I haven’t been this tired in a while. The frozen water blasting by us at 210 knots is hypnotizing in the glint of the landing light and I have to force myself to look away as I feel my eyes sliding from open to shut. It hasn’t been an exceedingly long day but a combination of switching from early mornings to late nights and not having time to eat lunch earlier has knocked me back a bit. I glance over at the FO who is happily munching on an apple and rechecking his approach plate. This is the benefit of a two pilot crew. If one guy isn’t at 100%, hopefully the other one can step it up and cover the deficit.

I briefly consider taking a hit from the oxygen mask clipped into the sidewall next to me but decide against it when I realize that I haven’t cleaned out the mask yet and have no idea what nasty germs are lurking it its dark recesses. The pure O2 might wake me up a bit, but the risk of getting sick from who knows what doesn’t make it worth it. I remind myself for about the 100th time that I need to make cleaning the mask part of my nest building routine.

The new weather report for Charlotte pops up on the screen and as I scan through it I feel myself shedding a few layers of drowsiness. They are reporting a low overcast, hanging just 300 feet above the ground with about 2 miles of visibility due to mist and fog. I make a final check of the approach setup and the minimums for the approach, verifying that the FO has everything set the same way. Happy with that I go back to watching the instrumentation as we bore a path through the darkness.

By 3000 feet we have dropped out of the bases of the higher cloud layer and into a confused world of arching clouds, rain, fog, darkness and light. A solid overcast covers the ground below us, light from within by patches of scattered ground lighting. 5 miles off the right wing a trio of radio towers stick through the ground cover, their bright strobe lights flashing in a synchronized pattern. As my eyes adjust to the change in light I notice several other red lit towers peaking through the clouds below.

Ahead and to our left the tall buildings of Charlotte stick up through the blanket of fog, ablaze in light, looking like rocky islands in the sea . The wind is from the south and the fog is breaking against the south faces of the buildings like a crashing ocean wave. It is truly amazing to see. I call for the landing gear and another notch of flaps as the nose drops down to follow the invisible thread of a radio beam we are tracking to where it terminates 4 miles ahead of us at the end of the runway. The final notch of flaps follows in short order.

I’m completely awake now as I watch the plane in front of us, visible just when its twin strobe lights flash, disappear into the fog bank. A minute later we follow it in and the world suddenly goes bright white from the reflection of our landing lights on the millions of water droplets surrounding us. At 500 feet I glance out the side window and I can make out the indistinct pattern of lights on the ground below us as the fog thins. Forward visibility is still zero and I take one more look at the missed approach procedure just in case we need it. At 300 feet, as advertised, a curtain seems to rise and the runway comes into view. I dump the autopilot, adjust the aircraft pitch slightly and take a deep breath.

My drowsiness is distant memory now as I try to visualize the landing gear reaching towards the wet runway below us. Apparently my visualization is slightly off as we thunk onto the pavement a half second before I’d planned. I mutter a quick “oops” and my FO is polite enough to laugh as we roll down the runway into the fog.

The turbulence starts as we descend between cloud layers. At first it’s a constant light chop but within minutes we are taking pretty good hits every few seconds and my FO’s cup of Sprite Zero is in serious danger of spilling all over the place. With that and passenger comfort in mind I pull the power back and set the speed bug to 280 knots which is our best turbulence speed. 25 miles ahead and rapidly approaching is an arbitrary point in space which the powers that be have given the name SHINE. We have instructions from ATC to cross that point at 11,000 feet and then slow to 250 knots which is now looking like it may not happen due to me having to decrease the rate of descent to maintain a slower airspeed. Through the basic concept of kinetic and potential energy speed is altitude and altitude is speed and some days they both seem to work against you.

I give up on making SHINE at 11,000 feet using the current configuration deploy the flight spoilers. There is a slight rumbling noise and although I can’t see them, I know that 30 feet behind me, the 4 spoiler panels have extended from the top of the wing and are sticking up into the cloudy slipstream which is blasting by the airplane at several hundred miles per hour. The airspeed quickly bleeds off and I trade more potential energy for kinetic and use the autopilot control panel to lower our nose and increase our rate of descent. The vertical speed indicator now matches our required descent rate and I between bumps I let a small celebratory sigh.

