As of today, I have 161 hours in the JungleBus. While I'm a long ways from "experienced" in the airplane, I've moved beyond the beginner stage where you have to think about everything you do to the level of familiarity where at least routine procedures become second nature. It's a comforting feeling for a pilot: an airplane that once seemed foreign, clumsy, even intimidating becomes as familiar as one's own home. Just as you can find your way to the bathroom or refrigerator in pitch black darkness, or know exactly where your floor will creak, a pilot develops instinctive motor memory for a machine he's been flying for a while. I'm at the point where merely thinking "altitude" sends my hand stretching for the altitude selector, while the mention of speed guides it to the speed selector knob two inches to the left. Now, any familiar airplane can become unfamiliar again in a hurry by doing something you've never seen it do or being put in a situation it wasn't designed for. But at least having a firm grasp on normal operations better equips you to recognize and deal with those abnormal situations.
After six weeks of nothing but Saskatoon hi-speeds, the MSP-YXE-MSP route was getting a little too familiar to me! Thankfully, I was able to trade away the last two weeks of February for a four day trip plus a few Vancouver turn daytrips. That four day trip was interesting. It was mostly east coast flying out of Detroit, so I went to a lot of airports I've never been to before (DTW, CLT, PIT, BNA, ORF, OKC). It's nice to see we do have a system outside of Minnesota & Saskatchewan! The airports are pretty easy to get used to (standard signage and good airport diagram charts go a long way) but all the unfamiliar VOR names had me referencing enroute charts rather frequently. I also got a refresher lesson in U.S. geography since I haven't spent much time on the east coast. Winter weather with widespread cloud cover cut down on scenery watching, but I did enjoy a nice low-level tour of Chesapeake Bay on the way into Norfolk, VA the other day. It was my first time to Virginia. Norfolk seemed much nicer than its gritty reputation, from the air at least.
We're settling into our apartment pretty well now. Aggressive craigslisting has furnished our apartment with some cool stuff on the cheap. I joke to Dawn that our place could be the craigslist equivalent of an IKEA showroom. I'm getting familiar with the watering holes and coffee shops within walking distance, and have a pretty good system for getting myself to and from work via public transit. I'm pretty sure we're going to sell my Blazer and get by on one car. I may get a motorcycle come summer. Although I complain constantly about the Minnesota weather, and I do miss the Pacific Northwest, in a certain way it's been exciting to go about building a new life for ourselves in Minneapolis.
At the moment, Dawn and I are back at our townhouse in Vancouver, WA. For the last two days we've packed up the remainder of our belongings and loaded them onto a U-Haul truck; tomorrow we'll be driving to Minnesota. Yes, the townhouse finally sold. Last week on Wednesday we got a full price offer with no contingencies. In today's real estate environment, we consider ourselves very f0rtunate to be selling our house for quite a bit more than we bought it for in 2005. The house passed inspection and the buyer's financing appears to be on track so we decided to take advantage of a 5 day gap in my schedule to move everything back to Minneapolis. Our place is utterly empty right now; it already feels like someone else's house. I have a lot of good memories in this place so it's hard to leave, but I remind myself that very little of that life remains here, so lingering is useless.
A few readers seem to have misinterpreted a comment I made in a previous post about my impending captainhood. No, I'm still a First Officer. However, an award for 24 new captains is coming out in a few days, and as I'm 15 from the top of the FO list I assume I'll be on it. Unless something changes, it's looking like I'll be a Captain at NewCo sometime in March.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Q400 Retrospective Gallery
Unlike Horizon, Newco has a fairly specific employee internet policy. It does not directly prohibit blogging but does forbid the internet posting of pictures that include any visible portion of a company uniform or aircraft livery. That's crimping my style in the photoblogging department a bit. Fortunately, my separation from Horizon means that I'm able to post all the pictures I wasn't free to put on this blog when I worked there. I've searched the dusty shelves of my photo archives and picked my favorite Horizon Q400 pics. Some of these were posted before in the first year of the blog but were taken down after I removed references to Horizon.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Curmudgeonly Advice from a 26 Yr Old
A while ago, a fellow airline pilot told me emphatically that "if I knew then what I know now, there is no way I would have gone into this stupid industry." That got me thinking. This pilot started flying about the same time I did, although his airline career began a few years before mine. He, like I, chose an aviation career at a time when senior airline captains were commanding salaries into the $300,000 range, major airlines were hiring like mad, and aviation analysts were predicting a severe pilot shortage stretching on into the foreseeable future. At that time - the late 90s - "airline pilot" was an enticing career indeed, and it was an easy decision to make for many of us who were young and enthusiastic about aviation. Since then, we've seen a major terrorist attack involving the airlines, a recession, a ton of lengthy furloughs, bankruptcies, an unbroken string of concessionary contracts, the outsourcing of much of the airlines' capacity to low-paid regionals, a few mergers and the threat of more, a likely second recession, and now the slowing of retirements due to a change in the retirement age. All of this has served to take the luster out of a once lucrative profession. I personally don't regret going into aviation because the primary attraction for me - the actual flying - is still as enjoyable as it was when I chose this career. That said, if I had a crystal ball back around 1998, and knew what was going to happen to this industry, it is quite likely that I would've pursued my other interests at the time and gone into law or perhaps architecture.
