I know I haven’t posted much recently. I’ve actually been on vacation since Christmas (ah, the joys of being senior) and the trip right before that was less then memorable. Also, I really should be packing right now as I am heading out the door at 4:45 tomorrow morning to catch a flight to Salt Lake City to go skiing. Of course, that means I’ll (hopefully) be sound a sleep when the year rolls over.

It hasn’t been a bad year over all. Of course, it could be better. The Spring was rough going for a while, but once the weather warmed up and stuff moved on by, life improved greatly. I was senior enough for most of the year to get the schedules I wanted (out of what was available anyways) and that helped. Over all I am writing off the whole year as a “learning experience”.

And on that note, I’m going to go pack and I’ll leave you with a few of the VERY few pictures I took in December.

This is the moon rising as we head out of Syracuse, NY. It’s the first time I’ve been able to to capture the moon and NOT have it blur.

An Airbus short final for 18L in Charlotte. It was REALLY windy out.

The whole weather thing worked out ok. We ended up departing Asheville in heavy rain and nasty turbulence all the way in to Charlotte. I shot an ILS down to near mins in heavy rain and nasty bumps with a kicking tail wind. We swapped airplanes (to one that had been shut down and had the galley door left open in the pouring rain) and eventually loaded up 50 people for the journey up to Albany. The ride north was pretty much moderate turbulence until we were north of Pennsylvania and talking to Boston Center. They eventually descended us into Albany were we broke out of the clouds and had the airport visually 10 miles away. The captain managed a nice landing with a pretty gusty wind and we taxied in to the gate. The first flakes of snow started falling while I did my walk around and we put the plane to bed. As I went to bed in my hotel room several hours later there were already a few inches on the ground and it was coming down pretty good.

I woke up at 5:30am unable to go back to sleep. I looked outside and there was about 8 inches of snow on the ground and under the orange glow of the sodium lights in the parking lot it looked like there was some mixture of frozen water falling out of the sky. About 7:30 (we had an 8:30 van) I checked the USAirways website and sure enough our ride down to Philly was canceled. Fortunately, the plane we had taken in last night made it out at 6:40, 40 minutes late. I figured scheduling would eventually call (haha) with a back up plan for us, but as we walked through the airport doors at 8:45 and saw a whole lot of red “canceled” notes on the flight board, they still hadn’t called. We went through an empty security checkpoint and out to the gate. Not surprisingly there were no passengers and no gate agents. The terminal looked sort of like the one in the Stephen King movie “The Langoliers”. Outside there was a Mainline 737 finishing the deicing process and a Southwest 737 was just pushing off the gate. Other then that there were no other airplanes in sight.

I checked flights on one of the gate computers and found that the only Airways flights out of Albany for the rest of the day that hadn’t already canceled were a 1pm down to Philly and a 1:15 down to Charlotte. As I looked at the numbers the ticket counter out front made an announcement that the 1:15 had just canceled as well. At that point we decided to call scheduling, so I dialed them. The scheduler I talked to was shocked that we were still in Albany as we were supposed to be half way to Philly by then. She had no clue the flight canceled and then had the nerve to criticize me for not calling earlier so they could work out something else.

She said she would work on it and call us back. She called back about 10 minutes later and told us we would deadheading down to PHL on the 1pm flight (which we were assuming was going to cancel as well because of the weather) and then deadheading back to Dayton on a 5pm flight and that the rest of our flying for the day would be covered by another crew. That sounded pretty good to me. I’d be getting home at 7pm instead of 10pm and I wouldn’t have to deal with New York were the wind was already gusting to 40mph. Of course, we had to get out of Albany first.

At that point a gate agent walked up and asked us what we were doing and we explained the situation. She said she was pretty sure that that one Philly flight was going to cancel as well because of the weather. About that time she got a call on the radio that Piedmont Dash 8 had just diverted out of Burlington and was on it’s way in to refuel and then head back down to Philly, as BTV was now closed for the day. I looked up the flight in question and found that it only had 26 passengers on it and 32 seats. We now had a way to Philly.

