Greenville Layover

I got to visit my folks near Asheville this weekend during a Greenville layover. Here's a picture I took waiting to leave Albuquerque on my jumpseat. See the "Supermoon"? Next: three weeks of vacation!!!

Birdstrike #2

We had a second birdstrike in three days on final approach into Memphis last night. It hit the FO's side again, just above the side window. They've really got it in for him (the birds)!
I cleaned out my locker when we got to Memphis as instructed. They're planning on expanding the number of sleeprooms into the existing locker room and library. I'll have to use my car for my spare uniforms and such. $50 in coins scattered across the bottom, the sum of about 15 years of use!

Miami

Airboats in storage

Drowned Dinghy

Downtown in the distance

Dinner Key

Scotty's for lunch

It was a nice day in Coconut Grove...cloudy but mild. I walked around the marinas for several hours, then had lunch at Scotty's under a canvas tent. Fish and chips and key lime pie for desert. Yes!

A Close One

We had a disturbing event last night in Atlanta. We had closed up the doors and armed the slides for automatic deployment, and the ramp crew had pulled the stairs away from the aircraft in preparation for pushback. After a delay, the stairs were pushed back to the airplane, and a mechanic came up to bring us some paperwork, opening the door without ever letting us know his intentions. Normally, there would be a signal on the interphone or just visually, and he would wait for the flightcrew's approval before opening the door so we'd have time to disarm it, but this did not occur. The reason this is a big deal is that the door is designed to blow open and deploy the slide automatically if it's armed and the door opens for an evacuation. There is a mechanical interlock that deactivates this system when the door is opened from the outside so that rescuers can get to the crew if we're unable to open the door ourselves, but we are trained never to take chances with this last-ditch safeguard. The door is always disarmed and opened from inside if there are crewmembers onboard. Of course, if the airplane is empty, then no one would have been inside to arm the doors, so they can safely be opened from the outside. Anyway, this guy had apparently gotten complacent about opening the door and hadn't paused to think about the fact that he was one mechanical failure away from certain death or severe injury. I had a few words with him about how lucky he was and then we closed up again and the flight proceeded to Newark without further incident. Today, I filled out a safety report advising that the Atlanta maintenance personnel might need some remediation in this area. I'm just thankful that the safeguard worked and no one got hurt!

Survived Night 1

Atlantic City

The worst is behind me for this trip. The weather was very nice for our trip up and down the eastern seaboard last night. We had a birdstrike on the FO's side window climbing out of Newark on the second leg, and they had to do an inspection in Miami for any damage (there was none). Coincidentally, there was an article in USA Today about this topic http://usat.ly/Iam3e5 The third leg from Miami back to Atlanta was a killer since the sun had come up. We landed just after 8:00 and I slept until 4:00 pm. At least we don't have to fly that last leg tonight!

Atlanta

In order to make up some of the lost pay for my deviation failure, I picked up an UGLY trip. It began with a deadhead to Atlanta, which I got to by jumpseating on Fedex (enough with the passenger carriers for awhile). So I got to Atlanta this morning and will attempt to get some sleep this afternoon. At 10:45 tonight, the fun begins. We'll fly to Newark, turn and then fly to Miami, turn and then fly back to Atlanta, arriving at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Tomorrow night, we'll do it again, but stay in Miami, finally returning to Memphis Friday night. I'll get home early Saturday morning in a vegetative state, I'm sure. Living the dream.

Midday, time to get up

Sunrise: Time to go to bed

Sunset: time to go to work

Around Columbus

St Joseph's Cathedral

Wendy's is BIG here

Columbus College of Art and Design (spells "ART" from a different angle)

Cool building

W.G.Grinder's

Smallish sign on a big building

In the lobby...go through that door on the right...

down these stairs

Through this unmarked door.

Lunchtime. Consulting Google Maps revealed a grinder shop in the basement of a local office building. Apparently, many of the denizens of said office building do not even know of the restaurant's existence b/c it's so well disguised and hidden. Above, follow the route to a great cheesesteak grinder!

Turn left and it's at the end of the hall!