Over the time I've been writing this blog, I've come to realize that many of my readers are new or prospective pilots considering a career in aviation. Although I originally set out to write for the traveling public, I've come to accept this demographic as my "target audience," if you will, and tend to write with them in mind. I've written about the changes the profession has seen, the challenges we face, the downsides to the job that aren't always apparent to outsiders. My goal has become to educate those entering the industry, giving them a realistic perspective that is seldom provided by the flight training industry. Throughout all this, however, I've tried to avoid advising my readers for or against a career in aviation. Now, though, I'm ready to revise my neutrality.
If you are considering a career in aviation, here's my honest advice: you should absolutely go for it.
I haven't gone off my rocker; hear me out. If you've been paying attention the last seven years or so, you've seen the very worst that the industry can dish out. If you've seen all that and still want to be an airline pilot, it is for the very best reason: a love of flight and a wish to make it an integral part of your life. From where the profession is now, I fail to see how things can get much worse. Salaries can't get much lower without pilots quitting in droves. Major airline pilots are finally realizing what a threat outsourcing is and are unwilling to let another slice of the pie go to regional carriers. All signs are that the global demand for air travel will continue to increase precipitously; while many pilot retirements have perhaps been deferred five years, they will continue apace after then. The problem for pilots of my generation is that we've only seen things get worse. For someone starting out now that has a clearheaded idea of where the industry is at now, things can only get better.
Furthermore, those starting now have a few advantages that those of us starting in the 90s did not have. A pilot starting today will not have to flight instruct for long; they will likely not have to fly freight. You will very likely be able to get a job flying a modern jet airliner with only a few hundred hours in your logbook. While I have delineated the reasons this is perhaps not favorable for the traveling public or the captains you'll be flying with, it really is good for you. Flight instructing and freight dogging are both hard, occasionally dangerous, often low-paid jobs. Those of us who did these jobs for years will point out that they provided excellent experience, and that's true - but this experience came at a price in both money and time lost. Some people paid the ultimate price; I knew several people who lost their lives while building experience for an aviation career. If you play your cards right, you have a shot at skipping this stage for a much easier job at a regional airline with a seniority number that will let you upgrade in only a few years with a shot at the majors shortly thereafter.
I'm not saying that your aviation career will be all roses; I'm not even saying that it's a good idea in all circumstances. I'm saying that if you love flying and want to make a career of it, this isn't a bad time to do it. I do, however, have some provisos for you:
1. Don't go deep into debt for flight training. Aviation is not as well paid as it used to be and with the greater expense of training it is no longer a great return on investment; therefore it makes sense to be frugal. I went deep into debt for training and if I have any great regret about my aviation career, that's it. I can tell you from experience that it is very tough to be paying $750+ per month in student loans on regional airline first officer pay. Skip the big name aviation colleges, whatever advantage they had in getting you an airline job in the past is gone now because the regionals are taking anyone with a commercial certificate and a pulse. Go for the cheap mom-n-pop flight school but beg for the best flight instructor you can find. Spread your flight training out over time if necessary to avoid going into debt; I personally think it's still going to be a few years before we see a real turnaround at the airlines, so take your time and sit out the rest of this downturn.
2. Study your butt off. Realize that you will be going to the regional airlines at a far lower level of experience than those before you, and you need to make up for your low experience with a high level of knowledge. Get your hands on every aviation text you can and talk to experienced aviators at every opportunity. There are a lot of opportunities for networking with airline pilots that weren't available a few years ago, such as aviation message boards. Make it a point to learn not only about the technicalities of flying but also the history and responsibilities of your chosen profession.
