There comes a point in time when the body becomes so mentally tired it starts to physically shut down. I’m not sure when I hit that point yesterday, but I do remember trying to put the cap back on my bottle of water and having trouble getting the threads to match up right. By then we were on our last leg and the airport beacon was in sight and this gave the momentary boost needed to complete the flight.

The day had started 17 hours earlier with me waking up to my alarm at 8:45 in Columbia, SC. Our van time wasn’t until 1:30pm, but the hotel has a really good breakfast which they serve until 10am, so I forced myself up early to get some food. In the end I was glad I did, but as I chowed down on bacon, eggs, potatoes, fresh fruit and a VERY nicely made waffle (if I do say so myself) I was wondering if I would have been better sleeping in a bet.

We got in the van at 1:30 under hazy skies. As the van pulled out of the parking lot there was lighting visible to the south west, and about halfway to the airport the raindrops started falling. By the time we pulled up in front of the terminal the rain was pretty much blowing sideways and despite being under a roof to unload, we managed to get a bit wet. We passed through security without any problems, and just as we were clearing the checkpoint the power to the airport died. Backup generators kicked in within a few seconds providing slightly dimmed lighting, but interestingly enough, the screening machines and metal detectors weren’t connected to the backup power and the checkpoint had to shut down until power was restored. That was our first (and last for a while) bit of good timing for the day.

We wandered out to the gate only to find that the ramp was shut down due to lighting, and despite our plane being on the ground, it couldn’t taxi in and unload. And it stayed that way for just under an hour. There was one cell that was just sitting on top of the airport going nowhere, and in fact, building in intensity. Finally after an hour of waiting the weather moved off enough for the rampers to head back out and park the plane. They unloaded their people in a heavy rain and we got aboard as the other crew got off.

The rain stopped long enough for our passengers to board, and then as a second cell started to pass to the north of the field we hurriedly started out engines and taxied out before the ramp shut down again. Once out at the runway we were number three for departure, with the low level windshear system reporting potential shearing. The two planes in front of us (another CRJ and a PC12) blasted off with no problem and we in turn were cleared for takeoff. It was the FOs leg and I set the power for him. We stretched out our rotation speed to the fastest we could so we would have as much airspeed as possible once off the ground (in case we encountered the windshear and lost some speed). Sure enough through about 200 feet we got a high-low tone followed by the computer screaming “WINDSHEAR. WINDHSEAR”. Also the red word “windshear” came up on the displays as well as the AMI eyebrows. Oh yeah, and our speed dropped off about 20 knots.

The FO and I raced to see who could push in max thrust on the throttles first (I beat him by about a millisecond) and he kept the plane climbing. Fortunately the shear wasn’t too bad and we managed to force our way up to 500 feet where we exited the shear and started climbing normally. Once stable ATC gave us a turn to the west around the weather that was causing the problem and then we headed towards Charlotte. The rest of the flight was uneventful, but we both commented that that was the first time either one of us had seen a red windshear that wasn’t just a computer glitch.

We touched down in Charlotte with calm winds and I took the plane and taxied to the gate. Once there we quick turned (as we were scheduled for only a 40 minute break and we were already 50 minutes late) and I headed us out towards Montgomery. The weather the most of the way out there was pretty good, although we had to make one deviation just to the west of Athens, GA. There was a pretty good line of weather to the south west of MGM, but it looked like (from my phone’s radar loop) that it was going to stay south and not be a problem.

We started the descent into Montgomery with the winds right down the runway at 10 knots. I had the field visual about 10 miles out and they cleared us for a visual approach. At about 4 miles out tower cleared us to land and advised us that while the winds on the airport were still at 10 knots and down the runway the sensors at the far west of the field were reporting wind gusts to 35 knots and from the south (which was 100 degrees off the runway heading). Our good timing from before was about to leave us.

2 miles from the airport tower reported the winds were the same but the midfield wind sensor was now reporting heavy gusts too. Going through about 600 feet the plane took a huge lurch to the left into the wind and dropped about 100 feet. I got it back under control but found that where before I was pointed right at the runway, I was now crabbed about 45 degrees to the left to correct for the wind. The plane was also bucking like crazy and at 400 feet I was just thinking about maybe going around when the bottom fell out, and for the second time that day the red windshear AMI came up and the plane started yelling at us.

