I was trying to travel back home from Fort Wayne today from a family function. The flight was on a Delta Connection Carrier and was oversold. I manged to list for the jumpseat no problem (Thanks CASS!) after a moment of panic when I thought there was another Delta Jumpseater who would have bumped me out (turns out they were going to Atlanta) I was able to head down the jetway and request a ride from the Captain. The jumpseat is one of the last things that we as pilots still have in our control. So much now is controlled by the gate or operations or dispatch or some combination of agencies, that the Captain, who at one point in time was the commander of the ship, is pretty much left out of the equation on a lot of things. Of course, when bad stuff happens they are always the one left holding the bag.

Anyhow, correct procedures for jumpseating vary slightly and are often times hotly debated. The basic moral of the story is, even if you have been given an empty seat in the back and don’t need to use the actual flight deck jumpseat, you still need to speak to the Captain and request a ride. Call it professionalism, call it SOP or call it safety, unless you specifically are told not to, you damn well better do it (yes, I am talking to you Republic FO from CLT to IND last month!).

So I told the FA was going to sit up front if that was ok with the captain and gave her my ID and ticket. She passed that up front and then told me to go ahead. After introducing myself to both the CA and the FO I requested a lift (which they were happy to provide) and then got out of the way as they finished up the last of the departure setup. Once we were buttoned up and I figured out how to the pull the jumpseat into place (every type of plane seems to have a different combination of release points, latch hooks and flipping seats) I buckled in and they pushed off the gate and started engines. This was a ERJ, which is the jungle made equivalent of the Arctic Regional Jet I fly. In general it is the same sort of airframe (although slightly older), but watching the crew run through their procedures I was amazed at how different two similar airplanes can be. Granted, jumpseating on the airplane I actually fly, but on a different carrier can be an eye opening experience as operations can be very different even there.

It was a quick flight over to Cincinnati where I was going to connect to another flight back home to Dayton. We got up to 15,000 feet before they started us back down again. I spent most of the time noting the differences in displays, buttons and procedures between the two airplanes. Interesting to say the least. From my quick observations, with the exception of the thrust levers, which are like the CRJ700s, the CRJ200 seems much more advanced then the ERJ. A lot of the stuff that is automatically done on the 200 had to be manually done on the ERJ. Made me happy to be lazy.

We got a late runway swap at CVG which the crew handled smoothly and shortly there after the Captain made a very nice landing on 18C.

It’s always interesting to ride along on another carrier to see how they do stuff (and to hear how it’s not just your own company that is out to screw the pilot group). Mostly I was just glad to make it home.

Recently I’ve been getting books out of the library to read on trips. Lots of sitting around time = Lots of reading time. Anyhow, I’ve been reading the typical mix of mystery (Robert Parker, Michael Connelly), humor (Carl Hiaasen), airplanes (John Nance, Dale Brown) and some random biographies (Light This Candle by Alan Shepard was pretty interesting as we Dashiell Hammett’s biography). After going through all this pulp I figured I should venture through the non fiction section and stopped at a computer to look up Sebastian Junger’s newest book, [i]A Death in Belmont[/i]. Most people know him for his first book, [i]The Perfect Storm[/i]. He also wrote [i]Fire[/i], which is a fascinating series of short stories about dangerous places he’s been. I first read [i]The Perfect Storm[/i] in 2000. I then picked up [i]Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds[/i] (actually by a cousin of mine, Gary Pomerantz) which details the 1995 crash of an ASA Brasilia aircraft on route to Biloxi, MS. As soon as I finished reading that I read Jon Krakauer’s [i]Into Thin Air[/i] about the disastrous 1996 season on Everest. I figured I would get all my disaster reading out of the way at once.

The library didn’t have Junger’s newest book in so I went to pick up a copy of [i]Into Thin Air[/i] to reread. Once I got over to the mountaineering section of nonfiction (796.522 for you Dewy Fans) and picked up the book, I realized it was really to depressing to read again right now. I look around the shelves near it and my eye settled on a book titled [i]Below Another Sky[/i]. It looked interesting to I grabbed in and about a week later threw it in my laptop case to take with me on a trip.

