My first clue that it might be a long morning came when I walked out the front door of the hotel in Mobile. Rain was cascading down so hard that the headlights of the few cars that were passing by at 5am on Interstate 10 across the parking lot were a soft blur in the rain and mist. The second clue was the bright flash of lighting and loud clap of thunder that was audible over the rain pelting down on the overhang above me. I looked over at my FO who was desperately trying to inhale his coffee and wake up and just wearily shook my head. He mimicked the gesture as did the Northwest Airlink crew who we’d shortly be sharing the van to the airport with. Some days that’s about all you can do.

15 minutes later we were unloading in front of Mobile Regional Airport’s main entrance. The rain was still coming down hard and now I could directionally orient myself with the airport complex and saw, much to my dismay that the majority of the lighting was to the west, which meant it still hadn’t reached us yet. A quick trip through Operations to pick up our paperwork and we were heading out the back door of the airport to walk to the plane. Fortunately most of the walk was under the cover of the terminal building and only the last 50 feet required us to head out into the downpour. Lighting was still flickering across the horizon when I left my back under the relative dryness of the jetway and sloshed through the puddles on the ramp to get the airplane’s door open. I figured my FO would have to brave the elements to do his walk around so I could at least stand outside long enough to get the door open so we could get on board.

That tasked accomplished, the three of us took turns shuttling our various bags and flight cases from under the jetway, across the 50 feet of open ramp, up the aircraft stairs and into the forward galley of the plane which was rapidly filling with water from the windblown rain. Once I had all my gear on board I got started with the daily process of getting the aircraft powered up and then running through the litany of checks and tests to ensure that all the switches (there are over 150 of them in the cockpit) are in the right position and all the systems are working properly. With that completed I stepped back into the galley which now resembled a wading pool and decided that until they got the jetway moved over to the aircraft I would shut the main cabin door to keep the rain out. That accomplished I headed back up front to start looking at the paperwork and weather for the flight.

Other than the local thunderstorm it didn’t look too bad. The weather was in the shape a large backwards “L” with the base starting west of New Orleans from where it headed due east (over Mobile) until it got to Pensacola, FL. From there the system headed north-east to where it died out around Atlanta. Charlotte (or eventual destination) was in the clear of the storm system but in typical early Spring fashion was fogged in to less than ½ a mile. Outside in the rain I watched a gate agent run up the jetway stairs and then a moment later reappear at the end of the cab to move it over to the aircraft. I called back for our Flight Attendant to open the door and as soon as he did the rain started blowing back into the cabin. After several seconds of this I looked back over to the jet way only to see the gate agent was gone. She reappeared underneath by the power unit and after pressing buttons for a few minutes came over to the airplane. Apparently the jetway had been hit by lighting at some point during the night and was not powering up.

We both agreed that loading passengers across the flooded ramp, in the middle of a lightning storm was not in anybody’s best interest so I asked her if we could maybe use Northwest’s gate once their plane left. She said she’d check and a few minutes later came back out to let us to know that we would us American’s jetway which was located on the other side of the terminal. 15 minutes later American Eagle’s ERJ taxied out and we started up our engines, turned out and then taxied the 500 feet around the corner to the other gate. After a brief bit of confusion about the jetway being configured for an ERJ and not a CRJ they got things rolling and parked it against the plane. 10 minutes later our passengers were boarding and 20 minutes after that (and only 15 minutes after our scheduled departure time) we were starting up our engines for the second time that day and taxiing out.

The good news was that due to our delay the first hints of day light were creeping in from the east. Also by now most of the weather had moved over. It was the FOs leg and as we taxied to runway 32 he briefed the take off. Lined up and ready to go the weather radar took a quick sweep to the northwest were it painted nothing but light rain. In the rapidly brightening dawn we could see clear blue sky through the broken layer of clouds off the end of the runway. With the power set the plane lurched forward and several seconds later was clawing its way into the air.

