of course, PHL (only 50 miles away) isn’t a MX base for use anymore and after about an hour of thinking, dispatch cancels the flight and decides to charter a plane from Akron and fly a tire and a mechanic to ABE. Apparently Akron was the only place they could find a tire. It is now 2:30 and I am supposed to be getting on my 700 trip in an hour. Not going to happen. The plane with the tire shows up about 6pm (we spent the time eating at Subway in the terminal and hanging out in Ops downstairs. Fun. Let me tell you.

It takes the mechanic about 45 minutes to change the tire. In the mean time scheduling has decided that we will repo the plane to Rochester (where it was going after it got back to Charlotte) and that way we will only be running 2 hours late and only have to cancel two flight. So off we go to Rochester ferrying an empty airplane. We get there and do a quick turn (15 minutes from block in to block out) and head down to Charlotte. It’s my leg again and the sunsets as we head down. As we descend down to 6000 feet and start the 15 mile downwind they were running we can see the fog creeping on to the airport. We do have an alternate in case we can’t get in but the fuel is pretty tight either way. We turn back around final and can’t see the airport at all. It’s clear and a million where we are but 500 feet of the ground is a thick overcast. A Dash 8 calls missed with tower as we are cleared to land number 2 behind a mainline 737. We follow their lights down the ILS and sure enough as they go through 500 feet their lights disappear. At 500 we go into the fog as well. The captain calls 100 above mins and I dump the autopilot. He calls the runway approach lights in sight as the plane calls off minimums (200 feet above the ground) but we still don’t have the runway. Legally with the lights in sight we can go down another 100 feet which we do. About 150 feet off the ground I peak up and see the runway light pop up as the captain calls it. Once below the fog layer visibility is around 2 miles and I have no problem flaring the plane and landing.

We taxi in and I grab my stuff and run over to the gate with the Dayton flight on it. I’m thinking I am late but of course the plane isn’t even in yet. I met up with the other crew over there and eventually the plane comes in. We get set up and push off the gate about 45 minutes late. As we come around the corner from the north ramp we can see a wall of fog, now down to the ground rolling across the field. Also there are a bunch of emergency trucks parked midway between us and the runway with a line of planes stretching all the way back. The trucks eventually cleared but the visibility went to less the 1000 feet so traffic was moving very slowly to the runway. By the time we got there an hour later the fog has cleared out enough that I could see most of the way down the runway as we took off. Once we got in the air it was a normal flight to Dayton although I managed to plant it pretty hard on landing. Stupid 200 to 700 thing. The down side was I didn’t get home until 3am. At least I’ve got 6 days off now. Pictures from this trip and the last one are up under August. I’m really too lazy to throw a link up.

Man, I loved that game. What fun. Anyhow, this is more like hungry right engine.

My day today was really easy. Get up at 3:45 (ok, that wasn’t easy) in CLE to work the 5:35 flight to Charlotte and then deadhead home. Sounds good enough. I manage to wake myself up even after being woken up by a phone call at 10:45 the night before (thanks Kas!) and get downstairs in time for the van. We get to the airport and even manage to push 3 minutes early. It’s a pretty uneventful flight until we are told by Indy Center somewhere over Charleston, WV to do our best forward airspeed (ie, go fast) for traffic into Charlotte. In other words, there were a lot of planes behind us and the faster we go the faster they can go and the more planes they can fit in.

We are at 28,000 and fully loaded. The best we can do speed wise is 300 knots and ATC had wanted at least 310 out of us. I call them back and let them know we aren’t going to be able to do it. They tell us not to worry as Charlotte has started holding for the airport. That’s bad news for us as we hadn’t really planned on an alternate and didn’t have that much extra fuel.

Let me vent a bit here. The weather in CLT was good. The winds were calm and there was no more then the normal amount of traffic heading in. So why the holding you ask? I’ll tell you. NIMBYs. That’s right. The people who live under the approaches for 18L/36R and 18R/36L don’t want airplanes flying over their houses in the wee hours so traffic is limited to 23/5. There is nothing wrong with that runway, but it severely limits operations which means we get to hold and burn gas so they can get their beauty sleep.

Anyhow, I digress. I ACARS dispatch and we get a plan to go to Tri Cities if we get low on gas. About the same time I switch over to Atlanta Center and they give us instructions to hold at a fix (SHINE for anybody keeping score) at 21,000 feet with expected clearance out of the hold in 20 minutes. We run the fuel numbers and figure we are ok with that plus a bit more. We get in the hold and start doing laps. They descend us down to 14,000 over the next 15 minutes and then extend our clearance time another 6 minutes. Shortly there after Atlanta clears us out of the hold and back towards Charlotte. All is good. We still have plenty of gas and we are heading to the airport.

