The Philly airport wireless seems to be free now. Which is good, because I am stuck here for at least another 2 hours.

That is all.

Fortunately for me, I’ve been back on a late reserve schedule this week. The good part of that is that I don’t have to get up really early ever. The bad part is that I am still on the hook to get called to work later in the day. Yesterday I started my reserve block at 10am and when, at 5:30pm they still hadn’t called I headed over to Yellow Springs to play Ultimate Frisbee. It was raining on the way over but it was warm enough I figured we’d still get people to show up. By the time I got there we almost had enough for 7 on 7 and shortly there after we got a game going.

Normally when I am playing Ultimate and still on reserve I check my phone between every point which is something of a hassle, but it’s the cost of business. When I check around 6:55 the green missed event light was flashing and there was a note that I’d missed a call from “PSA SCHEDULING”. Uh oh!

I called them back and found out that the good news was I had only missed the call by 8 minutes, so I was well within my 15 minutes of call back time. The bad news was they gave me an 8:20pm show time which was exactly 1 hour and 30 minutes (the minimum allowable time) from when they first called. That meant I had 90 minutes to pack up my ultimate stuff, drive home (about 25 minutes), shower, pack (because I was stupid and didn’t have a bag already packed), drive to the airport (35 minutes) and get to the plane. The one thing working in my favor was it was a reposition flight so there weren’t going to be any passengers and and I didn’t have to go into the airport to get to the plane.

That’s pretty much how it worked out. I rolled up to the Maintenance Hangar at 8:18pm and after talking to Dispatch and getting my paperwork headed out to the plane to get things set up. My FO wasn’t there yet so I took my time. Also Charlotte was ground stopped anyways due to all kinds of weather moving through so we weren’t going anywhere any time soon anyways. Additionally, the reason the plane was there to begin with was because it had been hit by lighting earlier in the day and had been flown in to be inspected. Other than some charring of paint and few burn through spots it was ok, and apparently the burn marks were within tolerances.

Eventually my FO arrived and after a quick fix for an additional maintenance problem we started up and taxied out. By then the ground stop had been canceled and after waiting for one plane to land (see picture at the end) I lined us up and handed the controls over to the FO who put up the power and rotated us skyward. After getting handed off to departure and headed south we set up for the hour long flight down to Charlotte. The weather was mostly good, although there was a pretty constant light show to the south east as we crossed over western West Virginia. Fortunately for us it was all east and south of Charlotte, and other than some good static discharges on the windshield (a first for my FO) we broke out of the clouds and joined the final for Runway 18R

After landing I took the plane back and taxied to the gate. Despite the late hour (10:30) there were still a lot of planes around, all delayed due to the earlier weather. By the time I had the plane shut down and the door open (which I had to do myself because there was no FA with us) the crew taking the plane out to Fayettville, NC was already waiting outside. We got off and they got on and that was that.

Today I manged to sleep in a bit and then head to the airport at noon to deadhead back to Dayton. That worked out mostly as planned (other than the exceedingly large guy sitting next to me) and now I’m looking forward to 4 days off. Highly exciting.

Warning… 100% non aviation content ahead:

So I had a $50 credit at Men’s Warehouse that was set to expire and then I got a $35 off coupon in my email from them which was only good until September 1st. So, figuring I had $85 in store credit sitting around I headed over there yesterday to get a shirt and tie. Not that I exactly have a need for a shirt and tie, seeing as I wear the same thing to work every day, but I figured, I shouldn’t let the potential $85 go to waste. So, with the help of a salesman (or maybe they call them “fashion consultants”… I don’t know) I picked out a nice red shirt and tie combo and a tan shirt and tie combo. They both looked pretty good and I really couldn’t decide which one I wanted to get.

So for some reason, I theorized in my mind I wouldn’t be using $15 worth of the credit if I just got one so I decided to get both. So the whole thing ended up costing me more then $50 anyways. Yes, sure the shirts are nice, but I had no intention of spending any money at all. I guess that’s probably what they planned on happening when they sent out the coupons to begin with.

As promised…

So, I’ve been listening to the Beastie Boys. (hence the title).