The Dash eventually landed and the gate agent went out to meet it. The bad news was they were weight restricted to just 26 people, but several passengers did want to get off and try driving to Burlington (normally 3+ hours, but who knows how long with the snow). In the end 15 people got off and we got on. We were airborn by 11am and landing in Philly at 12:20 with plenty of time to catch the 1pm flight to Dayton.

So in the end (after digging out my car) I was home by 3:30 instead of 10:30 at night. Some times things just work themselves out.

Here I sit in wonderful Asheville, NC (well, I assuming it’s wonderful, but we stay right next to the airport across from the interstate) wondering how tonight and tomorrow is going to play out. We are scheduled to depart here at 6pm tonight and head down to Charlotte. Then we are supposed to fly up to Albany, NY for the night. Tomorrow morning at 9am we deadhead down to Philly (on Air Wisconsin) and then fly PHL-New York-Dayton-New York-Dayton. At least that’s what we are supposed to do.

The weather here in Asheville is sort of dreary, but ok. It is supposed to start raining/drizzling later this afternoon. Charlotte is supposed to be about the same, so no problems getting down there. Then the fun starts. There is a major weather system (the second in 4 days) working its way west to east across the country. Right now it’s running in a north-south line from about Chicago on down to Little Rock. The southern half of the country is getting rain (hence the current Asheville weather) and the northern half is getting snow. Airplanes fly just fine in rain, and as long as it isn’t heavy, they do ok in snow. The problem lies in the fact that the rain doesn’t just magically, instantly turn into snow. There is often a line (both on the weather map, normally some color of pink or purple and vertically through the air as the temps change at altitude) where the precipitation isn’t snow and it isn’t rain.

There are all sorts of things that can be falling out of the sky in this zone. Freezing rain, hail, ice pellets and freezing fog are all possibilities. The problem is we can’t operate for very long in most of these forms of precipitation and we can’t operate at all in a few of them.

A quick note… we can land in pretty much anything. We do have to worry about airframe icing (ice builds up on the airframe and both adds weight to the airframe (bad) and changes the aerodynamics of the airframe (very bad). But we have a heated wing, engine inlets and as long as we have some airspeed the design of the plane prevents ice buildup so unless it is VERY bad (heavy or severe icing) we mostly can hold our own). However, once on the ground sitting at the gate, most of those protections go away. Hence, the only way to get the ice off the plane (and keep it off) is to spray deice and anti ice fluid. The deice pretty much uses the heat of the liquid and the force of the spray to melt/knock ice off the airframe. Then the anti ice fluid (which is much heavier and “sticks” to the plane) prevents new ice from forming. At take off speeds it is designed to slide off the plane as the normal anti ice systems kick into effect. The problem is depending on the air temperature and what is falling out of the sky, that anti ice fluid will only provide protection for as little as 10 minutes, or in some scenarios (snow falling mixed with ice pellets) no protection at all. Hence, we are grounded.

So, looking at all those factors, and then looking at the weather forecast for tonight and tomorrow, I see Dayton is supposed to be bad all day today, but improve (somewhat) later this evening. Unfortunately we aren’t going to Dayton tonight. Albany is supposed to be good (well sort of good) at our time of arrival tonight, but get bad shortly there after, including heavy snow at our time of departure tomorrow morning. Philly is supposed to go bad late this evening and stay bad until the forecast expires for tomorrow afternoon. New York is going to be ok, until about the time we are supposed to be heading up there from Philly at noon tomorrow.

The danger is, we get into Albany tonight, and then the originating crew who is supposed to take the plane we are brining in back out first thing in the morning gets stuck because of the weather. Then we get stuck because AWAC can get out of Philly to come up to Albany. So now we have a plane and two crews stuck in Albany (not to mention all the passengers, but when the weather goes bad, an airline mostly has to worry about positioning crews in such a way that when the weather gets better they can start the recovery process quickly). Best case scenario with that, the early crew is able to to get out and we somehow are able to get down to Philly, we’ve still got a day in the north east corridor in front of us with bad weather. And stuff backs up there even when the weather is good so it will be beyond ugly.