Not a really terrible time, except it was early in the morning and I didn’t want to have to do all that work. From there on in the flight is normal until we are about 1500 feet all configured to land. It is hazy out but we had the runway about 5 miles out and were going through 1500 fat, dumb and happy. Just as I finish the before landing checklist a little bird goes zipping by my window. I’ve nailed birds in a Cessna and hit a few egrets in Florida with the Seminole, but so far, as far as I know, I hadn’t hit any in the jet. I look back to try to see the bird fly by, but keep in mind it is flying towards us at some airspeed (slowly) and we are flying towards it at 143 knots (fast). I just see a blur and as I turn back foward and start to say something like “whoa!” there is a slight thump and the right engine vibration gauge rockets from .3 or so to 3.5 and then right back to .3. we continue on in and land normally. We then taxi to the gate and I jump out to do the walk around.

There wasn’t much to see really. A very small dent in the engine cowling and some streaks running up into the engine. MX came out and look at it and said it was good to go. I guess the dent was small enough to to affect anything.

So over all not a big deal, but way to much work for my only flight of the day. Good thing my deadhead was uneventful and now I have 3 days off.

I am on the 4 day from hell. The crew is fine. It’s just that everything else has conspired against us. Let’s see… Day 1 wasn’t too bad. DAY-CLT-GSO-CLT-ATL. We just beat a big thunderstorm into Atlanta, but managed to avoid most of the rush and got in around 3pm. Sure, starting at 4:50 am wasn’t any fun but that’s life I guess. The hotel we stay at is an Amerisuites and they are finally putting us in their new rooms. They have this sort of Asian theme and a 48 inch plasma TV. Nice. Of course even the 48 inch plasma didn’t make Mr and Mrs Smith any better of a movie, but hey, nothing else was on. We ate at Joe’s which is a burger and wings place. Very tasty. The van brought us over there and back.

Day 2 started off ok. Showed around 10:30 and waited for the plane. In it came with only 1 air conditioning pack working. Grr. Can you say hot? So we fly back to Charlotte with the cabin around 95 degrees. So far so good. A quick turn and we head up to PIT with a mainline guy in the jump seat. He was a 757 sim instructor and only has 9 months left until he is forced out due to age 60. Counting down the days I guess. We get to PIT and I run in and grab a sandwich. Man I miss the food options they have there. That was the best thing about that place. I get back to the plane and find out we have a Fed on board to ride the jump seat. Turns out to be a non event as he is an Avionics guy just catching a ride to CLT to start learning EMB 190 stuff for mainline. We get back to CLT and while waiting for pax to board for the trip down to TLH I notice that our number 2 system hydraulic quantity is reading 95% full. Full is good right? No… actually it needs to be less then 85% or else it could over pressurize and that is bad. The passengers board the already hot cabin and then MX comes out to take a look. After about an hour of playing around they decide the gauge up front in bad and the actual gauge in the back where the tank is is good. It is actually under filled back there so, they get a service truck and refill it and then MEL the gauge up front. Did I mention we have had passengers sitting on board this whole time in a 95 degree cabin. Yeah. Not good. So finally 1 and 1/2 hours later we push off the gate and as soon as we taxi forward out steering breaks. So back into the gate we go. The captain wants to leave everybody on the plane while MX comes back and fixes the problem but I make it pretty clear that that is not an acceptable option. The FAs both agree with me and everybody gets off. MX comes and and turns off the plane and turns it back on and the steering is working again. We load everybody up and head down to TLH. Get in 2 hours late and then quick turn back to CLT. We get into CLT running 1:45 behind and are the only plane on the entire ramp. Everybody is waiting for us. We turn in 20 minutes and head to SDF for the overnight. We finally get in at 12:35, almost 2 hours late. Yeah.

Day 3 starts off ok with us getting the plane at 2pm in SDF. All we have to do is got Charlotte, do an Atlanta turn and then go back to SDF. We are just about to push off the gate for Charlotte when they call to tell us that they have ground stopped the airport (CLT) for weather. We take extra gas on in the hope that we will go and sit by the runway and wait, but then they lift the ground stop and we head out 45 minutes late already. We get to Charlotte (dodging the weather the whole way in) and eventually push for Atlanta. As we come off the gate we move into the ramp that has become a parking lot. Fortunately we have 2800lbs of fuel for holding that we won’t really need so we are able to move some gas around and not have to return to the gate. It takes 2 hours to get to the runway for a 38 minute flight. Blah. Late again. We get down to Atlanta, turn as quickly as we can and head back to Charlotte, load up and head for SDF, getting in 1:30 late this time. They must really love us here. Today is more of the same (SDF-CLT-ATL-CLT) but then we head home to Dayton. We best not be late today!

I’ve been a bad, bad boy. No updates. Fact is I really haven’t flown at all in 2 weeks. I had 3 days of ground school and then I went to Scotland for a week. Well, I didn’t plan on going for a week but because I got stuck over there for an extra day it became a week. I’ll post all the goodness from that later. Right now I’m packing like crazy for a 4 day. Ok, I’m not really packing like crazy. Just packing.