Anyhow, yesterday was a rough day. I called in the night before for my reserve time (after being woken up at 5am to go to the airport at 6:30am to sit hot reserve until 3pm) and was given a 5am regular reserve. Excellent. Works for me. Maybe I’ll even get to sleep in. Then, at 9:30 my phone rings it’s wonderful scheduling ringer and for some stupid reason I answer it. Now, understand that once I had my reserve time the next morning I don’t have to talk to scheduling any more until my reserve time starts the next morning. But of course I wasn’t really thinking clearly and I picked up the stupid phone. They reassigned me (illegally of course) at 4:39am show for a day trip down to Charlotte. So, instead of sleeping in (haha) until at least 5am, I now had to get up at 3:15 in order to make it to the airport by 4:39am. Lovely.

I managed to get in bed by 10:30 but didn’t fall asleep until I turned on the air conditioning at 11:30. Then, for what ever reason I woke up at 2am and couldn’t go back to sleep so I just got up at 3am. Yep, that gave me a massive 2 hours and 30 minutes of sleep, after being up since 5am the morning before. Anyhow, I somehow managed to drag myself to the airport and once there I started to wake up pretty quickly. I was on the plane by 4:45 and we were loaded up and ready to go by 5:20.

The flight down to Charlotte was my FO’s leg and I actually was feeling pretty good. About halfway down the sun started rising and it was looking like it was going to be a nice day. Of course at that point ATC told us the planes were going missed in Charlotte because of the fog down there and to expect holding shortly. A quick look at our fuel showed that that wouldn’t work out too well for us, so I started playing the what if game.

Basically we need to be landing with 3000 pounds of fuel in the CRJ700. (We work in pounds, not gallons, and it works out to about 6 pounds per gallon so you do the math). That gives us 45 minutes before the engines suck the fuel tanks dry. 45 minutes may sound like a long time, but in reality, it’s not much when you are up in the air and at the 45 minute mark you no longer will be. When the put us in holding we had 5000 pounds of fuel on board. I did some quick math, backed up by the flight management computer and decided that Greer, South Carolina, about 50 miles to our south looked like the best place to go if we got low on fuel. It was about 50 miles away and at our current fuel burn it would take about 300 pounds of fuel to get there. I doubled it for my spider plant at home (most people use their wife/kids/goldfish, but I have none of those so my plant has to do) and then added another 100 just because. That meant at 3700 pounds of fuel remaining we would have to head over to Greer. It worked out that it would take 3800 pounds to get to Charlotte, so at 3800 we would head over to Greer anyways. That meant we had 1200 pounds of “play fuel” or at our current burn rate about 30 minutes to spin circles in the sky.

I called back to the FAs to let them know what was going on and they told me most everybody in the back was awake so I made a PA. If the majority had been sleeping I wouldn’t have bothered seeing as how ignorance is bliss and all. It ended up working out pretty well. By the time we had done one turn in the hold the weather was up enough that they were letting planes back into Charlotte. We turned back inbound and were cleared to continue on our route after holding for only 5 minutes. The rest of the approach was straight forward and we broke out of the fog at about 900 feet. After landing it was a quick taxi in to the gate where they actually plug in ground power and air making me feel like I worked at a “real” airline.

45 minutes later we were loaded up and pushing back to had over to Wilmington. Despite my lack of sleep I was still doing pretty well and managed to make one of my nicest 700 landings there. It’s on tape so I may upload it later. We had 45 minutes in ILM so I ran in and got a cranberry muffin for breakfast. It wasn’t as good as the last time, but when it comes to sugar filled baked goods I’m not picky. We then loaded up 40 more passengers and blasted off west bound to Charlotte. Despite some haze we made it in no problem (see picture below) and headed to the gate to start our 3 hour and 59 minute break.

Yeah, you read that right. Almost 4 hours of sitting and doing nothing. Fortunately a guy from my new hire and upgrade class was sitting hot reserve so we hung out for a while and then got lunch at Chili’s. That killed almost 3 hours so by then I was able to head down to the gate and get on the plane. Despite being 10 minutes late off the gate because our ramp crew took a mini vacation we got right out to the runway with no waiting and headed northwest towards Dayton and home. As we leveled off at 28,000 my exhaustion started catching up with me. A couple hits of O2 woke me back up enough to managed an ok crosswind landing in Dayton and then taxi in to the gate.