3. Be choosey about the regional airline that you fly for. In the past the conventional wisdom was that you take the first seniority number that comes your way but these days they're all hurting for qualified applicants. Your ideal airline is the one that offers the best combination of quick advancement and good pay/working conditions. My years at Horizon are a good example of how great pay and working conditions are all for naught if there's no advancement, but a bottom-feeder airline that uses and abuses you will kill your love of aviation and the fast advancement is a moot point then, too. Find a happy medium.
4. Keep a humble attitude. You will be flying with captains like me who flight instructed and flew freight for years to get on with a regional. We'll be a little skeptical of first officers who waltzed into their first job with a few hundred hours of flight time, but the only people we'll really have a hard time with are those who think they know it all. I remember how confident I was at 500 hours and how it seemed that there was little left to learn; only since have I realized how little I knew. Be as helpful as you can be to your captain, but realize that your first year or so as a first officer is really just another step in your training; keep an open mind and stay trainable.
5. Be involved in your profession. You need to realize that while the aviation industry will turn around, airline management will do their utmost to ensure that only they and the stockholders whom they have a fiduciary duty to will reap the benefits of the turnaround. It is up to you to ensure that pilots also benefit. Whatever your thoughts on unions, they are the only mechanism pilots have to look out for their interests in this cutthroat industry, and they cannot function effectively without an involved membership. Do your part.
One last piece of advice: be willing to relocate globally. The greatest expansion in aviation, and the greatest shortage of qualified pilots, is outside the US and Europe. The Middle East and Asia, particularly, are full of lucrative opportunities for qualified pilots and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Those with the greatest flexibility towards seeking work overseas will be the most able to withstand further instability in the aviation industry in western countries.
Over the time I've been writing this blog, I've come to realize that many of my readers are new or prospective pilots considering a career in aviation. Although I originally set out to write for the traveling public, I've come to accept this demographic as my "target audience," if you will, and tend to write with them in mind. I've written about the changes the profession has seen, the challenges we face, the downsides to the job that aren't always apparent to outsiders. My goal has become to educate those entering the industry, giving them a realistic perspective that is seldom provided by the flight training industry. Throughout all this, however, I've tried to avoid advising my readers for or against a career in aviation. Now, though, I'm ready to revise my neutrality.
If you are considering a career in aviation, here's my honest advice: you should absolutely go for it.
I haven't gone off my rocker; hear me out. If you've been paying attention the last seven years or so, you've seen the very worst that the industry can dish out. If you've seen all that and still want to be an airline pilot, it is for the very best reason: a love of flight and a wish to make it an integral part of your life. From where the profession is now, I fail to see how things can get much worse. Salaries can't get much lower without pilots quitting in droves. Major airline pilots are finally realizing what a threat outsourcing is and are unwilling to let another slice of the pie go to regional carriers. All signs are that the global demand for air travel will continue to increase precipitously; while many pilot retirements have perhaps been deferred five years, they will continue apace after then. The problem for pilots of my generation is that we've only seen things get worse. For someone starting out now that has a clearheaded idea of where the industry is at now, things can only get better.
Furthermore, those starting now have a few advantages that those of us starting in the 90s did not have. A pilot starting today will not have to flight instruct for long; they will likely not have to fly freight. You will very likely be able to get a job flying a modern jet airliner with only a few hundred hours in your logbook. While I have delineated the reasons this is perhaps not favorable for the traveling public or the captains you'll be flying with, it really is good for you. Flight instructing and freight dogging are both hard, occasionally dangerous, often low-paid jobs. Those of us who did these jobs for years will point out that they provided excellent experience, and that's true - but this experience came at a price in both money and time lost. Some people paid the ultimate price; I knew several people who lost their lives while building experience for an aviation career. If you play your cards right, you have a shot at skipping this stage for a much easier job at a regional airline with a seniority number that will let you upgrade in only a few years with a shot at the majors shortly thereafter.
