I’m getting there. My IOE Captain said he thought he’d be able to sign me off by the end of this trip. Unfortunately, he timed out (meaning he’d go over flight time limits) this morning in CVG, so we weren’t able to complete the trip. Landing a CRJ 900 is reasonably difficult for someone with no airline experience. The 200 is supposedly very, very easy and lands a lot like planes I’m used to flying. The 900 flies like an airliner, and comes in nose-high. The timing of the thrust reduction is critical. The plane doesn’t float at all of its own accord, and if you try to hold it off the runway with the elevators for a smooth touchdown, the rotation of the aircraft will just put the landing gear into the ground anyway. I finally made a landing acceptable to the flight attendants this morning, with a little verbal coaching from the Captain.
I haven’t gotten much sleep at all lately, what with 5am report times. Usually the first flight isn’t so bad, it’s the ones later in the afternoon, so I’m not terribly upset at getting to go home after only one leg today. Compared to the disaster last week, getting home this week was cake. We got into CVG at 8am, and there was a 9am flight back to Denver.
Yesterday, after the flight from DCA-JFK, I had a message on my telephone from crew tracking. This is something pilots dread because it invariably means they’re trying to draft you for additional flying. I wasn’t worried, since I can’t do anything without an IOE captain. I called them up and they asked me if I’d taxi an airplane from a gate to a maintenance hangar. I explained that I’m on IOE and can’t really do that. They put me on hold and told me that I could, in fact, do it. Not wanting to get in any trouble, I told them I’d need to talk to a Chief Pilot. They connected me, and a very pissed off Chief Pilot answered, saying, “I don’t know who you are, but if they say that I say you can do it, you can do it. You don’t need to talk to me. Bye.” So, I’ve managed to piss off the chief pilot in my first week. I’m not really worried about it, he gets paid a nice chunk of change to answer the phone and deal with issues like this.
So I told the crew tracker that I would be glad to move the plane for them, but wanted to know what they were going to do about the rest of my schedule. She looked at my schedule, with the deadhead leaving in an hour and said, “Never mind.”
And then, 2 minutes later, my phone rang with a different scheduler on the line, who said that I should go ahead and move the plane, and that they would hold my deadhead flight if needed. So I asked where to go, and they sent me to Gate 25, spot Q and promised a Captain would be there shortly.
I first went to the gate for my deadhead, and tried to check in, but it seems I wasn’t listed. So I gave up, and found the maintenance-needing aircraft. I opened the plane, and did a walk around. I rummaged through the galley and found some water, then sat outside the plane to wait for the Captain, since with the plane currently de-powered it was pretty hot. I called crew tracking who promised that a Captain was on her way, and that they would get me listed for the deadhead flight.
A few minutes later a good looking 6-foot tall readhead strolled up to the plane and introduced herself, “Hi, I’m Nicole.” “Berck. And, so you know, I’m on IOE.” “IOE? How is that even possible?” “I have no idea, but the chief pilot said it’s okay.” “Okay then, well, I took this plane in so I know the paperwork’s all good. Go ahead and fire it up.”
So I switched on the battery master and sat down in the FO’s seat as the displays warmed up and the audio warning system did it’s power on “BLEEBLEEBLEEEBLEE” thing. I checked the DC electrics page, confirmed greater than 22 volts on both batteries, pushed the APU power/fuel switchlight, and then then APU start/stop switchlight and watched the APU spool up. Nicole went and talked to some rampers who agreed to push us back, and then we sat and waited. We waited for a ground crew, and when they finally showed up, Nicole called ramp control and asked for pushback. We were in aircraft 601, so she just called us, “Freedom 601” even though there was no such flight. It took awhile for ramp to understand what the heck we wanted, “I have no paperwork for Freedom 601”, but eventually they let us go. Nicole said she had no idea what to call us, and figured Freedom 601 was as good as any. I remarked that if she was going to make up a call sign she should have picked something cool like Freedom 1234. “Or, better yet, Freedom 6969,” she said. “Oooh, or how about Freedom 666?” we both said at once, laughing. “Maybe that would get ground’s attention!”
She turned the radios over to me as we taxied, and ground told me to give way to a Saudi Arabian 747 to my right, then taxi on Alpha to Quebec. I read back, “Follow Saudi Arabian to Quebec,” and got chewed out. “No, I don’t want you to to follow Saudi, I want you to give way to him, then taxi Alpha to Quebec.” Sheesh. I read it back correctly this time, the importance being that often the only clearance to taxi you get at JFK is something along the lines of, “Follow Jet Blue”. Which leads to an interesting discussion of what you’re supposed to do when Jet Blue turns the wrong way. Fortunately, it makes for much easier readbacks for me.
After about 3 minutes, the Saudi 747 was still sitting there, not moving. Nicole was pretty annoyed and said she’d ask ground. She managed an impressive amount of tact saying, “Ground, Freedom 601, not sure if I understand, did you say you wanted us to follow the Saudi 747, because he’s not moving?” “Ah, affirmative, give way to the 747, he’s on the another freq and should be moving shortly.” Which had much better results than what I would have done, “Hey, that Saudi’s not going anywhere, why are we waiting for him?”
There’s continuously back and forth between the controllers at JFK and the pilots. Last week, when there were a hundred or so airplanes trying to get to their gate and ground wasn’t moving any of us, only letting planes go out, someone started raising hell on the radio. “Ground, this is ridiculous, we’ve been sitting here for an hour, no one’s moved, what’s your plan?” “What do you want to do?” “I want to go home.” “Fine, go home.” Followed a little later by someone keying the mike and saying, “There’s no place like O’Hare, there’s no place like O’Hare…” and someone else saying, “Yeah, they sure can move some airplanes at O’Hare,” with someone else saying, “Hey, easy guys!!”
We eventually got over to the maintenance hangar and Nicole parked us best she could with the vague instructions from the annoyed maintenance guys on the other end of her mobile phone. A maintance guy in a van picked us up, and he said he would take me right to the gate for my deadhead. The flight was leaving at 4:20, and we got there right about 4:25, where sure enough, it was still waiting for me. The best part was that the maintenance van was broken, and it took about another 3 minutes for us to get the door open so I could get out with my bags.
I climbed on the plane and sat in the only empty seat, with the flight attendant helping me stow my bags in one of the closets, what with the overhead bins being full and the cargo doors already closed. I didn’t have a boarding pass, but no one seemed to care. It was cool being driven to a plane in a van and having a plane wait on me. That’s never happened before.
Anyway, I just got my next bit of schedule. I’m flying out of JFK on Saturday evening to DFW for a 3 day trip. With any luck, I’ll be signed off after that trip and working my butt off… In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy my few days off.
