Our Dumb Blog

[Deadhead means a flight where one is on duty, in uniform, and traveling on company business, generally for the purpose of being in position to work another flight. It does not mean simply being an airline employee traveling on an airline, like many people seem to think it means. That is, I'm not deadheading when I'm commuting.]

While on reserve, one gets to see what’s perhaps the roughest side of an airline operation. Last week, I was assigned for a trip to DCA where I would deadhead to DCA, and then work a couple flights from DCA-JFK-DCA. After taxiing around JFK for 4 hours, the flight was canceled. They still wanted to us to do the DCA-JFK leg, though. So we sat around waiting for a dispatch release and passengers for a couple of hours. We were out at a remote pad, rather than a real gate, so everything had to be bussed out to us. Two busses of passengers arrived at one point, but it turned out they were traveling to DFW, not DCA. Eventually, it became apparent that we would be unable to complete the flight before reaching our maximum 16 hour duty day, and so the flight was canceled. I got back to Sydney’s apartment at 2am that “night”, and had to be back at the airport at 8am. Which meant that I got less than 4 hours of sleep.

This week I started off with a fairly innocuous trip to Buffalo. The flight to Buffalo, in the afternoon, was over 3 hours block time. 45 minutes of that was flying.

These problems have been mostly caused by thunderstorms. In the summer, thunderstorms cause reroutes and delays at airports they’re over and can wreak havoc with an already over-extended air traffic control system. The result is that planes sit on the ground, which is better than etching circles in the sky until they run out of fuel, which also happens with some regularity.

Thus far none of it has bothered me much, other than the lack of sleep. While I feel bad for the passengers, I’m not terribly upset when we don’t make it to where we’re going on time. Since there’s nothing I can do about it, I do my best not get upset about it. I do what I can to get us places as quickly as possible, but unfortunately there’re not many options. The airlines have really boxed themselves into a difficult situation by operating so many regional jets in and out of airports that simply cannot accommodate the volume of traffic. Smaller jets means more flights, which means more delays. It also means a job for Berck, and it’s hard to get upset about sitting right seat in a jet when so many people with so much experience are finding themselves out of work at the moment. I think it’s probably just a matter of time until I find myself unemployed as well. My employer has never furloughed anyone before, but these are trying times. The current business model of the airlines is simply not sustainable with current oil prices, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the long term, the nation is forced to return to a government regulated and subsidized market.

I was scheduled for a JFK-BNA round trip today. I woke up at 6am to get to the airport in time for my flight. When I arrived at the airport, I logged on to the scheduling website first thing to print a copy of my schedule for the day. Only to notice that it had been changed, and the Nashville flight had been “downgraded” to an ERJ. (I have no idea why, but for whatever reason the company decided to send an ERJ instead of a CRJ.) Since I’m not an ERJ pilot, they told me to go home. Since “home” is Sydney’s apartment in Brooklyn, I was disappointed. They offered to let me sit ready reserve if I desired, and I told them I’d get back with them. I checked on my projected hourly totals for the bid period, which came out to 63. A 10 hour ready reserve shift would only pay 5 hours, which meant that I was still 2 shy of 70. Since I’m guaranteed a pay of 70 hours, sitting ready reserve wouldn’t result in my making any more money, so I decided to go back to Brooklyn.

When my phone rang. They had a DFW flight for me. Turns out the crew that was planning on going to DFW was late, and they decided to send us to try to make the flight on time. We did, in fact, arrive on time, amazingly, even though we left over half an hour late. Probably because of the half-hour allotted taxi, which wasn’t needed this morning.

I’m currently deadheading back to JFK on the return flight. We were held on the ground in DFW for spacing into JFK. The weather in JFK is clear skies, there’s no weather at all, but still, the system is unable to accommodate us. It was only a half-hour delay on the ground in DFW, but it looks like that’s just the beginning. We’re currently out over the Atlantic ocean in cruise flight. You don’t need much geography to know that the Atlantic ocean should not be between Dallas and JFK. I’m not sure how far off the coast we are as I can only see out the right side of the aircraft (we’re headed North), but there’s no land in sight. At least we’re not etching racetracks, though who knows if that’s to come.

My final schedule for the month of August (which, since my company works on 28-day bid periods, is July 27th-August 24th) is up on Facebook. I’m excited about the possibility more flying and less time in Brooklyn, though unfortunately not much more time at home.

I don’t watch propaganda movies, so I’m not going to watch Expelled any more than I’m going to watch Michael Moore. But, after reading an amusing article about the astounding contrary-to-fact claims in Expelled, I thought I’d mention this website for those who might be interested in the truth (or rather, lack thereof) behind Ben Stein’s claims: Expelled Exposed.