Deviation Success

It was a near thing, once again, but I made it to Columbus. Last weekend's debacle made me doubly paranoid about deadheading, b/c two misses in a row would have been VERY bad for my career. I had a ticket on American from ABQ-CMH through DFW on Sunday, again a day early from the scheduled deadhead from MEM-CMH. On Saturday, the severe weather center in Norman, OK was predicting a huge tornado event throughout tornado alley, but it was supposed to subside on Sunday. I moved up my ABQ-DFW leg anyway so as to have a backup out of ABQ, and giving me a 3 hour layover in case things were running late. When I checked how things were going Sunday morning, DFW was in the middle of a line of thunderstorms that stretched way up past Kansas, but it looked like things would be okay for my early-afternoon flight. Then I got a message from American that the DFW-CMH leg would be delayed 45 minutes. Now, that leg wasn't until 8:00 at night, so the fact that they were already delaying it made me very concerned. Easy to cancel the last flight on a Sunday night if things got too dicey. I called American and asked why the change and they said their forecasters were predicting more storms later that evening. I called our corporate travel office and re-booked on and earlier United (ugh) flight through Denver and hustled down to the airport. This new ticket initially cost an additional $200. Then American also re-booked me on the same United flight, a really bad indicator. Unfortunately, United smelled blood and raised the price while I was cancelling the American flight (too soon), so I was now out $300. I finally got to the hotel in Columbus around 1:00 am, just thankful to be able to check in with Fedex saying "I'm here!" Next month, NO DEADHEADS! I'll just jumpseat to MEM on Fedex and if the flight cancels or delays, it won't be my problem...of course, it means I have to fly out of Memphis which is always a pain.

Deviation Failure

This was a rough week. I was originally scheduled to deadhead from Albuquerque to Milwaukee Sunday afternoon for a week long trip. I had deviated from the original trip, which would have left Memphis on Monday morning to deadhead to Milwaukee. I prefer to go Sunday night even though it's an extra night away from home, to avoid the stress of early Monday morning deadheading, and to get myself in to a nighttime sleep schedule. Unfortunately, American cancelled my Sunday night flight b/c of tornadoes in DFW. I checked the weather for Monday morning and it looked good, so I rebooked on the first flight out. I would still get to Columbus in time to legally check in for crew rest for my live leg Monday night. I got up at 3:00 am Monday morning and got to ABQ at 5:00 for my 6:20 flight to DFW. At 5:50, American announced a one hour delay in the flight due to a cracked windshield. I knew it would take alot longer than that to replace the windshield and allow the sealant to cure (more like all day). I tried to get on another flight, but none would get me to Columbus in time for my check-in. I made the agonizing decision to call Crew Scheduling and let them know there was no way I could make it in time. I was removed from the trip (without pay) and went home. I eventually had to provide a justification for the reason why I failed to make it to Columbus for Fedex Flight Management. The financial impact was significant, being half a month's pay. Not a happy event, but I feel like I abided by the provisions as set forth in our contract to make sure the revenue flight was protected. I have only missed a couple of deviation trips in my 17 year career (the other one due to a record-setting snowstorm that was not predicted), but it definitely felt like I had failed when I had to make the call. This is not helping my stated goal of some day retiring without anyone in Flight Management knowing my name.
Of course, it could have been worse...there was a guy on the flight who missed a job interview he'd been trying to get for months. At least I'm still employed!

Oooh, Scary

PHOENIX (AP) – A Delta Air Lines flight from Atlanta to Phoenix has landed safely after one of the plane's engines shut down as it began to descend over Arizona. 

Delta spokesman Paul Skrbec says Flight 2046 carrying 159 passengers landed normally Saturday afternoon at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. It taxied to the gate under its own power.

The Boeing 757's left engine shut down as the plane began to descend, so the captain followed procedure and declared an emergency. Skrbec says there were no injuries but the airline apologized to the passengers.

The twin-engine 757 can fly safely on just one of its two engines.

Good to know it will fly on one engine!

Pitot-Static Problems

A little fun this morning. As it always seems to, the weather couldn't resist turning ugly our last night. We took off from Indy into some mild thunderstorms. Since the leg to Columbus is so short, we only climbed to 15,000', which will not normally get an airplane on top of any weather. Approaching level off, my pitot-static instruments all went wacko. They're called pitot-static b/c they rely on dynamic pressure info from the pitot tubes (those pointy looking probes near the nose) and/or static pressure info from the static ports, to determine, among other things, airspeed, altitude and rate of climb/descent. When any of these sensors get clogged up, it's garbage in, garbage out time for the airplane's instruments. In most cases, the likely cause is icing; and since we were in the clouds, this was my assumption (although dirt dauber nests run a close second in causality). The ports are heated, and the heaters have idiot lights to let the pilots know if they're offline, but we had no such indications. I handed off control of the airplane to my FO, as his instruments, which have a different source, were fine. I switched my air data computer (ADC) to join the FO on the right side and things returned to normal. A little excitement at 5:00 in the morning never hurt anyone, right? Of course, you have to ask, what if the FO's side iced up as well? Well, it's emergency time and let's get out of the clouds and see if we can thaw out the ice. I had this happen in the E-2 one time, and it's quite a challenge b/c you have no idea how fast you're going or what your altitude is. Fortunately, we have a table of ballpark figures for airspeed based on weight and power settings, and the inertial reference units (IRU's) will still provide altitude info. The maintenance sign-off indicated a bad ADC, so case closed.