A low level arrival windshear go around is accomplished by holding whatever configuration you are in until you are clear of the windshear. If the flaps are full and the gear is out, you leave them there despite the extra drag they may cause (in a normal go around, the flaps immediately go to 8 degrees and the gear comes up). That way if you have inadvertent ground contact you have the gear out to cushion the plane. I got the power in to go around by about 300 feet and we leveled around 200 feet before starting to climb. I’d be carrying a bit of extra speed so despite losing about 15 knots we never got much slower than our approach speed. My FO called the go around to tower and he climbed us to 3000 feet. Through about 1000 feet we came out the back side and started picking up speed. I called for the flaps to 8 and the gear up and actually had to pull the power back as to not overspeed the flaps as they came up.

Once level at 3000 feet we checked our fuel and found, to nobody’s surprise we had enough fuel to wait about 15 minutes and then would have to head to our alternate of Birmingham. I’d actually joked about this while we were sitting at the gate in Charlotte. I commented that giving us 10 minutes of holding fuel doesn’t do us any good if there is just one cell sitting on the field and we have to wait it out. If we could wait 30 minutes it might be gone, but unless we time it just right, it isn’t going to go anywhere in 15 minutes. That was the case here as we waiting for our 15 minutes and found that the winds on the surface were still gusting to 35. At that point we could have waited another 5 minutes, but if we waited 5 minutes and then went and shot the approach and had to go missed again, we wouldn’t have enough fuel to make it to BHM safely, so we decided to bug out to our alternate.

20 minutes later I touched the plane down on Birmingham’s 12,000 foot runway and taxied in to the gate. They parked us and told us that Dispatch had called them and said to get us fueled and heading back to MGM as soon as possible. I called dispatch and after he voiced his surprise that we didn’t get in (“everybody else made it… I don’t know why you didn’t hold longer and then go in”) which I tactfully ignored and pointed out maybe if they had given us more than 10 minutes of holding fuel we might have gotten in, he said the winds were dying down there and we should be good to go. I agreed with that assessment and 30 minutes later we were air born again. A quick 20 minutes flight (through a rainbow no less) had us back on final into MGM where the winds were in fact calm now. I managed a nice landing (I figured I owed our passengers that much) and taxied in. Interestingly enough, just about all of them were ok with taking the diversion and were very thankful to eventually get to MGM. Looking back on it, I think those few seconds on final the first time around were much rougher then I originally thought, as I was busy fighting the plane during that time and didn’t realize how nasty it actually was.

From Montgomery we headed east back to Charlotte with my FO making a nice landing with a huge thunderstorm bearing down from the west. About 6 planes made it in behind us before the field was hit with heavy rain and wind gusts of over 35 miles per hour. After clearing the runway I taxied as fast as I could (a VERY brisk walk) to try to get our people off the plane before the weather hit. In a perfect world (which it at that point it certainly wasn’t) we would unload, and get inside before the weather hit, giving us time to go get dinner while we waited for the ramp to reopen.

Of course, it didn’t happen that way. Our gate was occupied, and we waited 5 minutes for them to push and clear out. We then pulled in only to wait another 3 minutes for a gate agent to show up. With the gate agent in place, the traffic lights yellow and lighting striking the western airport boundary our passengers started to get off. We had about 30 and the first 10 made it ok as the rain drops started to fall, but then the ramp lights went red. There was a moment or two of indecision while another 10 passengers managed to get off the plane, but then the gate agent said that was it and pushed our door shut trapping 10 passengers and us three crew members on board. And there we sat. For 1 hour and 35 minutes.

Once the ramp reopened we unloaded our remaining 10 passengers and as soon as they were off and the rampers had pulled the bags out of the bin our next batch of passengers were heading out the door. About 20 minutes later we had the aircraft buttoned up and were pushing back to head down to Panama City. I honestly don’t remember much of the taxi out. I think there were storms still in the area, and we had to bob and weave a bit to get going southbound, but at that point I was just watching the distance to go number spin down for 400 miles to zero.

Tower had long since closed when I finally put the wheels down on Runway 14 at PFN. We cleared the runway and of course couldn’t reach JAX Center to close our flight plan so once we were parked at the gate and the FO went to do his walk around I called the wonderful people at Lockhead Martin (who now operate the Flight Service Stations) and had them close it for us. Mission accomplished I shut down the plane and we headed for the hotel van. 20 minutes later we were at the hotel and somehow I managed to stumble up to my room and make the necessary preparations for getting into bed.

I really don’t want to do a day like that again any time soon.