Operations has a whole bunch of options. They could just wash out our entire day of flying tomorrow and preemptively cancel our entire day. That means either we would go from Charlotte right back to Dayton tonight or we would try to get into Albany tonight and then instead of leaving the plane there we would fly it back out either to Charlotte or to Dayton right away. We could go to Albany and then try to get to Philly tomorrow and then either deadhead right back to Dayton or try to do one New York trip and drop the last one or they could just send us on our full day and just deal with what ever happens. Right now there is no way to know. Mostly they just play these things by ear.

My reassignment to 700 flying went rather badly. I should have known right away that the whole trip was going to be a stretch. I came off the very first leg into Charlotte on day one and was met by our Charlotte Base Coordinator with paperwork to report to a random drug test in 15 minutes. Every month the computer “randomly” selects names of flight crew members and then they work you into the schedule. You never know when it’s coming. I’ve been here over 2 years now and this was my first one. Some people get them two or three months in a row and then not for a year or so. What ever, it takes all of 10 minutes to go to the facility (located in the airport) run the test and head back to work. No news is good news.

The next day I was notified of my schedule change (as previously posted) and swapped over to the 700. It was a good crew so that helped but the trip fell apart quickly. The first night was in Birmingham. The weather was supposedly pretty good but as we headed into the clouds at 5000 feet I turned on my radar on the off chance there was something hiding out there. Sure enough bunch of red splashes filled the screen. Wahoo. The captain dodged and weaved down the approach and we broke out of a heavy rain storm at around 1000 feet. Fortunately the airport was mostly clear and we rolled out in light rain. Oh yeah, no jetway for us though so our passengers had to splash through puddles to get to the terminal. We got to the hotel by 11:30 (central time) and I was asleep shortly there after.

The next day we didn’t show until 6:30pm (that’s 7:30 eastern time) so we all headed over to the 5 Points in downtown Birmingham an had lunch at The Grill. It’s a pretty nice place that was still serving Sunday Morning Brunch when we got there. After a slow lunch (we had hours to go still) we headed back to the hotel. I watched the Pats-Steelers game (one of the FAs had a thing for “Ben and Tom”) so I’d heard so much talk about the game I figured I might as well watch it.

Just as I was heading out the door to get on the van scheduling called and informed me that because there was no originating crew for the next morning in Memphis, the captain and I were going to fly the airplane BACK to Charlotte that night after we flew the revenue flight out there. We were scheduled to get into Memphis at 11:30 CST so we wouldn’t be getting back into Charlotte until 3 or so in the morning. Our day just got a whole lot worse. I flew the leg back to Charlotte (which was already running late) and then we loaded up and headed out to Memphis. We got there and quickly unloaded and refueled the airplane while our FAs packed up their bags and headed to the hotel. The captain and I finished up the paperwork and pushed off the gate. I started up the right engine and then the left. Stuff was going well until the left engine stabilized and we got an N2 vibration indication. (Simplified, N2 is a measure of how fast, in percentage, the internal turbine is spinning. N1 is the measure of the fan blade speed, the thing you actually see spinning on the front of a jet engine).

We held on the taxi way while the captain called MX and tried to talk through the problem for about 50 minutes. Nothing they suggested seemed to work. Pretty soon it became clear they didn’t have a clue what was going on (they kept asked about N1 stuff and ignoring the fact that it was the N2 that was vibrating). We eventually came back into the gate (thankfully our ops guys has seen us sitting out there and stuck around). After about 30 minutes a mechanic showed up and our MX asked him to visually inspect the engine inlet and make sure all the fan blades were there. Remember, the N2 is inside the engine and there is no way to see it from the front. The mechanic agreed with us, although he was willing to do the inspection and send us on our way. After going back and forth for 30 minutes (and discussing us ferrying the plane to Dayton which was currently 1/16 of a mile visibility with fog) they eventually told us just to go to the hotel and we’d deal with it in the morning. Of course, before we could do that we had to taxi the airplane to another parking spot because the gate we were at was actually a Northwest gate and they needed it at 6am for the first bank of arrivals. We got to the hotel at 1:45 central time and were told to be back at the airport in 8 hours. Yeah, reduced rest!

The next morning, after a whole bunch of false starts we finally got paperwork from GE (the engine manufacturer) that said as long as we didn’t get the vibration alert out side of idle power, it was ok. We taxied the plane out with a mechanic on the jumpseat and ran it up to different power settings for a while. Nothing vibrated so we taxied back in, finished the paperwork and then repoed the airplane back to Charlotte. From there I dropped off the 700 trip and picked up the remainder of my 200 trip.

