I finished up a 4 day trip (and the flying month of January) today with a dash against headwinds back into Dayton from Philly. We were trucking along at 79% of the speed of sound and managing just 350 miles an hour across the ground. The upside was the visibility from 6 miles high was spectacular. The weather system that blew through yesterday left some clear air behind it. Coming over the top of Pittsburgh and into Ohio, the string of lights of Canton, Akron and Cleveland were clearly visible to the north. To the north west the dim line of the Detroit lake shore could be seen, and over 100 miles due west Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati were clearly visible.

It had been a rather hard trip for me. The captain was very senior and just doesn’t care too much anymore. He didn’t really do much more then sit there. I flew most of the legs, I worked the radios in flight and I made sure the paperwork going out the door was correct. It was ok for the most part. I was comfortable with it, but it did involve a lot more work then normal. Fortunately for me, on this last leg home, the radio was quiet so I could enjoy the view without the constant interruption.

I’ve been in the right seat for just over 2 and a half years now. Earlier this month I was awarded upgrade to captain with ground school to begin in February. I have two 4 day trips at the beginning of the month and then I am done. 8 days of flying and I say goodbye to this seat that has seen me through my introduction to airline operations. On one hand I am really exited to take the upgrade. It means I will be logging command time which will help in my ultimate quest of getting out of here and on with a major airline some day. It means a bump in pay and it means a new challenge. The downside is it also means a huge loss in seniority. I will go from the top of the FO list to the very bottom of the captain list. But that’s all part of the game we play.

The material issues aside, being a captain (obviously) is a huge responsibility. You suddenly become responsible for not just your self, but also your entire crew, the airframe and all your passengers. You become the buffer between a company that is pushing for the flights to go and the reality that sometimes that just can’t happen. You have to know everything and even more importantly know when you don’t. Over the years here I’ve flown with some really good captains and some not so good ones. I think I’ve learned something from just about all of them (some did things I will emulate and some did things I will try hard never to do). The right seat is a learning environment, but only to a certain point. We are all hired as captain’s in training but need to be able to provide both the basic skills required to be a good FO as well as the learning skills required to absorb what the captain is doing. The view from the right seat is great. But that view is both of the outside going by several miles below and the other seat, just 36 inches to the left. This past trip has served as sort of a proof to me that I will be ok over there. I didn’t actually have the responsibilities of captain this time, but I ran stuff as I would if I did and it worked out well.

Descending over Columbus this evening the captain took back the radios and I started getting set up for the landing in Dayton. I took once last look to the north at Cleveland and was able to make out the neon lighting at the Airport Exhibition Center, 150 miles away. I pointed it out to the captain just before it passed back behind our wing but from his seat on the left side he couldn’t see it. I’m sure there will many more views for me to see from the left side, but I am certainly going to remember with some fondness the views my right seat has provided to me.

Some days, when you think things are going bad, something comes along and makes you realize, it could always be worse. Last leg of the night, from Charlotte to Akron and we get to the airplane to find no APU. (An APU is a small jet engine that provides electric power and air on the ground when the main engines aren’t running and it also provides air to to start the main engines). With out an APU you are pretty much stuck with what ever the temperature is and you need to have an external power source (like a really big extension cord) to provide power on the ground. Also, you need an external air cart which spins up the engines to a minimum speed before they light off and maintain their own rotation. All in all, it a pain to not have an APU, but it is workable. I spent all day yesterday with out an APU as well so at least I was brushed up on the procedures.

We were parked at gate 9 and loaded up our passengers. We saw on passenger go out the door and head towards the airplane parked on gate 7 (odd gates are next to each other) but we eventually thought we saw her come back to our plane. Once everybody was on board the flight attendant counted up our people and came out with 26. The gate agent then gave us the paperwork and there were 27 people listed. After some discussion we realized that somehow our 27th passenger had in fact gotten on the wrong plane and had not come back over (we had seen somebody else apparently). Also, that plane had since left and was taxiing out to the runway for departure to Jackson, Mississippi, which is no where near the same direction as Akron, Ohio. After some discussion the gate agent was able to call the other plane back and we decided that, because there was a later flight with open seats, we would get going and she would just have to go on the later flight.

We were able to get an engine started at the gate (using the ground air cart) and were about to push back but the rampers wouldn’t move us. Turns out, they had been told to hold us up for the passenger that was coming back. At this point the captain and I got a little frustrated because we were already running late (trying to find out why our passenger counts didn’t match) and thought we had worked things out so we could get going. By the time we clarified the situation to the rampers the other plane, with passenger number 27, was parked next to us so we popped the door and she ran over to us. How she misunderstood the flight attendant say Jackson instead of Akron I don’t know. We re ran out take off numbers for the extra person and one carry on bag while the Jackson flight pushed off the gate again.

I mentioned to the captain that it really was too bad for the other crew to be half way out to the runway and to have to come back. We might have been running late but at least we didn’t have a gate return. We then were cleared to push and this time the rampers did push us back. As we were backing up the Jackson flight started pulling back into the gate, still attached to the tug. The FO told ramp that their APU had just died. Shortly there after smoke started coming out the top APU door and there were flames visible for a few seconds through the APU exhaust hole. Their day just got a whole lot worse. As we spun out and headed towards the runways it looked like the flames were out but there was still a large amount of smoke coming from the vent. Hopefully it was nothing serious, but we weren’t going to stick around and check.