The drive home was mostly a blur, and then I was done and able to finally go to sleep. Of course I didn’t though. I was home by 5:30pm but I forced myself to stay awake until 9:30 so I wouldn’t wake up at 4am and not be able to go back to sleep. As was I got up this morning at 9am feeling mostly much better. Today is my last day of reserve and as of now it looks like they won’t be using me so I think I’ve survived the week.

I woke up when it was still dark this morning, and once my sleep bleary eyes focused on my clock, I saw it was 4:58am. There was absolutely no reason to be up at that hour so I figured my phone was probably going to ring in a few minutes calling me out for a trip as I was on 5am regular reserve. Sure enough about 3 minutes later my phone sounded off and I answered it to find I had been given hot reserve (yet again) starting at 6:30am because the 5am hot reserve had gotten used right away. Lucky me.

This time was just about as boring as the last time. Fortunately the extra few hours of sleep I had gotten, coupled with the hour and thirty minutes less I had to sit around made it bearable.

Somewhere along the line I must have ticked off the reserve gods because despite my request for “late, last out”, meaning I get wanted a late reserve time slot and to be the last person they called for a trip in that time slot, I ended up with 5am hot reserve this morning. I found out about it yesterday at about 3pm when I checked my schedule, although it wasn’t official until I called scheduling at 8pm. All afternoon I had a somewhat optimistic hope that maybe, just maybe by the time I called something would have changed and I wouldn’t have to be getting up at 4am.

Of course that didn’t happen so I spent a quick 30 minutes ironing a shirt and packing a bag for a potential 4 days on the road. After that I finished up some stuff on the computer and by 10:15 I was in bed. Over the past month I have been working late reserve blocks so my sleep schedule has been moved back to about going to bed at 1am and waking up at 9:30am. So shutting my eyes at 10:15 was pretty much useless. I fought it for about an hour and I eventually fell asleep, although I do remember the clock reading 11:30 at one point before I dozed off. And, as is my habit when I have an early alarm set I woke up well before it. About an hour and twenty minutes before it. Somehow I managed to sort of pretend to sleep until about 3:30 when I surrendered and got up and into the shower.

An hour later I was driving down mostly deserted streets until I got on the highway were the early Monday morning traffic picked up. Even with that, it was still dark when I parked at the airport and headed inside to begin what very well could be a 10 hour sit of complete boredom.

And that’s how it played out. The FO who was sitting hot reserve got called out before he even showed up so it was just the FA and I for the day. By 6:30am I had managed to do all by manual updates as well as repair a bunch of approach plates that had ripped holes. I turned on my computer at 7am and started in on the daily blog and forum reading and then got some work done on the monthly union newsletter. There was a brief rush of people at 8:30 as a couple of flights went out at about the same time. Another hour or so of boredom and then another crew showed up but was stuck for about an hour while MX worked on the landing gear of their plane. They eventually fixed the problem and they headed off to Philly.

After that it was quiet again until noon when the FA announced we were 70% done, and I headed down to get some pizza for lunch. The pizza was nasty but at least it was edible. Shortly there after a crew came in from Charlotte to wait out their two hour sit before heading to DC to sit for three hours before heading back to Dayton and finishing their 4 day trip. What a waste. By the time they headed out the door it was 2:45 and packed up my stuff and started walking out to my car. Up until now, minus a 10 minute stretch around 6am, I’d been pretty awake. However, the drive home was awful as I could barely keep my eyes open. By the time I got home I was almost stumbling up the stairs. After getting out of the monkey suit I laid down on my bed for a few minutes but realized if I went to sleep it would be for a bunch of hours and I’d never get back to sleep tonight.

So instead I forced myself up and paid some bills. After that a piece of apple pie (mmmm) gave me a bit more energy. And here it is 8:15, and I’m not really that tired. Hopefully I will be by about 10:30 as I’ve got 5am reserve tomorrow again. At least it’s regular reserve so if they don’t use me I can sleep in. Here’s hoping.

I finally got to fly again. After sitting around for the better part of 3 weeks I was given a 2 day trip. It wasn’t much, but something is better than nothing. The first day was a deadhead down to Charlotte, followed by a 2 hour sit and then a quick hope down to Columbia, SC. The second day was a late show (5:30pm) and then up to Philly and back out to Dayton.

