Our Dumb Blog

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.