Archive for the ‘Flying’ Category

I woke up this morning at 4:27am. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know at the time it was 4:27am, becase I wouldn’t have answered my telephone had I known.

Angela from crew tracking told me that I needed to go to the airport to sit ready reserve. After I hung up, I realized that it was well before 6am, when I went on duty. I called back to find out why they woke me up at 4:27am. The answer? I went on duty at 4am. I just didn’t realize it, because I’d misread my schedule. My first day of reserve this week started at 0600, and I assumed they all did. After I looked closer, I noticed that only the first day started at 0600, the other days started at 0400.

“Do you know how cold it’s going to be out there?” Tony asked. Tony is an American Eagle pilot at my crashpad who was also woken up by Angela’s phone call. “I don’t want to know.” It was somewhere around 0Ëš. Yay.

I’ve often wondered how the homeless in Chicago survive the winter. Apparently a lot of them do it by sleeping in blue line trains, from one end to the other. There were three of them slumped over, either asleep or dead on my car alone. The stench was overpowering.

The TSA working the crew line at Terminal 2 was particularly incompetent this morning, and it took me 15 minutes to get through security, which is just not acceptable. It looked like a lot of people in the line were going to be late for work.

One of the things that amuses me about airports is that airport restaurant chains look like their non-airport counterparts, but very much aren’t. The quality of the food is always lower, the menu choices fewer and the prices much higher. Places that don’t serve breakfast all do in the airport, presumably to make the most of their lease. And, well, they have a captive audience. For instance, Macaroni Grill serves Fritatas, Chili’s serves Breakfast Taco’s and Quizno’s serves toasted bacon and egg sandwiches.

The nice thing about the ready reserve schedule is that I was originally scheduled to be released at 1330. That was before my phone rang a few minutes ago. Angela called me back and asked how things were on ready reserve. “Just wonderful!” I told her, using a really convincing tone of voice, that should give me serious actor creds. She laughed and told me that I was going to work a round trip to Cedar Rapids, IA. “When does it get back?” was the only question I asked. “You’re going to kill me…” “Uh oh…. when?” “1441.” “Oh, that’s not that bad. I can still go home. Maybe.”

That is if I’m not back late. I think it’ll be okay because the weather doesn’t get bad until tonight. Here’s the English forecast:

Tonight: Snow and sleet, becoming all snow after midnight. The snow could be heavy at times. Temperature rising to around 30 by 2am. East southeast wind between 5 and 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow and sleet accumulation of 7 to 11 inches possible.

Assuming the weather cooperates and I get back on time, and my flight to Colorado isn’t canceled, I still have to get on the airplane. All the flights to COS and DEN are overbooked today, so I’ll be hoping for a ride on a jumpseat.

I finished reading Subwayland, a book I borrowed from Sydney. It’s a collection of Randy Kennedy’s New York Times Tunnel Vision columns, and I really enjoyed it. You can find most of them on the NY Times site, I think. He doesn’t appear to be writing the column any more, which is sad. If you have more than a passing interest in the NYC Subway, it’s worth reading.

Mesa had a bit of a problem Tuesday when the left main gear of a CRJ-700 collapsed on landing. Whoops. I’m glad it wasn’t me. I did, however, have a minor maintenance incident yesterday that I’ll write about soon…

So, I’m leaving in an hour or so to go to Cedar Rapids. On a CRJ-200. I’ve never flown a CRJ-200 before, so wish me luck!

On Monday, after taking Dad to the COS airport, Jonah wanted us to return the Bremers’ truck and pick up the blue car from the Bremers’ to go to the airport. There was still patches of snow/ice on the ground, and I was sure the Bremers’ driveway was covered in snow, and that there was no way we were going to get the blue car out, since the snow tires on the red car. I made a half-hearted attempt to convince Jonah of this, but she didn’t believe me. I figured it was easier to drive to the Bremers, prove that the car wouldn’t go anywhere, then continue on to the airport. So that’s what we did. I managed, in 5 minutes, to move the car about 20 feet, and get it reasonably well stuck in another part of the driveway. I neglected to realize that would mean driving the truck to the Denver airport, which meant, essentially, throwing away $10 worth of gasoline.

I got the airport at about 7:15pm for a 5:00pm American flight that left for ORD at 7:55pm. The fact that the flight was delayed was the only reason I was able to get on it, as the delay had caused many people to give up and go back home, declaring that they would try again tomorrow. There were a dozen pilots on the flight with me who had been trying all day to get on various overbooked United flights. The commute to Chicago is, I’m afraid, going to suck.

Fortunately, I shouldn’t have to do it for very long. The company announced last week that they are not going to furlough anyone else in the near future, which means my job is safe for now. I suspect that means they aren’t going to displace as many people from the CRJ, but they have stated that they will still be displacing some. The details should be out end of next week. I still think I should be able to get the Dash 8, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

The ORD airport is very large, and I haven’t got a decent overview of the layout, from the inside, in my head. If it confuses me, I can’t imagine what it does to passengers. Fortunately the signage is plentiful and mostly helpful.