The funny thing about that was the captain I was supposed to be flying with had called in sick at the last minute so they grabbed another captain who had been scheduled to ferry an airplane to Mississippi to get painted. He was dressed in jeans and a tshirt. That instilled some confidence in our passengers. We managed a quick trip down to Columbia where we quick turned and then sat on the ground for 1 hour waiting for a slot to Philly. Once it came we headed north and were only slowed down and vectored off the airway 4 times. Pretty good for a bad weather day in Philly. Thankfully the weather was ok when we got there and we were able to find the runway about 2 miles out.

We managed a 15 minute turn in Philly and then departed off of runway 8 (it’s short and right next to the express gates so taxi time is quick. It was my leg and we blasted off the runway into a 2000 foot overcast. Just seconds before we went into the clouds the whole cockpit was bathed in green light and then I saw a very clear green dot on the clouds right in front of us. The captain reported he could see where the beam came from on the ground. We reported the lasing to ATC who gave us a phone number to call after we got to Dayton. The lasing of aircrafts has become somewhat common with a few reported events every month. It’s annoying and actually pretty dangerous as a laser beam in the eye, even at a few miles distance can cause serious injury, not to mention not being able to see to fly the airplane.

After that we battled a 80 knot headwind all the way out to Dayton. Fortunately the weather was ok and we were able to sneak in on the ILS to 24R despite the fact they were advertising 6L (the opposite end of the runway).

I’m really hoping my next trip is more of a non event.

As much as I hate Seinfeld, the soup nazi does provide endless amounts of parables. I am on day 2 of a 4 day right now. It’s actually a pretty good trip. The captain I am flying with is a good guy (who is leaving for greener pastures at the end of the month) and the overnights are ok (Chattanooga last night, Jackson, MS tonight and Bentonville, Arkansas on the last night). So what do they do? They pull me off my trip and have me go do a bunch of 700 flying with wonderful overnights in Birmingham tonight and Memphis on the last night. Lets see… the BHM hotel has this problem were people shoot guns in the parking lot. Nobody knows why but they do. And then Memphis… well, we just left that hotel for about a month because of a problem with bed bugs. But the hotel swears they’ve fixed the problem so we are back. Let’s just hope the creepy critters aren’t.

The reason I got put on the 700 trip is something that bothers me as well. When a pilot first starts flying a new airplane or switches seats in an airplane they have to do IOE or Initial Operations Experience. It’s where they fly with a special captain who gets paid extra to train people on the airplane. People doing IOE already have learned to fly the plane in the sim, but this gives them a chance to work out any quirks of the plane with an experienced and trained captain in the other seat. Most of these IOE captains also work as check airmen were they can do the required yearly evaluation flight of other pilots.

These captains have to fly with different people every trip due to the needs of evaluation. What most airlines do is award what ever line they can hold the captain and then award the line to what ever FO can hold it. Then, if the Captain has to train somebody (the IOE captains can fly in either seat so they can train captains or FOs) the FO who holds the line is re assigned another trip or sent home with pay. It works out pretty well for the FO most of the time as they get some paid time off. Where I work, because they are cheap, they don’t do it that way. Instead, if a Checkairmen Captain is awarded a line that line is withheld from FOs. That way they don’t have to pay for an FO to sit at home while the captain does training on the line. Great. Save a few bucks. However, the problem arises when there is nobody who needs training at that point. Now there is nobody to fill the other seat. So the company has to go dig up a reserve pilot to cover the flying and potentially deplete the reserve pool.

The problem in this situation is that we don’t have very many reserves who are qualified on the 700. So they often pull line holder (who is 700 qualified) off their trip to cover the 700 flying and then put the reserve back on the 200 trip. Lucky me.

One of the nice things about this job is the scheduling flexibility. Granted, some times it turns around and bites you, but in general, once you have a bit of seniority, you can get pretty much what you need as far as days off or times you want to/don’t want to work. I’m not a fan of early mornings (in general) so I’ve been working later stuff for the past 8 or so months. Every once in a while something early slips in and I have to adapt. It’s never as bad as I think it will be, but I’d still rather not be doing.