Here’s the flight through the rainbow. I have a video clip too, which maybe I’ll post later

Nights can be sort of evil in the summer. I started in Dayton with a 4:35pm show for a 5:20pm departure. In theory the day was simple with a 3 hour sit in Charlotte and then heading down to Little Rock for the night. Stuff started going badly with our inbound aircraft being delayed and our departure being pushed back to 6:45. We managed to get off the ground by 7pm and made good time until we were about 150 miles out of CLT when we started getting into the weather.

We avoided the worst of it, although did get rocked a bit going through about 6000 feet. We landed, taxied in and got the plane shut down just as the first raindrops started falling. While we sat out our (now shortened) 3 hour break the weather hit and the airport pretty much shut down. Our scheduled departure time of 10:20pm came and went with another airplane (the one we brought down from Dayton) still parked on the gate, and the plane we were waiting on sitting on the ramp waiting to get in.

The ramp finally opened up again and the flight pushed off. Several minutes later our plane pulled in and unloaded. The weather seemed to be holding pretty well, although the inbound captain called the last few minutes of their ride in “sporting”. We started boarding our passengers shortly there after, but only managed to get about 10 on board before the ramp shut down again. We were on a jetway and could have kept boarding, but I saw no reason to keep putting passengers on when there was no place to go so I told the gate agent to hold up the boarding.

25 minutes later the ramp opened and we finished loading our people. Then we sat for 45 minutes waiting for a fueler to get to us as they were backed up from being forced to seek cover during the ramp closer. Eventually we had our gas and were ready to go. My FO called for push back clearance which we got, and with lighting still lighting up the sky we pushed back. Once the tug was disconnected and the right engine spinning we called for taxi clearance and I turned the tiller to head to the line.

The nosewheel moved about 50 degrees left and then stopped. The tiller returned to center and we got a “NWSTEER INOP” caution message. I tried cycling the switch on and off a few times but that didn’t seem to fix it. I then tried just using the rudder peddles to straight the nose out so we could taxi back to the gate, but the wheel was jammed hard to the left and every time I released the brakes to try moving forward we just drifted closer and closer to the plane parked next to us. Unfortunately, the second time I tried we rolled so quickly I had to slam on the brakes (which are much more sensitive in the 700 then the 200) and ended up knocking one of the FAs off her feet in the back.

10 minutes and a bunch of hand signals later we were able to communicate to the rampers that we would need the tug to pull us back to the gate. Meanwhile we were holding up all the outbound traffic and were getting heckled on the radio about how we broke the airplane and ways to fix it. We finally made it back to the gate where MX gave us some circuit breaker pulls to try. The first once seemed to fix the problem and 10 minutes later the door was once again closed and we were pushing back. This time we made it out to the runway with no problems.

By now it was 11:20 and the two main runways were shut down due to noise programs so we taxied out to runway 5 and blasted off into a sky that was still throwing out a good bit of rain and lightening. The climb out to the west we pretty bumpy but by the time we were west of Nashville the ride smoothed out. Descending over the top of Memphis we were handed off to another center controller who welcomed us aboard with the sounds of an Eric Clapton song playing in the background. My FO commented he liked the music and we got about 10 seconds of just the song playing over the frequency. The FO qued up the mic and sang about half of the next verse back. There was a slight pause and what sounded like a whole bunch of people laughing. Ah, things that can go on at 2 in the morning when you are the only plane in the sky. Before he handed us off to the controller he played a few seconds of another song and had us guess the tune. we agreed it was Led Zeplin but couldn’t come up with the name. It turned out to be Over the Hills and Far Away.

25 minutes later I was flaring the plane out over the numbers on 22R at Little Rock and 10 minutes after that we were unloading the last of our passengers and shutting down the plane. Of course the hotel van had long stopped running so we had to endure a cab ride with a driver who was either drunk or blind (or maybe both). Somehow we survived and after checking in I crashed on my home-away-from-home bed at 2:45am.

Yesterday I managed to do something I have never done before. I missed my show time. I was on reserve and got a phone call from a former captain here who had an extra ticket for a baseball game. Seeing as it was already 5:45pm and scheduling hadn’t given my anything yet I figured I probably wasn’t going to get used and accepted the offer to go to the game. Just to be safe I threw my flight case and overnight bag in my car.

Of course, halfway to the stadium my phone rang it’s wonderful scheduling ring. They assigned me a Paint Shop trip down to Greenville, Mississippi, with a show time (I thought) of 10:30pm and a 11:15pm departure. That worked well with the baseball game plan as the games normally finish up around 10pm, giving me plenty of time to head north to the airport.