Our operation is apparently liberally sprinkled all about the airport. In my 4 days, I flew out of the B gates, C gates, E gates and F gates. None of which are close to each other.

When busy, the ORD controllers don’t give you a chance to acknowledge radio calls, especially on the ground. That’s okay as long as you’re listening up and understand them the first time. I rarely did, but fortunately my Captain had a good idea of what was going on, and I did my best to keep up.

I flew exclusively the CRJ-700 this trip. There’s plenty of 200 flying as well, but unfortunately, I didn’t get any of it. The 700 is just like the 900, only slightly smaller and lighter. It lands more or less the same, only it sits a little lower, so my landings weren’t perfect, but were generally adequate. The annoying part is that the FAA considers the the CRJ 200/700/900 all to be of the same aircraft type, so I’ve now been signed off to fly the CRJ-200 as a regular First Officer, despite the fact that I’ve never flown it, except for 3 times in the simulator. But I’m signed off, done with IOE, so the first time I fly it will not be in a training situation, which bothers me.

I flew to to DEN, then DEN-COS in the CRJ-700. It’s roughly a 10 minute flight, and would have been shorter except that DEN was taking off to the North, although COS was landing to the south. It’s the first time I’ve landed at home in a jet, and it was a nifty perspective. I hand flew the entire flight, including the ILS approach from which we broke out at about 1000 feet.

ORD is cold. The planes are all covered in filthy and covered de-icing residue. The runways are covered in potash, the ramps with salt, and everything is mucky. The snow is piled off to the sides, mostly, but there are plenty of taxiways that didn’t get cleared, so there’s some slipping and sliding to be had. Fortunately, that’s all the Captain’s problem. The world looks very white, even when it’s clear, from the flight levels. It’s a view I’m pretty happy to have.

The really annoying part about being signed off is that I’m now on reserve until the beginning of next year. I have plenty of seniority for a decent line, but I just missed the cutoff for the December (er, M13) bid period. I haven’t gotten a reserve schedule yet, so it looks like I’ve probably managed at least this weekend off. I’m sure they’ll have headed back to Chicago soon, and it looks like I’ll need to find a crash pad. I’m not looking forward to it, but I’m hoping that I’ll be in training for the Dash sometime early next year.

Mesa, AZ – 17 November 2008.

From Halloween, 2008.

The Air Driven Generator deployed.

Flight Attendant Oxygen Mask

Lavatory Oxygen

Farewell, N604LR.

On Friday evening, I was scheduled to take one of our 4 remaining planes to CLT, on a non-revenue flight with passengers. We weren’t sure why they wanted the planes in CLT, but figured it was related to the fact that we had a maintenance base there and the company figured it would be easier to do whatever inspections were necessary to transfer to the plane to Pinnacle Airlines.

Sydney needed to give my key to someone that would be feeding her cat while she’s off in Philadelphia monitoring the election. Since she was leaving before I was planning on doing so, I wound up at the airport a couple hours earlier than I’d intended.

My Captain was sitting ready reserve, so we were plenty ready to go when the plane arrived. The Captain asked maintenance as well as our dispatcher if there was anything special they needed to do before our flight, and both said no. We left the gate 5 minutes early and only had to wait about 20 minutes in line for takeoff.

It was proving to be an uneventful flight until we were nearly halfway there and the air traffic controller advised us, “Freedom Air 9900, I’ve been told to have you guys call ARINC and get in touch with your dispatcher.” Whoops, my first chance to get SELCALL’ed, and I’d missed it. SELCAL (Selective Calling) is nifty way our dispatcher has to get in touch with us in the air, but it only works if the second radio is tuned into the correct frequency. That was my job, and I’d forgotten to do it.

The Captain and I came up with various amusing scenarios to explain the call while we waited for ARINC to set up the phone patch with our dispatcher. Eventually we got him on the line and he told us that we needed to go back to JFK and pick up a Pinnacle pilot who was going to do a test flight.

We were dumbfounded, but complied. ATC laughed at us the whole way back. “Forget something, guys?” “Or someone,” we said. “I sure hope you didn’t forget someone in one of the front two seats!” Here’s the amusing flight track of the resulting flight.

When we eventually got back to JFK, the Pinnacle pilot was waiting in the jet bridge. He informed us that we’d be doing a test flight that was going to involve a lot of very complicated things. A lot of them sounded like things I really didn’t want to do except in the simulator. He told us that he used to work for Bombardier as a test pilot. When we asked why he simply didn’t do the test flight himself, he told us that was because there was no way for a Pinnacle pilot to be on our insurance, and Pinnacle couldn’t insure the plane until it was on their operating certificate, but they weren’t willing to accept the plane until they knew it was all working correctly. The Captain called the chief pilot who assured him that it was all okay. Freedom pilots had already done this same flight profile with the same Pinnacle pilot on 3 of the planes.