Tower handed us off to approach and before I could check in there was a huge flash of light off to our right, directly between us and where we wanted to go. The back end of the weather was just passing to the north of the field. Approach kept us heading northwest for another 5 miles and then clear of the last cell we turned towards the northeast and Charlotte some 500 miles away. As we plunged back into the clouds and rain I took a quick look out my window to the west where the sky was clear and lightening with the rising sun, even if we couldn’t see it. It would be another 4 legs of flying and 12 hours later before we’d see clear skies again as we dropped the plane into Dayton for the end of our trip.

Over the last 4 years I’ve gotten very good at setting alarm clocks. It seems like there are a few standard models most hotels have and my now I can set them just about as well as I can set my own clock at home. However, every once in a while I run into new sort that I’ve never seen before. Last night in Gainesville, FL I spent about 5 minutes trying to figure out how to turn off the B alarm and set the A alarm to music instead of a buzzer. The fact of the matter is I rarely actually hear the hotel alarm clock go off. My cell phone alarm is set for whatever time I want to get up (this morning that was a dismal 5:10am) and then the hotel alarm clock is set for 15 minutes after that, “just in case”. I used to us a 3 layer of backup by having the hotel do a wakeup call 5 minutes after the hotel alarm was set but I found that half the time those never happen or occur at entirely the wrong time so I gave up on them.

This morning I actually woke up about 5 minutes before my cell phone alarm went off and got up just so I wouldn’t have to hear it. I hate actually having the alarms go off if I’m not still asleep. An hour later I was in the van heading to the airport with the crew. They had flown in earlier the day before and then I had deadheaded in that evening the join the trip. The Captain who’s trip it was had headed home to get married.
The early Florida morning was dawning clear and warm as we walked across the ramp to our aircraft. After a quick discussion about a broken coffee pot not being listed on the release I got the APU going and started the normal first flight of the day routine. All of the checks and tests complied with I took a look at the weather in Charlotte (1/4 mile and fog but the runway was showing 3000 feet of visibility, more than our required 1800 feet). I wasn’t exactly happy with the weather but it was good enough for us to go, which we did 30 minutes later after a slight mixup with our fuel truck.

The FO took the leg and by 7:30 we were crossing the Florida-Georgia border climbing through 20,000 feet. Once up at cruise I started checking the weather in Charlotte and saw it was still ¼ of a mile with no RVR (which stands for “runway visual range” and is a number in feet that a special machine can see down the runway). We can’t shoot an approach to ¼ so hopefully once we got closer somebody (an Air Traffic Controller) would have an RVR number for us and hopefully that number would be larger than 1800. Otherwise we’d be making a detour to August, GA, our planned alternate.

Descending back down to 21,000 feet Atlanta Center asked if we were Cat III capable. Basically there are three categories (I, II and III) of how low visibility an approach you can shoot with CAT I being the most restrictive (normally 200 foot cloud ceilings and ½ mile or 1800 RVR visibility) and CAT IIIc being the least restrictive (no minimums, or in other words a “zero-zero” approach). We of course, being the cheap regional we are, are only authorized for CAT I approach. There is a rumor we are getting to get CAT II certified but that’s been floating around almost as long as I’ve been here.

Anyhow, despite the RVR actually being 1800 feet, and legal for us to shoot the approach we were temporarily put in a hold. Before I could even figure out how much fuel we had and how long we could hold for they took us back out of the hold and cleared us on our way. 20 minutes later we were 200 feet off the ground and looking at nothing but the swirling fog and mist in front of the airplane. Just as the computer called off “minimums” the thin line of lead in lights appeared in from of the nose followed shortly after by the edge of the runway. The FO dumped the autopilot and held the nose over towards the ground. Seconds later we were bumping down onto the wet pavement and slowing to a more manageable speed before I took the plane from him for the slow taxi to the gate.

A few times in the past I’ve made a post in response to a recent plane crash. Thankfully, in my relatively short career in aviation I have yet to lose a friend to a crash, although a student I briefly worked with a few years ago managed to plow into the side of a mountain in Utah. Moral of the story is that what accidents there have been since I started flying have taken the form of educational lessons on how quickly something can go wrong. It’s a somewhat cold view to take, especially when you think about the hundreds (thousands?) of others that are personally effected by these various accidents, but many pilots much wiser (and more experienced than I) all say the same thing: Learn from it, mourn the dead and move on.