Fortunately for us there was no wait to get to the runway and we arrived in Akron only 3 minutes late. It was a quick 1 hour flight through snow and ice the entire way until we descended through 6000 feet into Akron. Over all not too bad for us. But I do feel bad for the Jackson guys who, if they even left Charlotte had an almost 2 hour flight ahead of them.

On another note my new camera is doing pretty well. The quality difference is pretty noticeable. Here’s two of the same shot, one with the old camera and one with the new.

Here’s New Bern at sunset with my old camera

[img]http://www.thegearmonkey.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=2028&g2_serialNumber=1[/img]

Here’s the same view with the new camera

[img]http://www.thegearmonkey.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=2072&g2_serialNumber=1[/img]

My new camera rocks. Of course, the batteries died (that might be a problem… unless the nicads do better then the normal ones). 10 megapixles makes such a difference. Also the fact it actually focuses in a normal amount of time. Oh yeah, it does video too. Youtube here I come. No… really.

Today was 4 legs. All over an hour. That was nice. The captain wasn’t so nice. Not too bad really, but still not all that great. We had two jumpseaters as well so that helped to pass the time. Oh yeah, no APU all day either. Fun fun fun.

So here I sit waiting for my movie to finish processing. Hence the random post.

One quick picture from last week.

On one of my days off I went down to Charlotte to see a friend’s band play. The DAY-CLT was way over sold and weight restricted due to the weather so I couldn’t even get on the jumpseat. Instead I headed over to Washington and then on to CLT from there. We shot the River Visual and I took a few pictures. The difference is I was sitting in the back shooting out over the wing.

Excuse the Treo quality please…

[img]http://www.thegearmonkey.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=2042&g2_serialNumber=1[/img]

Yeah, I’ve been MIA. So what.

So it seems that hotels have become the latest victim of energy costs going up. It used to be I would open the door to my hotel room and the lights would all be on, the heat or AC would be keeping the room a nice temperature and the TV or radio would be on. Now, the lights are off, the room is cold (or hot) and there is no radio or TV on. Ah how times change.

Tomorrow (well, it’s today already) starts after noon with a flight in to Charlotte and then up to Indy, on to Philly and then ending the day in White Plains, NY. Not too bad in theory, but the weather is supposed to die here in a few hours with freezing rain and slush expected all day. Hopefully the weather people are wrong and the day goes smoothly. As always, the end of January and the beginning of February are always the worst.

So here it is almost 2am, and I’m still wide awake. That’s what happens when you don’t get up until 11am. I’ve been slowly shifting my schedule later and later and for the past few weeks I’ve been going to bed after 1 and waking up after 10. I figure I function pretty well on about 9 hours of sleep. So I am getting enough rest, but I’m not sure how much I like waking up and eating lunch an hour later.

Part of the reason I’ve been doing it is on my days off I haven’t had much to do so I haven’t been having to wake up to get stuff done. The other reason is my flying schedule has been all late stuff recently and I’ve moved my sleep schedule around to accommodate it. However, by flying late I don’t mean much past 11pm at the latest (for the most part), so the staying up until 2 is slightly overkill. The only way I can justify it in my mind is that I don’t want to be at all sleepy when I am flying that last flight so I need to move my schedule back a few additional hours so it’s not even close. But again, I’m not liking it. And my worry is, that as it stays lighter later it is going to become more and more acceptable to me to stay up late like this because the amount of time of “night” that I am up will be getting shorter and shorter.

Oh well.

Yes… I’ve been bad and haven’t update. Shame on me.

Vacation was good. Almost 2 full weeks off. Went home, hung out, skied, hung out… Not too bad over all.

Today was day 3 of my first 4 day back. Day one was a nightmare (delays, had to kick a passenger off the plane, passenger lighting a cigarette on board during flight). Yesterday was slightly better. Today was fine. Charlotte was fogged in all morning so stuff fell apart. Fortunately for us, we managed to avoid the mess and flew our first three legs with out much problem. Our plane for the last flight (up to Akron) was delayed about 30 minutes, and a passenger had thrown up so we had to wait for HAZMAT to come and clean up the mess. We finally got on our way and headed north. The winds (at altitude) were out of the south-west, but Akron was reporting that they were landing to the north. This meant we would have a tailwind on the approach. Sure enough I had to wrestle the plane down through some pretty good chop and about a 50mph tailwind down the ILS. We asked tower what the surface winds were and they said they were from the north (which was good). An ASA (Delta Connection) plane had landed right in front of us and they said they had the tailwind until about 200 feet and then it moved around to the headwind. (I’ve written about windshear before, and this type is ok, although no windshear is good). It was nice they decided to pass along that information.

We landed, taxied in and headed for the hotel van. There was already another crew (from another regional flying for Delta) in the van. Normally (well, some times) a crew will wait if they know the other crew is coming. I’m not sure how long they had waited, but either way it was nice. Turns out the FO had grown up best friends with a Captain who just recently left PSA and who I had flown a bunch with. Small world.

I was going to write more, but I am fading fast and this is getting incoherent. Another time maybe.