The game got off to a pretty bad start with the other team scoring two in the second, but the Dragons came back with two of their own and then one more. Then in the middle of the 5th inning, at 8:45pm my phone rang again. It was scheduling wondering where I was, which confused me to no end as I thought I had another hour and forty five minutes before my show time. Turns out I’d heard wrong (and as I wasn’t home I hadn’t ever looked it up on CrewWeb) and I in fact had an 8:30pm show with a 9:15pm departure. Oops!

Fortunately, this was a repo flight so there were no passengers to make late and on top of that, the plane didn’t actually get to the hangar until almost 9:10pm. Despite my late start I was on board with the engine running by 9:30 and by 9:45 we were airborne and heading south to Mississippi. The ride down was pretty good until around Memphis, were a large line of weather was throwing off some electricity, and as we transitioned down wind of it, the air got pretty turbulent. As we needed to descend soon to land anyways we started down early and found some smoother air, but got to wondering how much the weather would impact our return trip.

I was flying with a brand new FO who just finished IOE last week. He had about a year of experience at another airline that had shut down before he came here, so despite his low time in the plane, he was keeping up pretty well. Also, because we are over staffed here due to fewer (ok, almost no) pilots moving on to other places, we are furloughing the 27 most junior guys starting July 1st. So this guy was going to be on the street in a few weeks. Despite the probably distraction in his mind he managed a very nice landing at GLH before I took the plane to taxi to the paint shop. This being my second trip here I at least knew where to go this time.

We parked next to the plane coming out of paint (actually the one I brought down a few weeks ago) and shut down. While the FO did a walk around I dragged my stuff over to our new plane and got stuff started. Being a typical Mississippi night it was relatively hot and VERY humid and the mosquitoes were out in force. Of course, the plane had been sitting out in the open for several hours with the door open so it was just full of bugs.  I managed to swap about 10 of them while getting power on the plane, but a few managed to get some bites in as well. With the air vents full open I was able to keep most of them away from me, but did get bit a few more times on the way home.

After a thorough walk around a preflight we got the engines turning and headed back out. The FO took this leg as well and despite having to skirt a little bit east of the weather now passed Memphis, we made good time coming home and were parked back at the hangar in Dayton by 2am.

Here’s the freshly painted 256 in the moonlight in Greenville, MS.

There seems to be some unofficial rule that the last leg of a trip can’t go smoothly. Whether it’s being delayed at the gate for some reason, having to deal with an enroute MX problem, or weather at the destination, it just seems that you can arrive early every leg of a trip and still manage to get home late.

Last night our final leg was from Philly back to Dayton. We came into Philly up the east coast from Columbia, SC, and despite get slowed and vectored a bit we managed to get into Philly a few minutes early. I grabbed a “small” bowl of ice cream (which the lady piled with about 6 scoops) and we boarded up. The release had no alternate (which we need when the weather is bad or forecasted to be bad at our destination) so that was a good sign. However, upon actually looking at the weather there was a temporary forecast from 9pm until 11pm (with our arrival time at 10pm) for 1 mile visibility and thunderstorms. Interesting…

I called dispatch to get an alternate put on and was told the weather was just at Indy at that point and moving east. That didn’t sound good at all. A quick look at a radar picture on my Treo showed a very solid line stretching from the Kentucky-Indiana border north to just south of Toledo, Ohio. That didn’t look good at all. It was pretty much going to be a race between us and the weather to Dayton. We had about 500 miles to cover, and would be doing it at about 500 miles per hour. The weather had about 60 miles to cover and was currently moving around 50 miles per hour. But factor in that we still had to finish boarding, taxi out and then take off, things weren’t looking too good.

Our alternate was Columbus, which while scheduled to remain clear for the time we needed, is east of Dayton, which means, if we couldn’t get into Dayton and went back to Columbus, we’d have to sit there while the weather continued working east, over the top of Columbus, and only then could we launch back for Dayton.

With all that in mind we loaded up our 39 passengers and taxied out. Fortunately there was no line and we were quickly air born heading west into the sunset. Through 10,000 feet I turned on the autopilot and started monitoring our fuel. We had original planned to fly to Dayton at 30,000 feet but Cleveland Center stopped us at 28,000 as 30,000 had been reported to be choppy. 28,000 wasn’t very good either so we descended down to 26,000 which remained tolerable.

Many of the airports we fly into have digital weather reporting systems which means we can get the weather, no matter how far away we are. Other’s only broadcast it over a radio frequency so you generally have to be within 100 miles of the airport before you can hear it. Dayton is one of these airports. However, Indy has digital weather, so just east of Pittsburgh I sent a request for the weather at IND.