We pass over SHINE at 11,000 feet still in moderate turbulence. The latest weather report for Charlotte pops up on our FMS and after looking at it I start setting up for a landing to the south. The weather report, just 5 minutes old is calling for calm winds and a broken layer of clouds at 5000 feet which is good enough for an easy visual approach. I have the FO load in the ILS just in case but I don’t brief it. Instead, between bumps and while trying to keep the airspeed somewhat constant, I brief the visual approach. By the time I finish ATC has descended us out of 11,000 feet and turned us towards the final approach course, still about 15 miles away. As we get away from the ridgelines to the west of Charlotte the turbulence diminishes and my FO is able to drink the rest of his soda without the risk of wearing it.

5 minutes later we are turning to join the radio beam that will eventually get us to the approach end of the runway. As we pass through 4000 feet I start realizing there is something wrong. We should be underneath the clouds now and be able to see the ground. Instead, although the ride has smoothed out we are still blasting through clouds and in the moments of clear air we get, I can see a solid layer well below us. Obviously the weather has changed from the report we got, and changed quickly. As the autopilot grabs the glideslope and drops the nose to follow it down I quickly rebrief the approach for a full on instrument procedure. Fortunately everything is set up already and all I have to do is set the minimum altitude of 950 feet above the ground and go over the missed approach procedure in the event we don’t find the runway by the time we get there.

At 3000 feet we are in the overcast layer and heavy rain is streaming up the windshield. The mileage is spinning down at an alarming rate due to 30 knots of wind on our tail pushing us towards the airport. By 2000 feet I call for the last of the flaps and slow to our approach speed of 135 knots. Despite slowing, the GPS still is showing our groundspeed at well over 150 knots. Legally, we can take no more than a 10 knot tailwind, and unless the winds decrease somewhere in the next 2000 feet of air we are going to be going around.
At 1000 feet above the ground the clouds part. Rain is still running up the windshield but with the wipers on their highest setting I can see the runway ahead. I dump the autopilot and note that our groundspeed now matches our airspeed of 135 knots. The wind has died off. 500 feet to go and I take one last quick look at the display screens. We are showing the flaps at 45 degrees and three green boxes for the landing gear. The “cleared to land” light (really just our taxi light switch) is on meaning that somewhere back in the gray darkness behind us the tower controller had issued our landing clearance. Everything is looking good.

200 feet above the pavement and I flex my hand on the thrust levers in anticipation of brining that back. The rain has let up some and I can see all the way down the runway, through the clouds of water vapor left by the airplane that has blasted off in front of us. As the radio altimeter calls out 20 feet I start pulling out the power and as the plane slows I increase back pressure on the control yoke to keep the nose up. There’s always a moment in landing the 70 seater when you wonder where exactly the air ends and the ground starts and just how sudden that transition is going to be. Today I get lucky the left main gear settles onto the rain slicked pavement with barely a whisper, followed by the right main and several seconds later the nose gear.

A combination of thrust reversers and breaks get us slowed and at 40 knots I move my hand from the yoke to the tiller and exit the runway. As soon as we clear a Mainline Airbus 321 starts rolling from the end of the runway, their engines kicking up a spray of water as the plane starts to accelerate. Beyond them, the lights of the next arrival emerge from the clouds and rain.

I’m sitting in the exit row of one of our CRJ 200s heading South with the volume switch on my laptop almost all the way up and the Rolling Stones She’s A Rainbow cranking in my earphones. I’m desperately trying to drown out the screaming baby sitting behind me and so far I’m not having a lot of success. Some of may have to do with the fact that he’s also kicking the back of my seat every few seconds. Just one more reason I hate deadheading.

I flew this same route early yesterday morning except instead of sitting in the back I was up front, attempting to wake up as the eastern sky changed from black to dark blue to lighter blue and then finally yellow and orange as the sun came up over the horizon. It was much quieter then than it is now with the only sounds being the wind rushing by the fuselage at over 400 miles per hour and the periodic chatter on the radio as, one by one, aircraft woke from their night of sleep and checked in with ATC as they took to the early morning sky.