An interesting thing is that while I have been lucky in being able to drop or trade most if not all of my early morning stuff, not everybody is so lucky. Junior guys and people on reserve generally get what ever is left. That means the first day of a trip may be a 4am show followed by a late show the next day and finishing after midnight. It’s legal sure, but is it safe? It’s normal (here any ways) to have a four day trip with all early morning shows and then to have a one day trip tacked on the back that starts and noon and doesn’t get back until late at night. So for four days you train yourself to go to bed early to get up early (and by early I mean 8pm and 3am) and then the 5th day you need to sleep in enough to be able to stay awake (and coherent enough to fly) until midnight, 4 hours after your “bed time” for the last 4 days. Crazy.

I came off a 3 day trip of all late shows on Friday night. The first two days started around noon each day and got done around midnight. The last morning started at 9am (9:04 of scheduled rest that night) and then got done around 10 pm after we got back from New York. I then had Saturday off followed by a 6am show on Sunday morning. To prep for getting up early I went to bad Friday night as soon as I could (which was 1am by the time I got off the plane at 10pm, drove home, unpacked, caught up on the mail and went to sleep). I forced myself to get up at 8am so I would be tired by that evening. I kept as busy (laundry, run, more laundry, dishes, vacuum) as I could on Saturday to wear myself out to go to bed early. The plan mostly worked as I managed to get into bed around 10pm. I had to be at the airport at 6:25am so I figured 45 minutes door to door (it’s normally less but the weather was supposed to be bad) and 40 minutes to get up, shower, get dressed and out the door, meant getting up at 5am. 10pm-5am… wahoo, 7 hours of sleep before I headed out to work a somewhat grueling 10 hour duty day.

The plan almost worked too. I went to bed at 10 but some idiot dialed my phone (wrong number) two times at 12:15 and 12:17. I ignored it the first time but got up and answered it the second time. Obviously I wasn’t “Sally”. I got back in bad and then found I had a problem. I hadn’t really been that tired at 10 when I went to sleep (keep in mind I’d been up until 1 or 2 every day for the last week) and now that I’d just had a 2 hour nap, I was hardly in the mood to fall back asleep. I tried and tried and I guess at some point I succeeded. I do remember the clock reading 1:55 though before I did fall back asleep. I then woke up well before my alarm (like I always do) at 4:22 and somehow managed to go back to sleep (sort of) until 4:55 when I got up and turned off my alarms (I always set two, my phone and my alarm clock for 10 minutes later) before either one went off. I then started up the routine of slowly waking up and trying to get going. I managed a pretty good pace and was dressed and mostly ready to go by 5:30.

I then remembered that one of the buttons on my blazer was almost falling off and being held by just one or two threads. I figured I had time to sew it back on. Granted, Betsy Ross I’m not, even when I am fully awake and had plenty of sleep. So there I was at 5:30 trying to thread a needle with black thread and not poke myself while I sewed the button back on. It mostly worked. The button is a little crooked, but it’s not going anywhere.

I bundled up (it was cold this morning) and drove over to the airport in a light rain. The trip it self was pretty easy. Fly down to Charlotte (captain’s leg) fly to Pensacola and land from a visual approach in the fog (funny story) and then head back up to Charlotte with a full boat plus a jumpseater (the Airtran flight canceled). We sat in Charlotte for an hour and then deadhead in the back of a very full 700 up to Dayton. The weather was really bad and we got rocked most of the way in on the approach and broke out right at mins (I’d guess so anyways from sitting in the back) in a very heavy rain storm. The rain kept up on my walk back to my car (getting drenched for the first time today), my drive home, my walk into my apartment (drenched X2). It had let up some by the time I headed back out to the grocery store for some food, but of course started up again as I headed back out to my car lugging shopping bags (drenched X3) and as I unloaded the groceries at home (drenched for the FOURTH time).

Now, I am typing this at 11:30. I have a 10am show tomorrow which means I can stay up tonight (in fact I really have to because I need to make it until 11:45 tomorrow night) despite the fact I was up at 5am this morning.

Tell me how much I love this job again?