I just finished it up tonight and have to say I would highly recommend it. The author, Rick Ridgeway is a long time mountaineer and writer/producer/photographer. He has done National Geographic productions and articles (some of which I actually remember reading) and had been a general outdoor adventurer for 30 years. In 1980 he was caught in an avalanche on a mountain in Tibet with 3 friends. He and two others survive but one friend is killed. 19 years later he takes his dead friend’s daughter to Tibet for a few months of trekking, culminating with a climb back up that mountain to find her father’s grave. The book combines stories of his past travels with the narrative of the trip he is currently on. A very good read.

One more day and I am done with this trip. Just CHA-DCA-DAY tomorrow. So far the weather looks good. Here’s hoping it stays that way.

Fall is just around the corner for sure. Today, my second of two days off, was pleasantly cool all day. It was warm enough to leave my windows open and wear a short sleeved shirt, but on the other hand I didn’t need to run the fans in my apartment. Also, here it is only 5:30 and the sun is pretty low on the horizon.

The shorter days show in my work schedule as well. With a few exceptions I’ve been flying late trips all summer. Normally we were done flying for the day somewhere between 9:30 and 11:00. Most days all but the last leg was flown in full daylight, and even that one normally started in daylight. Several times (notably heading south out of DCA) I was able to watch the sun “rise” in the evening as it had set just as we left the ground but as we climbed and increased our view over the horizon the sun looked like it was coming back up, only to set again a few minutes later as we leveled off and it kept sinking.

I don’t really mind flying at night. Over the summer it can make thunderstorm avoidance a little harder. During the day you can mostly see the cells in front of you (unless you are already in the clouds). On a moonless night, unless the cells are actually discharging (cloud to cloud lighting) you really can’t see much. The radar is only so useful so it can lead to some interesting scenarios. Fortunately, most of the small cells tend to die off as the sun sets. On the flip side the cooling air can lead to the bigger boomers starting to light off, however those ones are normally pretty easy to see.

Interestingly enough of the bigger issues at night is actually finding the airport. During daylight hours you can mostly pick out the airport environment and the runway if you know what you are looking for. Also, terrain is easy to see during the day. At night, the airport is just some more lights in what is normally a sea of them. High terrain looks like everything else and you have to use a bit more caution when cleared for a visual approach. When you are taxiing on the ground an airport seems to have lights everywhere. It is always surprising to me how hard all those lights are to see from the air. Often times the best way to find an airport is to look for a dark patch among all the other lights. Even once you have the airport in sight it can still be tough to find the runway, especially if there are more then one. To avoid confusion, runway side lighting is normally not omni directional, meaning you can only see it when you are facing the long way down the runway. Then all the individual lights line up and the big picture makes sense. If you know your heading, and the runway heading, you can often make a good guess as to which lights belong to the runway and get a sense of where the runway is. However, the trick then becomes finding where the end (the arrival in is more important) is so you can plan your descent to it.

We had this problem going into Chattanooga last week. The captain was flying the leg in from Charlotte. We departed just as it was getting dark and headed down over Greer, SC and then over the mountains into CHA. Visibility was excellent at altitude. At one point we could see Atlanta, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Nashville all at once. The airport is mostly aligned north-south and that night the winds were out of the North. We were arriving from the east so all we had to do was make a right turn and land. Unfortunately, the captain misinterpreted where the end of the runway was and we ended up having to do a 360 degree turn to lose altitude as we were way too high to land. It happens during the day as well, but not as often.

Happiness is (among other things) opening the wrapper on your straw and discovering it is a bendy straw. Wahoo! It helps when the kiwi lemonade it goes in is pretty good too.

I’m sitting in PIT for the next 3 hour s waiting for a flight down to Clarksburg to sit for probably another 5 hours and hope they are done doing work on the airplane I am supposed to pick up down there. Then I’m supposed to take the airplane to Charlotte and call it a day. So far I see about 8 hours of sitting around in my immediate future. Mmmm. Fun. Maybe I can find some more bendy straws.