As the sun finally rose above the cloud layer on the horizon, illuminating the ground fog covering the West Virginia mountains below, I took a minute to update our fuel numbers and check the most recent weather in Charlotte. I was happy with the fuel but less than thrilled with the weather. Visibility was holding at less than a mile with low clouds and mist. With the current weather we were good to land and the rapidly rising sun would eventually burn off the fog, but it was possible the soup hanging over the runways could thicken in the meantime and make us go somewhere else. Like so many times before it would end up being a race between us and the weather. One that we probably would win, but just the possibility that we might not was enough to put me on edge and start the hunt for other places we could go.

100 miles out from Charlotte had us descending through 20,000 feet, crossing over Bristol, TN. The rolling peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains below stuck up out of the fog but the valleys were completely filled in with a white blanket of clouds and mist. I had the flight computer set to keep checking for the latest weather report from Charlotte and every few minutes a new one would pop up on screen. As we passed through 15,000 feet the most recent report showed ¼ mile visibility and ceilings of 100 feet, well below our minimums. However, in our favor were the actual Runway Visual Range readouts, basically a distance in feet that a special machine next to the runway can see downfield. While we need ½ mile (roughly 2800 feet) of visibility, if there is an RVR readout and the runway supports it we can go all the way down to 1800 RVR.

With the radio tuned in to Charlotte Approach Control and the plane dropping through 10,000 feet we passed abeam the airport heading south to join the ILS beam and land back towards the north. Visibility was still at ¼ mile but ATC was reporting the RVR at 2400 feet on the approach end and better than 6000 feet at midfield and at the departure end of the runway. The 2400 reading concerned me, but as of now were legal to continue and I called for 8 degrees of flaps as we slowed to 200 knots and descended to 5000 feet. As ATC turned us back towards the airport and gave us a clearance to join the ILS we watched the plane in front of us drop into the clouds and disappear.

A few minutes later we sank into the clouds as well and our whole world went gray. I took a quick look at the minimums for the approach again (just 210 feet above the ground) and the procedures for what to do if we didn’t see anything by then (a climbing turn up to 5000 feet and an eventual hold to figure out our options). By the time we passed through 1500 feet the plane was configured and we had been cleared to land on a runway that was somewhere in the fog in front of us. 1000 feet came and went with nothing to see. 500 feet passed by and I rotated my hand slightly on the thrust lever so my thumb rested on the Go Around button which in the event of a missed approach would turn off the autopilot, pitch my flight director up to 12 degrees above the horizon and generate a max thrust number “carrot” on the display to which I could push the thrust levers up to.

100 feet above our minimums (and 310 feet above the ground) my FO called off 100 above. I snuck a quick look forward into the mist but seeing nothing quickly went back to watching the flight instruments to make sure the autopilot was keeping up. At 210 feet above the ground the aircraft called out “MINUMUMS” just as my FO announced the approach lights in sight. Glancing forward I saw a single splotch of light off the nose which rapidly resolved itself into a straight line of lights leading forward into the fog. Another second passed by, seeming like an eternity, and the lights started to widen into beginning of the runway lighting.

The thumb on my left hand rotated slighting and put in one quick burst of elevator trim. Although there is a big red button on the yoke to disconnect the autopilot I find it much easier to use the trim button, which will do the same thing, to disconnect. The plane made its typing double chirping noise to alert us to the fact that the autopilot was no longer flying and I steadied my feet on the rudders as the plane called off 100 feet above the ground. By the time the plane called 50 feet I could see 3 or 4 white runway centerline lights stretching into the grayness ahead.

30 feet above the ground and I had the two degree nose up pitch I wanted to land with. Our world had become defined by the gray bubble on all sides of us and the rapidly approaching blur of pavement underneath the nose. The runway lights had little halos around them as they rushed by at 140 miles per hour. The plane called off 20 and 10 in rapid succession as I took out the last of the power on the engines. There was as slight pause and then a slight bump as the main landing gear settled to the ground some 60 feet behind us. Seconds later, as we began to decelerate I lowered the nose gear to the ground and popped the thrust reversers.