The interesting thing in the report is that the storm had pretty much moved on as the wind had died down and the barometric pressure was back up to 29.89. The whole string of C’s translates to “Frequent Lighting, In Cloud, Cloud to Cloud, Cloud to Ground”. Not a good place to be. But, that was actually the back side of the storm, as the weather itself wasn’t too bad (winds only gusting to 17 knots and light rain). So if the storm had already left IND, that meant it was now heading towards Dayton.

In flight our radar is limited to what is right in front of the nose out to about 80 miles ahead of us, so sitting almost 150 miles from Dayton at 22,000 feet there was no way to know how close the weather really was. With that in mind I sent a message to dispatch asking how it was looking.

It’s never a good sign when dispatch tells you to fly fast.

About 80 miles out and descending through 18,000 feet just to the east of Columbus (which was completely clear) the radar started painting red swatches just to the north west of Dayton, and we could start to see lighting out the front windows. Indy center told us it looked like the weather was currently about 15 miles from the airport. This was going to be VERY close. I kept the speed up and Indy gave us direct the field. They even worked a hand off direct to Dayton Approach for us so we could get vectored right in. I held 310 knots until they brought us through 10,000 feet and then slowed to 250 knots. The lighting was almost a constant glow to the north west and the red on the radar now showed purple centers. The nearest cell to the airport was about 3 miles away as we descended through 5000 feet. The ride was still mostly smooth and I kept the speed up. A Delta Connection CRJ made a short approach in front of us and was cleared to land with the winds currently from 240 degrees (right down the runway) at 15 knots. As he taxied clear we descended through 3000 feet.

The weather wasn’t actually at the airport yet, so we’d been able to see the beacon and the runways for almost 20 miles and had been cleared for a visual approach. There was a pretty solid line of red on the radar stretching from just to the south west of the field, all the way around to the north. Through 3000 feet the ride became very choppy and when we were handed off to tower they cleared us to land with the winds now from 310 degrees at 35 knots.

At this point the airplane was getting pretty difficult to control and the airspeed was fluctuating about 20 knots up and down due to the bumps. I did some quick thinking in my head and ran the pros (not very many: the airport was still visible, the winds, while strong, were not gusting (yet) and were (barely) within the legal limit of 27 knots of crosswind) and the cons (lots of them: the ride was falling apart, the wind had shifted almost 90 degrees and doubled in velocity in just 4 minutes, even though there weren’t gusts yet, there may be at any time, and if we had to go missed, which with the current winds and the bumps was a very good possibility, there really was no place to go because of the line of weather). I took one more look at the radar picture, and then up at the airport which was routinely being illuminated by the lightning now just a mile away and decided discretion in the better part of valor and told my FO we were getting out of there.

Tower gave us a climbing left turn back to the south and then east, away from the weather. As we started to turn the ride got so bad the autopilot was have trouble figuring out what to do so I turned it off and hand flew back to the east. After about 30 seconds of not really being able to see the instruments due to the bumps we broke into smoother air. In the middle of the turn as I was trying to find outside references to fly by (it was dark, but still visual outside) I saw a bright green flash of light on the ground in front of us. Somewhere in the back of my mind it registered that that was the Laser Light show that they do at night down town after a Dayton Dragons game ends and wondered who had won. I quickly suppressed that random thought and got back to flying the plane. Once things calmed down a bit I reengaged the autopilot and took a quick look at our fuel.

The number I saw was pretty good and gave us about 45 minutes before we’d be at our minimum reserves. I thought briefly about holding somewhere and waiting for the weather to move off the field, but because we were to the east, and that’s the way the storm was moving, we’d have to punch through it to get back to the airport, and I really didn’t want to do that. The other option was climb up higher and try to poke our way through to the other side and then sneak back into Dayton from the west, but from what I’d seen on the way in from the radar there wasn’t too many holes to be found. With all that in mind we headed east back to Columbus.

It took all of 15 minutes to get lined up for 28R into CMH where I managed a pretty nice landing. Columbus Ops didn’t sound too happy to see us (nobody wants an extra plane on short notice) but gave us a gate. Once parked and shut down I took a trick from a playbook of Captain I’d flown with in the past and used the FA’s PA to talk to the passengers so I could at least make eye contact with them instead of hiding out up front. After letting them know what was going on (actually, I said, I’m not sure what’s going on yet, but give me a few minutes and I’ll let you know) I called dispatch who said the weather was pretty much breaking up and we should be able to launch right back to Dayton and have no problem.