In short, Intelligent Design isn’t science simply because there are no hypotheses to be tested. Since there is nothing to test, there is no research being performed, and thus no work is being peer reviewed. Proponents complain that “the scientific community won’t take them seriously,” but they obviously don’t understand how it works. If you want to be taken seriously you need to come up with a hypothesis, test it, and publish your results. You don’t simply get to claim that, “The paradigm is wrong,” and get things changed. (Well, amusingly, Einstein was able to do this, but only because others were willing to go out and perform experiments, while mainstream science was simultaneously completely unable to detect the aether, resulting in some unrest.)

The most amusing thing I found on Expelled Exposed is that the Discovery Institute apparently once had lofty goals to actually do real science and then go promote it, acknowledging that if they failed to do the scholarly work first that they would merely be peddling propaganda. Amusingly, they haven’t produced any of the scholarly articles that they said would, but have instead moved on to movie-making. Which makes them self-proclaimed propaganda peddlers.

Jonah noticed this.

I just got back to Brooklyn from Maine. I’d never been to Maine before. I need to figure out which states I’m lacking now. I think I’m down to like Vermont, New Hampshire and Alaska.

I got to the airport at 6:45am for my 7am ready reserve shift. I was on duty until 5pm. At 4:15pm, they called me to go to Maine. At first, annoying. But then I remembered, “Hey, that means I get to fly a jet!”

And then we had a 1.5 hour ground delay before we could come back to New York.

I landed on centerline, with a perfectly acceptable visual approach with no electronic guidance at all back in JFK tonight. It wasn’t exceptionally smooth, but it was perfectly adequate.

Buffalo and back tomorrow. I was doing a DCA turn, but I got back too late for rest requirements.

Sleep now.

So why aren’t I flying?

I’m annoyed that I had to come to New York yesterday just so I could sit around and do nothing. Well, I did a little more than nothing, but I didn’t get to fly.

I rode JetBlue yesterday. I didn’t get an exit row, but I did get one of the new “even more legroom” seats which have 38″ of seat pitch. 38″ is way more than even I need. The flight left about 45 minutes late, then we were in a hold for another 15 minutes. In other words, a normal flight to JFK.

I eventually met Anjeanette in the village for dinner. We ended up at the Slaughtered Lamb Pub in the West Village. Anjeanette picked it. I had a mediocre burger and okay fries. Decent (though not exciting) beer selection. Anjeanette, I think, mostly likes the place because of Mrs. Pacman. Which we didn’t play. We did have a fun time, and I hope I’ll get to see her again some time.

I really should learn my way around some subset of NY without a map. The village would be convenient because that seems to be where everyone wants to meet me, but on the other hand, everyone else knows their way around the village, so maybe I should pick some other place to learn. The village confuses me because the streets aren’t at even vaguely 90 degree angles.

While I was at the pub, crew tracking called me. At about 9:30pm. Since I didn’t go on duty until 7am the next day, I figured that they must have something for me in the morning, and I figured the sooner I knew about it the better. It turns out that she was calling to notify me of a trip on SUNDAY. Why they called me late in the evening on my day off to notify me, god only knows. I suppose that’s better than 7am or 3am.

So, today is Wednesday, and they don’t have a trip for me until Sunday. I whined about this via SMS to one of my buddies that was in my class. He’s got a line this month and thought he would let me know that it looked like he was going to time out for his trip to Dallas tomorrow, and maybe I should try to get crew tracking to give it to me. I thanked him, and told him to call me later tonight after he finds out what’s up.

So when crew tracking called a few minutes ago (after I went off duty, of course) it wasn’t to notify me that they’re giving me the Dallas trip. Nope, it was to let me know that they want me to sit ready reserve tomorrow morning.

Which really, really, bites. I was trying to figure out how to amuse myself in the city tomorrow, but it seems I needn’t have bothered. Ready reserve means that I have to be at the airport, in uniform, ready to fly at a moment’s notice. Starting at 7am. Which means getting up at 5am. To sit there. W00t.

I’ve got 70 hours in the jet now. I need to get 100 hours before the end of August, or I have to take another checkride in the simulator. I really don’t want to have to do that, so I hope they get me my time. There’s no reason I shouldn’t, but I’d feel a lot better once I did.

Plus there’s the fact that I still suck at being a first officer, and it would be nice if I could get better at it. And I’m not going to get any better at it if I don’t fly. I still can’t land on center line, I still say, “uhhhhh…” into the radio, and I still forget to do stuff.

I didn’t want to leave the apartment today because there was a notice from UPS that they’d tried to deliver my new sheets yesterday and would try again today. This meant that Sydney’s trick with the note that says, “UPS: Leave packages outside the door!” didn’t really work like she said it would.

I finally got the sheets, took a shower, and decided to go to the laundromat to wash them. It seems that whoever used either the washer or drier ahead of me got sprayed by a skunk because now my brand new sheets smell like skunk.

And then I vacuumed Sydney’s apartment. And cleaned out her refrigerator, which was downright scary.

I’ll be going to bed early tonight so that I can get up early in the morning.