Columbus

Scioto River

Columbus Commons

This month, my flying will be divided between Columbus-Indy and Milwaukee-Indy trips. I got in to Columbus late last night and woke up this morning to a beautiful spring day. It is my first time here, so I enjoyed walking around Columbus Commons, beside the Scioto River, and all through the Capitol district. It was nice to be deadheading on American again after the nightmare last month of United (every flight was late, and one was outright cancelled).

Famous Flyers

I recently found this book at our cabin, which had been rescued from my family's North Carolina cabin after it was sold years ago. I never realized it was actually my father's; a gift to him when he was quite young, as the inscription inside says. It's a collection of stories about the pioneering pilots of that era (copyright 1932). I enjoyed very much reading it during spring break leisure time, and again felt a connection to dreams he might have had as a boy growing up at the dawn of aviation.

Fun in Portlandia East

Runway 29 on the Harbor Visual approach

See the lighthouse?

parked for the weekend

This has been a very challenging week flying between Portland, Maine and Memphis. It started with a deadhead on United Sunday night complete with two old Chinese ladies playing Asian disco music on a portable stereo so loud the passengers had to ask the flight attendant to have them shut it off. We flew a relatively uneventful leg from Portland to Memphis Monday night, actually getting there in time for a sleep room. After a quick nap, I woke up to learn we had an FAA flight inspector on our jumpseat back to Portland, my first as a Captain. He was somewhat grumpy, so the flight was less than enjoyable. Stuff always goes wrong when a check airman or FAA inspector is onboard, and this flight was no exception. Our APU refused to provide air pressure for engine starts, and the two mechanics at that gate were brand new (read: clueless). Their clumsy attempts at troubleshooting did not impress the Inspector, and the paperwork to defer the problem was less than satisfactory. We finally left over an hour late, and lost our status as a "time critical" flight. We were typically short on gas from the start, and all these delays caused me to be about two minutes from having to taxi back to the ramp for more gas when we took the runway for takeoff. The Inspector spent the next day bringing joy to the ramp at Portland with an audit. Meanwhile, we were diverted into Fort Wayne the next evening on the way to Memphis, cutting very short our turn time, so no nap. We were late again leaving Memphis thanks to a window heat problem with the same mechanics trying to figure out what to do. By the time we got back to Portland, I was drooling on myself. The only cool thing to happen was getting to do the Harbor Visual approach to runway 29 b/c the sun was up. Fun! Last night, the Inspector rode back to Memphis with us, but was somewhat more jocular. My FO did a nice job with nasty crosswinds on the Memphis landing. When we came back to Portland this morning, our airplane's autothrottles were not working, making the approach a handful. Who knows what fun awaits us tonight to close out the week!

Late Late Late

I picked up a 2 day makeup trip with a deadhead to Indy Sunday night, one live leg to Knoxville Monday night, then deadhead home; easy trip, right? This is just to take the airplane (tail #922) to a "C" (maintenance) check. I flew this airplane most of last week, and when the mechanics on the push crew mentioned it only had one flight left before it needed to be in Knoxville, I figured there might be a trip in open time. The weather looked fine everywhere Sunday, so I took the latest flight I could get out of ABQ to spend a little more time at home. I normally give myself plenty of time for unexpected delays getting to the airport, but I did the math wrong (yes I'm getting old) and ended up leaving home much later than usual. Still, I would make it to the airport with 45 minutes to go before departure. Then I remembered the truck needed gas...oh well just have to push it, no time to stop. Coming into to town on I-40, the warning signs said the interstate was CLOSED at the second exit in the city limits. Tried to get off early to take an alternate route, but so did all the semi's. Finally broke free of the traffic and hit EVERY SINGLE RED LIGHT along the surface streets to the airport. Parked in short term parking with the fuel light flashing ominously and ran with my bags to the American ticket counter. No chance to check bags: time to get out the ziplock bag for the liquids. Hurried through security and got to the gate at 15 minutes before push and was the last one on. No more overhead space: had to gate check the bag through to Indy with a hand-written claim check (sure I would never see it again). Phew! Man I hate being late. I just hope there's enough gas in the truck to get me to a gas station Tuesday morning.

Emergency, Emergency!

MD-10 and entourage of no less than seven fire trucks

757 ON THE ROLL!!!

Eventful night in Indy last night. Just as we were ready to push, and MD-10 had to come back after takeoff with indications of a possible #2 engine fire. This shut down the entire right side of the airport complex and added 30 minutes to our day. The numerous fire trucks followed the emergency airplane all the way back to our ramp...like a Christmas parade. Also, we had some nasty heavy wet snow to deal with in Milwaukee. Always on the last work day of the week. On the positive side, I did have time to snap a picture of a 757 taking off right in front of us.