All of our plates (short for approach plates which are basically maps of how to either taxi around the airport, get to the airport or get away from the airport) come from Jeppeson. Normally we just call them Jepps. Every 2 weeks (normally) there is a nice manila envelope waiting in everybody’s Vfiles that has the latest updates in it. Inside these envelopes are new pages for all the places that have had things change. The changes range from big (new runway added) to small (notes about birds in the area changed). Some times the plates even say No Changes, which is always puzzling as to why we got new plates to begin with. Updates are done by referencing a sheet that comes in the envelope that tells you which pages to swap with the new ones, which pages to destroy (ie, take out and NOT replace) and which pages to add. A “good” update might have 10 or so pages to replace (plus some index changes). A “bad” update may have several hundred pages. The most efficient time to do these updates is when flying on a longer leg. Some companies frown on this as it does tend to distract a person from other stuff (such as actually flying) but most people manage to multi task pretty well.

The last update we got (number 23 for anybody keeping track) was a bit of a sad one. There were only about 15 new pages in it but it had us remove a whole bunch of airports that we had plates for but never went to. Flying east towards New York I took a quick mental trip to places that I probably won’t see again with this company.

The first to go was Austin Texas. It was primarily there for an alternate for Houston if the weather got bad. I never went there and really have no desire to. I’ve driven through it once on the way out to Phoenix.

Next to go was Bangor, Maine. I was only there once and it was in the middle of the winter. Cold. Very cold. That’s one I won’t miss much.

Then the Dallas plates came out. Dallas has about 100 different arrival and departure procedures plus a whole lot of approaches and runway diagrams. I never flew to Dallas. The good news about this is that it freed up about an inch in my binder, making it much easier to flip through. The irony here was that this is the SECOND time we have removed all the Dallas plates. We stopped going there a while ago but then started up service, one flight on Saturdays only, so back came all the plates.

After Dallas came Exuma in the Bahamas. I flew in there once, but not in the CRJ. Again, it was an airport we served on Saturdays only. The update also called for the removal of Freeport, ending all of our Island Flying. Again, I never flew the jet out there, but having the plates always lent that hope that just MAYBE I’d get the trip some day.

Also in the “F”, Fort Lauderdale came out. I was in and out of there all the time when I was flight training in Stuart, but only went down there one in the CRJ. We used to have a trip where you’d start in Dayton, fly to DCA then to Orlando and then to FLL and call it a day. Then the next day you’d do 3 trips out to Key West and back. The next day was the same and then the last day was a reverse of the first day. It was a huge change of scenery and some of the most fun flying I’ve done here. We also removed Miami from our plates. Goodbye South Florida.

Also coming out was Houston (no more Texas flying for us), Des Moines (no idea why we had it to begin with), Omaha (an alternate for something) and State Collage, PA. Perhaps the most painful to remove was Portland, Maine. A beautiful airport which, when we had it, had a killer overnight.

It’s sad seeing some of these places go. As an airline we really don’t go into very many interesting places, although yesterday (DAY-LGA-PHL-Knoxville-DCA-Greer, SC) did hit some of the highlights. I just hope I get to see some of these places again.

Irony is dodging a whole bunch of thunder storms on final, missing a huge level 4 cell just on the other side of the airport, getting the walk around done just of as the rain starts to come down… and then getting COMPLETELY drenched (and almost struck by lighting) while walking to the car in the parking lot. My flight case and laptop case are just now drying out a day later.

Going around, or aborting a landing and heading back up into the sky, is something that gets practiced pretty much from day one of learning how to fly. Flight instructors are always coming up with creative ways to get their students to do the go around (“Look! A cow on the runway”) and a good student gets pretty adapt at rapidly switching from a landing mentality to a taking off mentality. The standard flow of a go around involves powering up, pitching up and cleaning up.