I'm not saying that your aviation career will be all roses; I'm not even saying that it's a good idea in all circumstances. I'm saying that if you love flying and want to make a career of it, this isn't a bad time to do it. I do, however, have some provisos for you:
1. Don't go deep into debt for flight training. Aviation is not as well paid as it used to be and with the greater expense of training it is no longer a great return on investment; therefore it makes sense to be frugal. I went deep into debt for training and if I have any great regret about my aviation career, that's it. I can tell you from experience that it is very tough to be paying $750+ per month in student loans on regional airline first officer pay. Skip the big name aviation colleges, whatever advantage they had in getting you an airline job in the past is gone now because the regionals are taking anyone with a commercial certificate and a pulse. Go for the cheap mom-n-pop flight school but beg for the best flight instructor you can find. Spread your flight training out over time if necessary to avoid going into debt; I personally think it's still going to be a few years before we see a real turnaround at the airlines, so take your time and sit out the rest of this downturn.
2. Study your butt off. Realize that you will be going to the regional airlines at a far lower level of experience than those before you, and you need to make up for your low experience with a high level of knowledge. Get your hands on every aviation text you can and talk to experienced aviators at every opportunity. There are a lot of opportunities for networking with airline pilots that weren't available a few years ago, such as aviation message boards. Make it a point to learn not only about the technicalities of flying but also the history and responsibilities of your chosen profession.
3. Be choosey about the regional airline that you fly for. In the past the conventional wisdom was that you take the first seniority number that comes your way but these days they're all hurting for qualified applicants. Your ideal airline is the one that offers the best combination of quick advancement and good pay/working conditions. My years at Horizon are a good example of how great pay and working conditions are all for naught if there's no advancement, but a bottom-feeder airline that uses and abuses you will kill your love of aviation and the fast advancement is a moot point then, too. Find a happy medium.
4. Keep a humble attitude. You will be flying with captains like me who flight instructed and flew freight for years to get on with a regional. We'll be a little skeptical of first officers who waltzed into their first job with a few hundred hours of flight time, but the only people we'll really have a hard time with are those who think they know it all. I remember how confident I was at 500 hours and how it seemed that there was little left to learn; only since have I realized how little I knew. Be as helpful as you can be to your captain, but realize that your first year or so as a first officer is really just another step in your training; keep an open mind and stay trainable.
5. Be involved in your profession. You need to realize that while the aviation industry will turn around, airline management will do their utmost to ensure that only they and the stockholders whom they have a fiduciary duty to will reap the benefits of the turnaround. It is up to you to ensure that pilots also benefit. Whatever your thoughts on unions, they are the only mechanism pilots have to look out for their interests in this cutthroat industry, and they cannot function effectively without an involved membership. Do your part.
One last piece of advice: be willing to relocate globally. The greatest expansion in aviation, and the greatest shortage of qualified pilots, is outside the US and Europe. The Middle East and Asia, particularly, are full of lucrative opportunities for qualified pilots and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Those with the greatest flexibility towards seeking work overseas will be the most able to withstand further instability in the aviation industry in western countries.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Wintertime
It's snowing in Minneapolis. An hour ago huge flakes were blowing sideways and obscuring even the shops across the street; now the wind has died down and the snowfall looks more picturesque than malevolent. Either way, I'm glad to see snow. Without new snowfall, the snowbanks turn into ugly barricades of ice, sand, and salt. More importantly, snow in Minnesota heralds the arrival of "warm" weather, 29 degrees F today. When we have long winter stretches without snow, it's usually because the atmosphere is too cold to carry enough moisture for significant snowfall. We've had several weeks of frigid weather with a few Alberta clippers that combine gusty winds with bitter temperatures for days on end of wind chills in the -30 F and colder range.
This would be a superb time to bid four day trips with overnights exclusively south of the Mason-Dixon line, but in my infinite wisdom I bid a line that contained nothing but hi-speeds to the one place we fly in North America that's colder than Minneapolis: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Saskatoon redefines the word cold. Last Wednesday we spent the day there with a broken airplane. When we finally ferried it out at 8pm, the airport was reporting -37C (-35F), which is only three degrees from the JungleBus' minimum temperature for takeoff. The wind chill was -52C (-62F). I offered to Paper-Rock-Scissors the Captain for the preflight inspection, since that's our standard method of determining who flies which leg; he just laughed at me so I dutifully grabbed my flimsy pilot cap and headed out into the maelstrom. I returned a few minutes later without any feeling in my ears, nose, or face.