The timing of the trip actually worked out pretty well with the 4pm show on the first day. A friend of mine who is a captain here was sitting hot reserve at the airport and got done around 2:30 so I planned to meet up with him to have lunch after he was done. Just after we set that up a former student of mine who flies for TSA (regional that does United and America flying) called to let me know he was heading to Dayton in a few minutes for an overnight. I ended up picking him up at the airport at 2:30 and then the three of us went and had lunch at Friendly’s.

After lunch I headed over to the airport and got my positive space ticket down to Charlotte. 30 minutes later we were boarded up and pushing off the gate. This was the first time I’ve sat in the back on a flight since US Airways started selling water and soda. Over all it didn’t seem to be too much of an issue, although they’ve drastically shrunk the water bottle size which meant that during a regular work day I went through three bottles instead of one.

We made it to Charlotte no problem and I headed up to the crew room to try to print out a copy of my schedule. With that accomplished I managed to kill about an hour before heading back down to the gates to grab something to eat. On the way I ran into a friend of mine who was sitting hot reserve (different one, different airport) who hadn’t had dinner either. I also ran into my FO for the trip.

The FO has several thousand hours time as a flight engineer on heavy aircraft all over the world, but only about 350 hours as a pilot. He has worked here as a mechanic and instructor on and off for the past 5 years, but just became a pilot here about two months ago. He actually taught most of my upgrade ground school back in February.

The three of us headed over to the express gates food court and got some food. After that my FO and I headed out to the plane where our FA was waiting. I let the FO get most of the FMS programing done while I read through the release and checked the weather paperwork. Columbia is all of 70 miles from Charlotte, so I could pretty much just look outside to see what was going on down there. Either way I looked at it, it was showing a nice evening.

By the time the FO had the button pushing taken care of the last of our passengers were on board and we were ready to go. After sorting out a passenger miscount we managed to push off the gate and taxi out. I was rather relieved to find I still remembered how to do all that stuff after my long break. I won the possession arrow to fly (sort of like basketball, sometimes if we can’t decide who is going to fly first I’ll just keep hitting a toggle switch until the FO says stop and then see which one of us it is pointing to) so after getting cleared for take off I blasted off heading south.

17 minutes later I was turning final for runway 11 in Columbia. I even managed a nice landing despite the plane in front of us taking forever to clear the runway. We got things shut down and secured and then followed our passengers through the terminal to where our hotel van was waiting.

And that was the day. The next day (yesterday) went pretty well. We didn’t show until 5pm and than had about an hour delay before we could head north to Philly. It was my FOs leg and he managed a nice job all the way up there. I talked him through the landing on 35 (a short, sometimes hard to find runway with not a whole lot of vertical guidance) which he manged to nail. From there, because we were already about 30 minutes late, we quick turned and after sitting in line to take off for about 25 minutes (pretty good for Philly) we were heading west with the night. The ride north from Columbia had been a little choppy, but heading westbound there was barely a ripple the whole time.

We never caught up with the day light and an hour after rotating I lowered the nose back down onto 24R in Dayton. A short taxi in and we were done for the night. It was a short trip, but at least I got some flight time.

So I haven’t flown in 2 weeks now. That’s actually not that long of a time to be not flying, but after about a year of rarely going more then 3 days and a few months of no more then 5 day breaks (other then when I was down for training for upgrade) 14 days is a really long time. And the interesting thing is that because I’m just sitting reserve, there is no end in sight to not flying.

It doesn’t really matter in theory. I’m getting paid either way, and the likelihood of me forgetting how to fly is slim to none, but every once in a while I wonder how far behind the curve I’ll be when I finally get back in the plane. It probably won’t be too bad, but especially now when I’m in the left seat, if I haven’t gone through the flows and routine in a while I always feel like maybe I’m forgetting something. There are checklists in place to prevent that, but the feeling just doesn’t go away some times.

The good (if you can call it that) news is I have sim event some time in September, so I’m in the process of (slowly) studying up for that. I keep surprising myself with how much stuff I actually remember. I guess that’s a good thing.

I ran into this guy while I was taking a hike today.