That didn’t sound right to me and a quick look at the radar map showed that if anything the line had strengthened slightly, and although it was breaking up to the north there was no way for us to get from Columbus back to Dayton. I called dispatch back and told them that I wasn’t see what they were seeing and I was planning on sitting it out in Columbus until the weather blew over and then heading back to Dayton. They said that was fine (although I’m thinking they may have called me some names after I hung up) so I informed the people of our plan, and told them that I would get them off the plane just as soon as the gate agent came back from unloading another plane. With the exception of one guy who complained that he was being held hostage on the aircraft and DEMANDED to get off, everybody else was pretty calm. Fortunately the gate agent showed up in about 15 minutes and out passengers headed up to the boarding area to sit it out.

About 45 minutes later the line came through Columbus, and even parked at the gate the plane bounced around a bit in the wind, which according to the tower was gusting to 41 knots. After the line moved past we re boarded our people (minus about 5 who chose to stay in CMH) and taxied out. The the wind was down to about 5 knots and despite some lighting up to the north the radar sweep we took right before I powered up showed nothing to the west.

The climb out from CMH was pretty smooth and despite some light rain the visibility was good, with Dayton coming into sight as we climbed through about 5000 feet. There was a few patches of light chop enroute, but for the most part it stayed smooth, and 14 minutes after taking off I put the wheels back down on 24L in Dayton in calm winds. A quick taxi to the gate and we were parked and shut down at 12:05, just two hours and five minutes later then planned.

While sitting on the ground in CMH and while driving home from the airport I was second guessing myself a bit, about if I should have continued the approach into Dayton the first time, or if I should have maybe broken it off sooner. Who knows. It came out ok in the end, and I realized these are the sort of PIC decisions I’m going to have to make for the rest of my career when ever I’m in the left seat. Part of the job I guess.

I forget how exciting flying can be for some people still. Kids, generally, still get a big goofy grin on their face every time their parent encourages them to stick there head up front. For them, all the glowing screens and buttons and switches must look like the biggest toy ever made by Matel. Yesterday on the PHL-Charleston, SC leg we had two little girls (both less then 5 I’d say) who stopped by up front to say high. The younger one apparently did all the talking, and her older sister simply smiled and nodded. It was their first flight on an airplane ever and I don’t know if they were more excited about that or going on vacation to “a place that is the same as our last name” as the younger one pointed out. Either way they took a good look around, said hi to Chuck The Monkey (my semi official Mascot and dashboard ornament), showed my their pink Barbie Sunglasses and then headed back to their seats.

The flight down was pretty routine, other then a abnormally warm cabin temp due to a 40 minute wait to get to the runway. Once down there I managed a nice landing on Runway 15 and headed in to the gate. I normally stand and say goodbye to the passengers when it has been my leg (and encourage my FOs to do the same on their legs) and was surprised at how friendly and happy everybody was getting off, despite how hot it had been on board. Southerners are both polite AND used to the heat. The two little girls and their mother were the last ones off the plane. The quiet one even managed a little thank you and the younger gave me a big smile and hugged my around my legs and said thank you.

My point I guess, is I take for granted how out of the ordinary it is for some people to get in a small, hot and cramped metal tube at one location, and then walk out into the bright sunlight in an entirely different place. I certainly don’t get that feeling in an airplane much any more, but on long transcon or international flights, especially to places I’ve never been before, I am reminded of just how magical it can be.

The airline industry is in serious trouble right now. Fuel has almost tripled in two years and airfares have barely budged. Airlines are living off of the money they made over the past few years while life was (relatively) good. Of course, that can’t last very long and in order to attempt to make up the shortfall they are starting to cut services. Fewer flight to fewer destinations. No more free snacks. No more free drinks. Harder to earn/redeem frequent flier miles. They are also adding nickel and dime fees in the hope the passenger will still buy the initial “cheap” fare and then not associate the “extra” costs with that specific airline and still buy a ticket on them in the future. It’s a shell game really.

We are starting to feel the crunch here. Mainline is furloughing 300 pilots and our junior 27 guys are going to be on the street starting July 1st. Hopefully it ends there and nobody else gets the boot, but unless something drastically changes I just don’t see that happening. Personally, I am probably safe from furlough, unless we park about half our fleet, but it is very likely if there are any more reductions that I could be forced back to the right seat. Not much I can do about it so there’s no sense in worrying.