In smaller propeller driven airplanes, when you push the throttle up inside the plane the effect is pretty immediate, the engine starts developing power which is transfered to the prop which generates thrust and starts propelling the airplane forward at a greater rate of speed. Excess speed, when coupled with increased pitch equals altitude, which is exactly what you want when going around. In a jet driven aircraft the same principles apply however it can take a little bit longer for the excess airspeed to build as there are multiple lags in the system between bringing up the power and the acceleration due to the fact that thrust is generated by sucking in air, compressing it, rapidly expanding it (due to combustion) and then blowing it out the back of the engine.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of a go around is the pitch transition. In general an airplane in a landing configuration approaching the runway is pitching down or just above the horizon. To start climbing the nose needs to be brought up. In theory this is pretty easy, but in practice there is a fine line between arresting the descent rate towards the ground and controlling what airspeed you have so as you don’t get too slow and risk a stall.

After the plane starts accelerating and climbing, all the stuff hanging off needs to be brought in. This normally involves retracting the gear and bringing up the flaps just like a normal take off. However, in most cases you are going to have more flaps out then you would taking off. Different airplanes have different flap setups, normally referenced in degrees down from the trailing edge of the wing (although Airbus simplified things by naming each flap setting a generic number so pilots on the Airbus just call for “flaps 1″ or “flaps 2″). Most airplanes have fixed settings, although some (older model Cessna’s are the only ones I can think of) just have a switch that moves them up or down and you stop them where ever you want. In general flaps serve one of two purposes. They either serve as lift or drag devices. As a lift device they allow the aircraft to operate at a slower then normal airspeed due to the wing being reshaped by the flap hanging off the back and generating more lift. They function as a drag device by hanging out so far off the back of the wing into the air stream that they slow the airplane down or require more thrust to be used (more on this in a bit) to keep a set airspeed.

Again, different airplanes have different procedures, but in the CRJ the flaps come up from 45 degrees to 8 degrees (there is a stop gate on the flap switch at 8 degrees so it just takes a flick of the wrist) and then once the airplane is climbing and has a “positive rate” (of climb away from the ground) the gear comes up. This is so in the event of ground contact the gear would cushion the airplane from impact. Once a safe climb speed has been reached the remaining 8 degrees of flaps are brought up. In other airplanes the gear is brought up before the flaps. In some airplanes the flaps are brought all the way up initially. As previously mentioned flaps can either be used for lift or drag. On the CRJ flaps 8, 20 and 30 primarily generate more lift and allow the airplane to operate at a slower speed. Flaps 45, while providing a little lift, mostly function as drag devices. In other words, once flaps go out to 45 it requires more thrust to hold a given airspeed. The reason for this is that it can take a turbine engine so long to spool up and generate power, especially when spooled all the way down as it would be if there was not much drag and the airplane was descending towards the runway, it is faster to reduce drag by bringing the dragging flaps up then wait for the engines to spool up. Flaps 8 is needed during the initial climb out as the aircraft is still very slow and requires the extra lift generated by the flap setting.

Once climbing and clean a go around becomes just like a normal take off, although things come at you faster as you are normally well above what your normal rotation speed would be and you are starting at a higher then normal initial altitude.

So, lecture done, it’s story time.

Heading into Charlotte yesterday afternoon from Raleigh. Weather was 4 miles of visibility in mist and haze with a broken cloud layer at 4000 feet. Landing to the north, they turned us inbound for runway 36R. We were about 5 miles behind a US Airways 737 with nobody behind us on the approach. When we were about 4 miles out the 737 landed and tower had us slow to our approach speed so she could get an Republic 170 out between the 737 and us. We started to slow as the runway came into sight 3 mile miles in front of us. As we descending through 1000 feet the 737 (who had taken a long time to slow down and missed almost all of the runway exits) started to clear at the end of the runway. Meanwhile the 170 had pulled out on to the runway to wait for the 737 to clear and then take off. The controller, sensing it wasn’t going to work asked the 170 to taxi up to the first runway exit and clear the runway as the spacing wasn’t going to work. At this point we were going through 500 feet and had 2 airplanes on the runway in front of us. Dad (the 737) finally cleared, but Republic was barely creeping forward to the exit. At about 300 feet tower threw in the towel and told us to go around.

All in all it wasn’t too bad. They managed to slot us back into the arrival flow and we were only about 10 minutes late getting to the airport. Nobody’s fault really that it happened, although Dad could have made more of an effort to get off the runway and the 170 might have been able to exit quicker.

Pictures are up from August. That’s about it.