I got slightly behind in uploading stuff off my camera. Lazy me… I know. Anyhow, here are 2. There are more up under December of 06 and January of 07.

Christmas Eve heading into CLT

If you listen hard enough you can hear the Rocky Theme playing

I know… I’ve been lazy recently.

Anybody ever have one of those days where EVERYTHING goes against you?

Yesterday I had my first “fun with bad winter weather” day of the year. Thanks to global warming I haven’t had to deal with much ice and snow so far but yesterday more then up for it. And the funny thing is that each individual thing wasn’t too bad but the combination made for a nasty day.

We showed in Dayton at 8am. A nice morning show with out having to get up too early. I left my house with about 3 inches of snow on the ground and more coming down. The roads weren’t plowed but they weren’t too bad so it only took about 5 extra minutes to get to my parking spot at the airport. Of course the parking lot wasn’t plowed so I had to drag my roll aboard through 3 inches of the snow all the way to the terminal. Fun fun.

Our plane had been in the hanger overnight and they towed it to the gate. Of course they towed it the wrong gate and had to push it back, start it up and taxi it the correct gate. This led to us getting on the plane a little late and boarding a little late as well. Fortunately we didn’t have that many people so we were able to push 1 minute early and taxi to deice.

We pulled into the pad and I called the Deice guy on the radio. The truck was parked right in front of us and while I am talking to the driver the guy in the boom is trying to get the thing moving and gives us a thumbs down. Apparently they blew out the boom hydraulics. The driver said not to worry as another truck was on the way. 5 minutes a no truck later they called us back and said both other trucks were broken as well (dead battery and sputtering so bad they didn’t want to move it). Fortunately for us the FBO on the field does deice for other airlines so ops called them and after 20 minutes they came over and started deicing us. Of course they managed to spray more on the ground then on the plane but after 25 minutes (and the boom operator dropping the hose and spending 3 minutes trying to drop the boom down to pick it up while type 4 fluid sprayed all over the place) we were clean and ready to go.

DAY to PHL was an easy flight. It was the captain’s leg and he took off on a snow covered runway in about 3000 feet of visibility. We never really broke out of the clouds until we were descending into PHL. They cleared us for the visual for 26 and we flew by the city (pictures later maybe). Even though we were almost an hour late it didn’t really matter as we had a 3 and 1/2 hour sit. Yeah!

Fortunately our plane was on time coming in from New York so we left for Knoxville on time. My leg was mostly un eventful. On the arrival we hit some nasty bumps and heavy rain. We were landing to the North East with calm winds on the surface. However at 4000 feet the winds were the other way at 65 knots. In other words we were going REALLY fast towards the airport. The approach controller tried his best to get us set up right but we were fast and high intercepting the glide slope. I managed to get down and configured about 100 feet above our criteria for a stabilized approach, break out at 500 feet and land the plane.

Because the headwinds we were late getting in to Knoxville so we quick turned in the pouring rain and headed off to DC. The forecast for DC was calling for the snow that they were getting to turn to freezing rain later on. FYI that’s bad. We had to alternate airports on the release so with that in mind we took off and headed to DC. About 350 miles from DC we were slowed to 250 knots, although we were eventually allowed to speed up again. Then, closer in we were put in a hold due to the fact that they were going to close the airport to plow the runway. Of course the AA MD80 in front of us was told to “go fast” has he was the last one for the airport. Lucky him.

We got held up for about 10 minutes and then were cleared in on the approach and told to expect to hold on the ILS later on. We did this and were put in a hold at PISCA on the ILS 1 at 7000 feet. (PISCA is a mere 9 miles from the runway). There was a USAir 737 at 6000 feet and a MidEx 717 at 8000. In anticipation of the runway opening again they descended the 737 to 4000 and us to 6000. When the airport opened 10 minutes later we had just turned in towards the airport and the 737 had just turned away. So of course we were cleared for the approach even though we were 3000 feet high. Everything (flaps, gear, spoilers) went out and down we went. We caught up with the glideslope just outside the final approach fix and broke out of the clouds at 1000 feet. Forward visibility was bad but I could see lights on the sides of the Potomac below us through the snow. The runway appeared out of the snow at about 500 feet. There were airplanes everywhere waiting for gates, waiting to deice and take off. The captain managed a nice touchdown on the slushy runway and we skidded to a stop despite having been told that braking action was “good”.

Fortunately they had a spot for us to park at but the rampers could find the line on the ground so we sat and waiting for a few minutes while they kicked snow around to find the line. Eventually we parked and our passengers got on the bus to the terminal. There was some hope for us that they would cancel our trip to Huntsville due to the fact that many of our passengers hadn’t made it in yet. Unfortunately they planned on sending us anyways. We already down to a short rest period in HSV (9 1/2 hours) and as we were running late we would probably be reduced to 8 hours with a delayed departure the next morning.

We boarded up and after some delay headed off to the deice pad to get sprayed down. There was a pretty good line for the mainline deice pads but fortunately for us Express Ops uses a separate location and there was nobody else down there. After some confusion (we pulled into American Eagle’s spot) we parked and the pad operator plugged into the ground port and we set up for the deice. Just before they started spraying us the airport set to close down again so we would have had our hold over time expire before we can get out. So, being short on fuel we shut down both engines. About 20 minutes later they started up deice on us in the assumption the airport was going to open shortly. We finished up type 4 just as a new atis came out with freezing rain in it meaning we couldn’t take off anyways. Our hold over time with the type 4 on the wings was 35 minutes. I called ground ready to taxi once they opened the airport again and he told us it would be at least 40 minutes. Of course that wouldn’t work so called dispatch to see what they wanted us to do. After about 20 minutes of them doing what ever it is they do they, they ACARSd us to tell us the flight was canceled and to return to the gate.

Of course that was easier said then done as by then they had opened the runway again and everybody was taxiing out while we were trying to get in. Another 45 minutes and 3 runway crossings later we got back up to the ramp. We eventually got a ramp crew to unload the pax and a bus to put them on. Fortunately scheduling was able to get us a hotel (the normal one) and we took the metro through the sleet to there.

Over all it ended up being better for us as we got to show later then we would have in HSV and we got in about the same time. We actually spent more time on the ground going out and back to the gate then we were scheduled for going to HSV.

Ah yes, the winter time is fun.