Yesterday was day 2 of a 4 day trip and for whatever reasons it just dragged on and on. We started in Gainesville, FL and managed to make it to Charlotte despite Jacksonville Approach trying to vector us into every thunderstorm possible until we got over the FL-GA border. Once in Charlotte we headed up to Charlottesville, VA. We had the door closed 5 minutes early but of course the ramp wouldn’t push us until 2 minutes prior to our scheduled departure time (in case any last minute bags showed up). Well, of course, no bags arrived, but in those three minutes our push crew wandered away and then when they finally came back (3 minutes late now) there was an airplane behind us so we ended up being 10 minutes late off the gate.

That translated into 20 minutes late into CHO (due to a huge line to get to the runway in Charlotte) but with only 8 passengers coming back to Charlotte we turned the airplane in 16 minutes and WOULD have been back on time except for the fact we had to sit by the runway and wait for a slot into Charlotte for 39 minutes. Despite being 15 minutes late (with a scheduled 35 minute turn) I managed what might have been might nicest landing ever in the airplane (I couldn’t even tell if we were on the ground or not) and then took a short cut to beat 2 Mesa 900s to the gate. Highlight of my night for sure.

We managed a quick break for dinner and then loaded up 45 people to head over to Newport News for the night. The timing worked out just right that Norfolk Approach handed us off to Tower, I checked and she said she was closed for the night as of 5 seconds ago and we were on our own. Oh boy. We survived a landing into an uncontrolled field (for the second night in a row as Gainesville Tower had been closed the night before) and taxied to the gate.

Today is a deadhead up to Philly and then a Charleston, SC turn followed by a flight down to Columbia, SC for the overnight. And the best part… Tomorrow is going home day.

Goodbye my good friend… We’ve been through so much together since we first started working together over 4 years ago. The documents we typed out, the webpages we designed (badly), the games we played, although not so much recently as you just physically weren’t up for it. You’ve come on almost every trip I’ve worked for the Airline, not to mention the few vacations we’ve taken together. You’ve seen my through the three relationships that all ended one way or the other (but all ended) and lived in 6 different apartments and god knows how many hotel rooms with me.

You were a good laptop and I’m going to miss you now that your motherboard shorted out and you won’t turn on any more.

Yes, I know, I’ve been posting a lot of fluff recently. Lists, pictures, reminders and comments seem to have been making up the majority of my recent musings. The reasons for that are twofold (ok, maybe threefold, but that doesn’t sound nearly as cool as “twofold”). Firstly, I haven’t been doing much interesting stuff recently. I can really only type so much “took off, landed, rinse and repeat” before I get bored, and I’m sure my readers (if I actually have any) do as well. Secondly, I was in the process of updating the technology on the site and copy over posts from the old database. I didn’t really want to add to the backlog so I just didn’t post anything new. And that leads directly to the third (ie, threefold) reason. I’m lazy.

Today was day 2 of a three day trip with early shows the first 2 days and a normal show on day three (and, because of that, a rather late finish). As you’ve gathered from the previous few posts the early mornings haven’t been too kind to me. I’ve averaged about 5 hours of sleep over the last two nights, and even though I was up before my alarm this morning it was very hard to push myself out of bed.

I somehow managed and went through my normal morning routine and was downstairs waiting for the van at 4:55am. I walked off the elevator and saw a flight attendant wearing a US Airways uniform (but he wasn’t part of my crew so there was at least one other crew) and an ExpressJet FO sitting in the lobby already. So that was 3 separate crews of three trying to go to the airport at 5am. Good thing we had a 15 passenger van. But wait… the elevator door opened just as I sat down to wait and a captain with an ASA badge got out. Uh oh… 4 crews now. 12 people. 15 passenger van. BUT… the last row of seats was out of it to fit all the bags that we lug around. Hmm. 12 People plus 1 driver equals too many people or not enough seats depending on your point of view.

In the end we managed because the PDT captain ended up sleeping in and took a later van. It was tight, but fortunately it’s a short ride up the hill to the airport. Once we each headed out to our respective airplanes (except for the two PDT guys who were waiting for their captain, and were deadheading back to CLT on us anyways) and got stuff going. We boarded up 40 something people and taxied off the gate 3 minutes early at 5:57am, and were the first of the RJs to head out. 5 minutes later we were blasting off into a clear sky and heading south to Charlotte.

Because we arrived in Charlotte before 7am we couldn’t land on the normal North-South runways so we had to loop around for 23. By the time we were on the ground and at the gate our next flight was due out in only 35 minutes (and oh yeah, it was a different airplane, parked ALL THE WAY at the other end of the express gates). A quick jog through the terminal and several minutes later and we were boarding up for Fayetteville.