The Pinnacle pilot briefed us in detail (though not in as much detail as I might have liked, as it later turned out), on what we would be doing. He wasn’t going to push any buttons and I made sure he understood I wasn’t going to flip any switches until my Captain agreed. After that, the Pinnacle guy spent an hour or so making sure everything worked on the ground, including pushing a lot of buttons I’ve never pushed except in the simulator, like the emergency fire push switches.

Eventually, we took off and flew the Kennedy 1 departure, Brezy Point Climb for what may be the last time in my life. After we cleared the immediate New York area, Gison (the Pinnacle pilot) said we’d need 10,000 feet for awhile, whenever the controllers could give it to us. We were at 11,000 and just issued and instruction to climb. I explained to the controller that we were doing a test flight and needed 10,000 feet. He gave us a direction to fly in, and cleared us to fly at 10,000 feet. Gison had us slow to 180 knots and extend the flaps to 20°, then instructed us to pull the alternate landing gear extension lever. This lever releases the hydraulic pressure in the system as well as the mechanical locks holding the gear up and lets it free fall in place. It’s to be used in case the primary landing gear system fails, and I’ve never used it except in the sim. The gear fell into place not much more slowly than it does when under power, and the plane immediately started screaming at us, “GEAR DISAGREE.” This was a logical thing for it to do since the landing gear handle was still in the “UP” position, but the landing gear was now down and locked. After verifying that all the proper warning messages were displayed and the gear was indeed down and locked, Gison had me lower the landing gear lever, which I did. I then stowed the alternate extension handle, and everything was normal, except that we were flying along at 10,000 feet with the gear down for no good reason.

We got the gear back up and moved to the next test. Here we pulled the ROLL and PITCH DISCONNECT handle which separates the Captain’s yoke from mine. The Captain’s yoke controls the left aileron and the left elevator while mine controls the right aileron and the right elevator. Normally they’re interconnected, so moving one yoke moves the other and all the appropriate control surfaces. Should one of them become jammed, we still want to be able to fly the plane, so we’re able to disconnect them. This means the plane doesn’t handle nearly as well since the flying pilot can move half the control surfaces.

I wasn’t sure about this one, but it turned out to be not that big a deal. We pulled the ROLL DISCONNECT handle first, and first I verified that I had control of the aircraft and was able to bank both directions with only one aileron. Then the Captain did the same thing on his side. We reconnected the controls and then did the same thing with the PITCH DISCONNECT, and each verified we could make the plane climb and descend with only one elevator. It worked better than I expected it to, and it was neat to be able to feel what that’s like in real life.

We climbed to 18,000 feet and put on our oxygen masks. As we were climbing, Gison had me switch the cabin pressurization controller to manual, and start climbing the cabin. I’ve never done that, even in the sim. As the cabin altitude exceeded 8,500 feet we got a “CABIN ALT” caution message, as to be expected, but l kept going. At 10,000 feet the caution message became a warning message and the plane started screaming “CABIN ALTITUDE”, but we pressed on. Gison asked me to press the “EMERGENCY DEPRESSURIZATION” switch, and I hesitated. The system manual indicated that this would force the outflow valves fully open, and we still at an 8,000 feet cabin pressure differential. I didn’t want to know what my ears would feel like if I did that, and I complained. Gison agreed to let me keep climbing it gradually. We eventually got it just over 14,000 feet, which made the passenger oxygen masks drop, presumably. We had the door closed, so we couldn’t tell, but the light on the passenger oxygen switch lit up saying “ON”. It wouldn’t climb much higher than 14,000 feet, and so I finally agreed to push the EMER DEPRESS switch, but the cabin didn’t climb much higher. The switch is to be used in the event of a forced landing in order to insure the plane is depressurized in the event of a crash, and there’s no need for us to be depressurized higher than 15,000 feet, so the plane wouldn’t let let any more air out. Then we turned the PACKS (pressurization system) off entirely. Now there was no air being put into the cabin, and this would let us see how tight the plane really is. It proved to be very tight and the cabin altitude never got over 15,000 feet.

That concluded, we returned the pressurization system to normal and climbed up to 30,000 feet. We did some more checks, including turning half the pressuration system off, then all of it off again to see how it held up at 30,000 feet. It did perfectly.

That done, we headed up to 37,000 feet. When we got there, we started the APU. This is something we never actually do–we generally only run the APU on the ground, but 37,000 feet is the highest altitude Bombardier says the APU can start at, so Gison wanted to make sure it would. It did. Then he had us climb on up to 41,000 feet, the published service ceiling for the plane. Even with only 3 of us on board, it took awhile to get up there. We were only able to climb at about 500 feet per minute over 40,000 feet. We got there though, and verified the APU was still working. It was.