The blur of lights began to turn into individual lights evenly spaced down the runway as we slowed down to a more manageable speed. I stowed the thrust reverers as I gently applied the brakes. The runway exit materialized out of the mist ahead of us and as the plane slowed more I moved my hand from the yoke to the steering tiller which would get us the rest of the way to the gate, waiting for us somewhere across the fog shrouded ramp.

30 hours later I am once again heading for the same ramp, except now there is no fog in sight. The early afternoon sun is bright through the cabin windows as we descend over the North Carolina countryside. The baby behind me has calmed down some but I’m guesses as soon as he’s forced to put his seatbelt back on during landing the screams are going to start up again. As if on cue the seatbelt and Electronic Device signs illuminate above me. Here we go again…

I’m the last one off the plane and into the heat of the jetway but manage to catch up to the rest of my crew as they get stalled in the crush of people trying to grab their carryon bags. Once clear of the jetway the four of us turn right and start hoofing it towards gate 17. Our departure time is rapidly approaching and our new aircraft is half a terminal away; all too typical of last flights of the day.

Minutes later we arrive at the gate to find an airplane but no gate agent. The agent soon appears from the jetway to tell us Maintenance is doing a tire change and they think they will be done in 15 minutes, which not surprisingly equates to more delays for us on our go home leg. With the paperwork in hand we head into the jetway to get away from the crowds and wait for the nose gear to be changed out. While we wait my FO and two FAs start a game of wheelchair bowling in the jetway. This almost ends in disaster when the chair all but dumps my FO on the ground. At that point they decide to stop, which coincides nicely with the mechanics finishing up their work. 10 minutes later our first passengers are streaming down the jetway and boarding the plane.

Departure time comes and goes with passengers still wandering onto the airplane. We finally get the paperwork only to have it taken back by the gate agent as more passengers and bags show. Meanwhile, leaking through the earpieces of my headset, I can hear a steady stream of aircraft calling ready to push back and taxi, all heading out towards the runway ahead of us. It’s going to be a long evening. A quick look at my phone’s weather radar shows a large mass of thunder cells to the west of Dayton moving east. As far as I’m concerned, the quicker we get going the better.

Finally the last passengers, in from Montego Bay, Jamaica, well tanned and with the slightly bleary look so common to people returning from vacation, stroll up to the plane. Their bags follow shortly and we get the door closed. My FO calls for pushback clearance, which we are given. Ramp also tells us that the FAA tower has requested we take off from the left runway instead the right one, which we had expected. It’s odd but I’m not complaining as it’s a shorter taxi and despite the line I could see stretching around the corner, it probably will get us airborn faster.

Before we even finish the push back ramp is calling us back to inform us ground wants to get us out right away and plan on jumping the line. With that in mind we start both engines and once clear of the pushback tug request a taxi clearance. It’s quickly granted and we head out to the exit of the ramp. Ground control tells us we are going to get right out and asks if we can take an intersection departure. We have the numbers for it and my FO lets the controller know that is fine. We are slightly puzzled as to what’s going on but shrug it off and get busy running the taxi and before takeoff checklist. Minutes later we arrive at the intersection they want us to use and are cleared on to the runway.

It’s my leg to fly and as soon as we are cleared to go I put the power up. We are full and heavy on gas due to the potential weather in Dayton so it takes a while for the plane to decide to start flying. Once up and running tower turns us back towards the northwest and home. The radar is showing a mess of dying thunderstorms ahead of us but it looks like if we head slightly east we should avoid the worst of it.

50 minutes later we are descending into the hazy murk below us. The sun is just below the horizon and the skyline is tinged with orange. Approach points out the airport off to our left. It’s barely visible through the haze but the beacon strobes clearly every few seconds. With it in sight we are cleared for the approach so I dump off the autopilot and turn for home. The runway clarifies itself out of the darkness and several minutes later we are (gently) thumping onto the pavement. The taxi to the gate is short and our passengers are quick to unload.

Walking out to our cars in the parking lot I mention to our FAs that we really lucked out in getting to the front of the line. Neither the FO nor I can figure out why it happened. A lightbulb appears above the head of one of the FAs and she explains that one of the passengers had made a comment about how she worked in the tower in Charlotte and she was going to call a friend to see if we could push us out quickly. It’s nice to have connected people on board on the last leg.