I managed to eat a quick breakfast of a granola bar that a mainline flight attendant have given me the day before when she non reved on us up to Charleston as they loaded up are 13 passengers to FAY. After some confusion over which airplane we were waiting for we pushed back and started up our engines. We almost spent more time on the ground starting up, trying to get off the ramp and taxiing out (21 minutes) then we did in the air (23 minutes). I managed a mostly nice landing in Fayetteville, and taxied it to the gate.

Due to some strange scheduling quirk we had over an hour on the ground in FAY so I elected not to start the APU and left one engine running while they plugged in a ground power connection. Even though it was pretty hot out (almost 90 already) the plane was relatively cool when we landed and if we turned off all the lights inside I figured I could start the APU a few minutes before the passengers boarded up to go back to Charlotte and the temp would be ok. Of course, my trying to save fuel ended up causing more work for me as when we switched over to ground power from the single engine that was running my Primary Flight Display (the screen that displays heading, airspeed and altitude information on my side) died. A quick call to maintenance and several circuit breaker pulls later the problem was fixed and I headed to the back of the airplane to read a book for a while.

My book reading was cut short when a large (several inch) butterfly somehow managed to fly through the cabin door and started bouncing around the cabin. It finally settled on one of the windows and I was able to trap it in a plastic up with some paper and transport it back outside. By then the cabin temp had climbed to just about 90 degrees and I figured it would probably be a good time to get the airflow going again. As I finished that our people started coming down the jetway. We crammed in 50 people and pushed off the gate a few minutes early back to Charlotte.

The FO made a nice landing in Charlotte where we taxied in to a 35 minute turn, and what I hoped would be my lunch break. That ended up not happening as we had another error message (system proximity fault) that needed to be cleared. This time it took 9 different circuit breaker pulls (and just about every aural alert the aircraft has) to clear the issue. That of course took away any chance I might have had at getting something to eat, so we launched for Knoxville with me just getting some pretzels to eat.

I made a nice landing in Knoxville on an empty stomach and felt the first edges of tiredness as we taxied into the ramp there. It felt like it was almost 5 in the afternoon, despite being just 11:30 in the morning. Fortunately we had a quick turn in Knoxville and were shortly loading up 50 passengers plus a jumpseater and taxiing back out. After sitting out a 15 minute ground delay we took off and headed east again back to Charlotte. With a nice tailwind we made pretty good time and 38 minutes later the FO was setting it down on 18R and slowing us so I could exit the runway just as a large dust devil (ok, it wasn’t that big compared to some of the ones I saw when I was living in Phoenix) crossed downfield from us. Once at the gate I said goodbye to my FO who was done for the trip and the FA and I hustled across the airport to the mainline gates to catch a deadhead up to Philly.

We got to the gate to find the plane was hugely oversold a it had been downsized from a 321 to a 320 with a lost of almost 25 seats. The FA got a seat and I ended up in the second jumpseat (as there was already another mainline guy trying to get to work) when we finally pushed 45 minutes later. The flight up the coast dragged on as they slowed us to our minimum forward speed pretty much as soon as the wheels were in the wells. We did eventually get there and head to the hotel. I manged to grab dinner in the hotel bar (my other option was walking about 1/2 a mile to a Denny’s.

So here it is 10:20pm, and I’ve been up since just after 4am. The thing is, I’m not even scheduled to get done tomorrow until around 9:30pm, and that’s after going through New York twice, so I don’t want to go to sleep to early tonight and be tired by the end of the day tomorrow. The problem is, right now it is a losing battle. If I can just make it another 40 minutes…

So I listed all the things that might keep me awake, and then went to sleep at 9:45.

The fireworks started at 10pm.

Yep, didn’t see that coming.

Here’s a picture of the festivities across the road.

My plan for sleep fell apart last night. I was in bed by 10pm, and almost asleep when my phone rang at 10:30. Doh. After that I just couldn’t force myself to shut my eyes. I think I finally dozed off around midnight, but woke up several times before getting out of bed 5 minutes before my alarm.

Today wasn’t too bad of a day, but seeing as I didn’t get much sleep last night, I am pretty tired now. Of course, actually getting any sleep may be difficult due to any of the following:

-The kids running up and down the hall of the hotel, which is the official hotel of the West Virginia Special Olympics.

-My room faces the front which means I hear

-Cars/Trucks/Motercycles on the road out front

-Riverboat horns on the river across the street

-Train horns from the train tracks across the river

-The band playing in the park between the road in the river

Yep, it’s going to be one of those nights…