Then Gison had my Captain turn off the autopilot and hand-fly an emergency descent at maximum possible speed with full flight spoilers extended. After getting clearance from ATC, we went for it. We descended at 12,000 feet per minute. Previously, I’ve never been in a plane that descended faster than about 5,000 feet per minute, and that’s generally considered excessive. We dropped like the proverbial brick and were down to 25,000 feet in no time.

We’d gotten to Charlotte some time ago, and were now flying circles around the sky north of Charlotte until we finished our tests. Now we told the controller we’d like to go ahead and fly an approach into Charlotte, but we wouldn’t be landing just yet.

We flew an approach like normal, except we didn’t put the landing gear down, nor did we lower the flaps beyond 30°. The plane has warning systems to remind us if we’re forgetful about these things so that we don’t accidentally land a plane with the gear up. Gison wanted us to test those systems.

Sure enough, at 1,000 feet an obnoxious warning horn sounded to let us know that we’d forgotten to put the gear down. We tried to silence it, but the plane wouldn’t let us. We pressed on with the gear up. At 400 feet, the plane got a little more insistent and started yelling, “TOO LOW GEAR! TOO LOW GEAR!” At that cue, I put the gear down. Because the flaps were still at 30° instead of the 45° we normally land at, the plane started yelling, “TOO LOW FLAPS! TOO LOW FLAPS!” now that the gear was down. At 200 feet above the runway, we executed a go around. I haven’t done a go around in the airplane yet, so it was pretty exciting to see. I bungled one of my callouts, but the Captain did an admirable job in spite of me.

We told the controller we’d like vectors for a 20 mile final, and proceeded to do the final test. Gison explained that now we’d be testing the ADG, or Air Driver Generator. Because my plane is one giant computer, or more correctly, very many little computers connected, it doesn’t really fly so well without AC electrical power. We’ve one generator connected to each engine, plus another one connected to the APU (Auxiliary Power Unit, which is basically just a little bitty jet engine in the tail that we use to start the big engines, and provide electrical power when the big engines aren’t running.) If everything goes really bad and all those fail, we’ve got one more trick: the ADG. It’s basically just a little windmill that pops out of the side of the plane and powers only the very essential systems of the airplane.

I assumed we were simply going to manually deploy it, verify that it spins up and produces the correct amount of power. I was wrong. Instead, we were to manually turn all the other generators off to verify that the ADG will pop out all on its own like it’s supposed to. This seems unwise, and in retrospect, I might should have refused to do this. My Captain was willing to go ahead, however, so I consented.

I turned off the APU and the RIGHT engine generator switches one at a time. Things kept working correctly off the LEFT generator. “You sure you’re ready for this?” I asked my Captain. “Yup,” he said. “Here goes nothing,” I said and flipped off the LEFT engine generator switch. All the screens turned off for a split second as I heard a very loud thunk, followed by a loud whirring noise and a very pronounced vibration under my seat. The system display screens turned back on as well as the Captain’s flight instrument display. Everything on my side stayed dark–the ADG doesn’t generate enough power to light my side.

There were so many caution messages on the screen that it took up two pages. Gison made me look for some specific ones, which were indeed there. We verified that the ADG was also powering Hydraulic System #3 like it was supposed to. After that, Gison asked my Captain to slow down to 135. “But, the ADG only provides power to 135 knots, below that and we’ll have nothing!” “It’s okay, it’s a clear day out and we can see just fine.” “I don’t like it,” I said as the Captain was slowing down and the remain screens started to flicker a bit. Apparently Gison was content, or didn’t want to push me any further and asked us to speed up, which my Captain had started doing anyway.

I turned the generators back on, and got everything more or less back to normal as the Captain turned final. We landed and pulled off the runway and discovered that no one knew where we were supposed to park the plane. No one answered company operations frequency, the ground controller had no idea where Mesa maintenance was located. We’d tried to find out before we left where we should go, but the dispatcher said we should just call operations when we got there. We called the dispatcher on the telephone who chastised us for not finding out before we left, despite the fact that we’d tried. It took half an hour before we got someone who knew on the telephone.

Maintenance finally came out to park us. Rather than having two lighted wands to marshall us with, he had one that flashed rapidly. That made it very difficult to understand his discussions and really brought home the feeling of how poorly run the entire night seemed to be.

I finally got to the hotel at about 5am that night, and had to catch an 8am van back to the airport. Fortunately, Crew Tracking was willing to release me so that I could go home instead of making me go back to JFK like originally planned.

And now I’m in Phoenix for ground school for the CRJ. Still no word on the Dash displacement or when it might be out.