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!