Greetings from Wheaton

(Population 1600)

I made it to Minnesota just fine on Sunday night. Yesterday morning I drove to Dawn's parents' place in Wheaton. We'll be driving back down to Princeton to visit my folks tomorrow morning and staying through Friday or Saturday.

Bring on the Airbii

So I'm done with my 2-day trip, ready to head out to Minnesota for my week of vacation. But first, to get there. The United flights to Denver and Chicago were packed so I'm trying the Northwest flight that leaves at 4PM. It used to be a 757, now it's an A320. It was usually full before so it's sure to be packed now. Here's hoping I'm the only jumpseater.



Actually, I think NWA's A320s have two jumpseats. Guess I'll find out. If I don't get on this flight, I'll be going up to Seattle to catch the 1AM redeye to MSP. Yeah, the same flight that left Dawn stranded in the Sea-Tac terminal overnight.

One Six Right

Just saw the trailer for a very cool forthcoming documentary on Van Nuys Airport in Southern California. It looks like a very quality film, with production values closer to large-scale cinematic releases than any flying video you'd order from Sporty's. It is aimed more-so at the non-flying public than pilots, I think, and will be shown in public theatres. I certainly hope to make it to a screening; if not, I'll be ordering the DVD.

One Six Right: The Romance of Flying

Portland on a sunny morning...

Just a little antidote for the more typical winter weather we're currently having: dreary, cold, rainy, windy. Bring back the sun!

It'll probably come back to Portland when I'm in MN this week. The upper midwest, on the other hand, will see record lows and a freak blizzard. Uh huh.

Sam's Arch-Nemesis

Whoever designed the heating/cooling system on the MegaWhacker needs to be severely beaten with a blunt instrument (and I mean that in a very positive way, Sylv). It has two temp controls, one for the cabin and one for the flight deck - but in actuality only has one pack (heating/cooling unit). That'd be kinda okay because there are two sets of seperate expansion chambers, heat exchangers, etc - but then the air is all mixed together before being split for the various ducts. So basically, if we run the system in auto mode, we get the same temperature of air that the passenger cabin gets. If there are more than 40 people in back, we need to keep the duct temps pretty cool because of all the body heat. Of course, this means we freeze our butts off in the flight deck. It's worst on full flights. I've been cold to the point of uncontrollable shivering on full flights to Canada or Montana. We rest our feet on the instrument panel because the floor is often cold-soaked.

Sometimes we can get a mediocrum of heat going in the flight deck by using a bass-ackwards combination of manual pack controls, or turning the flight deck pack off, turning flow control to max, and turning the pax control way up. Each plane is different, though, and seems to change from week to week.

The situation is made worse by the touchiness of the temp controls. The slightest movement can drive the packs to full hot or full cold. Sometimes selecting the packs to manual improves things; sometimes it makes it worse. Also, I've had situations where the temp was set up perfect, but reducing power to start descent drove the pack to full cold or full hot. One time descending into Santa Barbara, it was essentially a race to get on the ground before the passengers passed out from the heat, because nothing we did could nudge the packs from full hot. On the return leg, they worked perfectly.

So needless to say, dealing with this A/C system requires a mastery of four-letter words. If any MegaWhacker pilot ever catches the Canadian engineer who designed it in a dark alley...well, it ain't gonna be pretty. One really wonders how it made it through flight testing and certification, in Canada of all places. If anybody can design a proper heating system, it should be them. I mean, heck, Bombardier puts hand-warmers on their snowmobiles - how about foot-warmers on their airplanes!?

Hanging out in PDX

I'm hanging out at PDX with Dawn. I deadhead to SEA at noon for a Kelowna turn and Boise overnight; Dawn hopefully heads off to Denver around 1PM. I'm listening to The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on my computer & Dawn is taking a catnap since she's been up all night.



I'm not a big fan of the drug culture or arguments to legalize certain drugs, but you can't deny that some of the world's best music was written and recorded under the heavy use of psychedelics. Sgt Pepper is one of the better examples. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, indeed.



Somebody call the pee-in-a-cup lady, Sam and Dawn look a little doped up themselves! Yeah, lack of sleep will do that.

Dawn: Stuck in Non-Rev Hell

I was woken at 5:30am today by a call from Dawn. She flew to Seattle last night to try and catch a redeye to Minneapolis on Northwest. It was not to be: NWA had substituted A320s for 757s throughout the day and had a huge backlog of stuck revenue pax, to say nothing of non-revs. Apparently the situation is the same throughout the western US: the best chance of getting to MSP is from Great Falls, MT, and only because it's booked solid rather than overbooked.

Okay, fine, there are other games in town than NWA. The best way is to go to Denver on Alaska or Frontier, and then to Minneapolis on NWA or Frontier. I checked Alaska's 7AM flight to DEN: 8 seats available, but 50 - count 'em, fifty, non-revs listed. No-go! Desperate, I started checking Alaska flights to the southwest and the east coast. Boston, Washington DC, Newark, Miami, Phoenix, Las Vegas: everything is overbooked. I checked Frontier to Denver: oversold all day and all week. I checked United. Oversold. I checked America West to Phoenix. Oversold.

I decided it's just not a good day to non-rev out of Seattle, and listed Dawn on a Horizon flight back down to Portland. The good news is that here, there is a 1PM flight to Denver that's wide open. From there, she'll non-rev on a Skywest flight to Fargo (her ultimate destination anyways) that is looking wide open. Just gotta get creative sometimes.

She'll get there at 10PM, nearly 24 hours after she began. She didn't sleep all night. I'm going to keep her company at PDX now, until I leave on my overnight trip at 11.