With that in mind the recent crash of a FedEx MD-11 in Narita scares me a bit. Maybe because there is video of the crash (which seems to be more and more common these days) or maybe because the crew was at the top of the industry, in one of the biggest airplanes currently flying around. If it can happen to them, it can happen to anybody.

If you’ve seen the video of the crash (I’m not going to link to it, but there are several versions floating around Youtube as well as most major news networks sites) you know how quickly this happened. It appeared as if the plane was making a normal landing before it took two huge bounces and then slammed down on the left wing and cartwheeled out of the frame in a huge ball of fire. 10 seconds is the difference between a normal touchdown and roll out and the utter destruction that is captured on the tape.

Who knows what actually caused this terrible event. Thanks to modern technology they probably will be able to recover the FDR and CVR and reconstruct the last few seconds of landing. But even if they are able to get a 100% clear picture of what exactly happened (and that is very unlikely due to the seemingly suddenness of the crash) it still won’t be much in the end. The abruptness and violence of the landing, bounce (and second bounce) and crash were such that even if the crew was aware of what exactly was going on, who knows if they could have reacted quickly enough, and if their aircraft could have responded quickly enough to do anything about it.

I guess those wise old aviators are right. Learn what you can from it. Honor the dead. And move on.

The departure end of 6L in Dayton is rapidly dropping behind us. The jet loaded up with just two pilots, a mechanic and 6500 pounds of fuel is rocketing skyward in the cold predawn air. At 400 feet I roll the wings left and then, a few seconds later roll them level on a northern heading. Tower hands us off to departure who rapidly clears us up to 10,000 feet before handing us off to Indy Center.

With a clearance to 23,000 and the Findley VOR in hand I decide I’ve had enough fun for the morning, turn on the autopilot and get down to the business at hand… sitting and watching the clock tick by. This morning we are on an OCF or “Operational Check Flight”. Basically, Maintenance has some problem which they can’t replicate on the ground and require a test flight to verify they actually fixed the issue. In this case a gauge that shows the core speed of the engine on the left side was randomly dropping about 5% during high altitude descents.

Maintenance was pretty sure they had fixed the problem by cleaning a cannon plug (basically a thing that attaches one thing to another thing) but the only way to know for sure was to run the plane up to 31,000 feet and see if the problem still happened.

So here we were climbing northward into the rapidly lighting sky. With our light load we reached 31,000 quickly and then settled down to sit out 25 minutes of “cold soaking” the airplane. At altitude the outside air temperature was -43 degrees C. At that low temp parts tend to function differently or not at all. In order to fully duplicate the situation that had been written up we had to let the airframe cool off from the relatively balmy 35 degrees it had been sitting in on the ground. After 25 minutes of making a large clockwise circle across Lake Erie (and watching the sun come up over the eastern edge of the lake we deemed the plane cold enough and let ATC know we were ready to start down.

After a slight wait while some westbound traffic crossed underneath us heading up to Chicago we were cleared down to 24,000 feet. I set up a 1000 foot per minute descent and all three of us watched the N1 gauges for any fluctuations as the power slowly came back. There were none and several minutes later we had leveled off at 24,000. To be doubly sure we climbed back up to 31,000 and repeated the experiment again. Once again the gauges for both engines held steady and with the concurrence of the mechanic sitting quietly in our jump seat we turned south towards Dayton.

15 minutes later the airport was in sight and ATC cleared us for a visual approach to 6L. Out of 6000 feet I turned off the autopilot and rolled the airplane towards the runway. Because we were so light our approach speed was very slow (slow being a relative term as we were still bombing down final at close to 130mph) and in the still air it felt like we were barely moving. Even at the slow airspeed we eventually made it to the runway were I managed a rather nice landing. 5 minutes later we were parked and shut down at the hangar.

Time spent: 1 hour and 18 minutes
Fuel burned: 2600 pounds (about 385 gallons)

Watching the sun come up over an iced over Lake Erie: Priceless

Some days it’s worth it to get up at 4am.