I'm apparently a glutton for punishment because I bid the exact same line for February. I didn't really want to, but it was the one line I could hold that had the days off I absolutely needed off (Dawn's birthday & my sister's wedding). I then set about trading away as many hi-speeds as I could in exchange for warmer overnights - which would be just about anywhere. In the end I only gained Pittsburg, Nashville, and Detroit overnights and accidentally scheduled myself to fly during the weekend I was hoping to go to Florida with Dawn and her parents. My trip-trading technique at NewCo can obviously use some improvement. I do have five days off at the end of the month; an airline buddy and I are talking about going to Mexico for a few days. I think after another month of Saskatoon that'd be a very welcome change of scenery.
Other than the cold preflights, winter flying isn't all bad. The plane performs pretty well in the cold air. The stronger, more southerly jetstream can make for bumpy rides but the JungleBus usually has the performance to climb to smooth air; it's nice not cruising through the tops at FL250 all winter like you'd do in the Q400. Frequent deicing can be a pain from a keeping-the-schedule standpoint but our flights are long enough that we can make up most of the time by cruising at Mach .78 or .80 rather than the planned .76. I imagine that monster lines of thunderstorms in the summer carry more potential for schedule disruption. There are more low instrument approaches and crosswind landings than you'd expect in the summer but I'm glad to get that experience in the plane before I upgrade.
Besides all the north-of-the-border flying, I got a healthy dose of winter driving on a cross-country road trip the weekend before last. Dawn and I have been living in her aunt's basement since I came back from Montreal, a rather less-than-idea living arrangement. We've been looking to get our own place, but our budget is rather limited given that we're still paying the mortgage on our still-unsold townhouse. We ended up getting a two-bedroom apartment with a single college friend of mine who just started flying for NewCo. His Subaru was still in Washington while he was in Montreal; once he was done, I met him in WA to bring back the car, which had every square inch of cargo space packed with his stuff and ours, as well as a monstrous roof bag. We detoured up to White Pass to go skiing with his cousin, and then set out at about 8pm Saturday with the intention of driving straight through to Minneapolis.
We managed to time it just right to be driving through the middle of a major winter storm for the first 500 miles. The snow was dumping in the Cascades, then a sleety mix near Ellensburg, then snow again at Moses Lake and rain on top of previous snowfall in Spokane, a slushy mix that started freezing as soon as we started climbing into the Bitterroots past Coeur d'Alene. It was harrowing for a while until we got high enough that it was pure snow, no ice. Dan's all-wheel drive Subaru performed admirably. Dan woke up and took over the driving duties for me at Lookout Pass, ID, which we crested around 3AM. I settled into the passenger seat and fell fast asleep.
I woke up an hour later to Dan's exclamation, "Oh #%#!!!" as the car slid sideways straight into I-90's center meridian ditch. We were still going about 30 mph when we hit the snowbank and the car plowed about 20 feet into the ditch before grinding to a halt. Dan tried reversing without any movement. We were stuck fast. I got out and pushed, to no avail. It was sleeting outside; we had again descended to an altitude where freezing rain on top of previous snow made the roads absolutely treacherous. A snowplow stopped and called the state patrol for us; I suggested that we see if we couldn't dig out the car. We didn't have a shovel so I used Dan's snowboard to scoop most of the snow away, and then Dan used an ice scraper to break through the bottom layer of snow and ice to give the tires traction against bare dirt. We scooped as much snow from under the car as we could, and then cleared a path ahead and behind it so that by rocking the car and pushing we were able to dislodge it from where the undercarriage was hung up on the snowbank and clear that spot out so we had about a 30' clearway where the car was fairly free to move. Then we scooped and stomped a path up to the shoulder of the highway. I moved the car to the very back of the cleared area and got as much speed as I could before we hit the second path and the car had just enough momentum to claw its way up the path and onto the shoulder. After 90 minutes of shoveling heavy, wet snow in sleet and rain, we were exhausted, soaked, and exuberant. We stopped in Missoula to change into dry clothes and have breakfast. The weather was decent the rest of the way, but the trip took 29 hours instead of the usual 22 and we pulled into Minneapolis at 3am on Monday morning.
The moral of this story? If you're tempted to drive cross-country in the middle of the winter, don't. RedCo will fly you there in a fraction of the time for less than the cost of gas. Heck, half the time I think they'll charge you less than their cost of gas! [/shameless plug]
Blogging has been slow/nonexistent because we don't have internet in our new apartment yet so my only internet access is on my short overnights or during visits to Caribou Coffee. Heck, we don't really have furniture yet. The apartment is still mostly bare, a somewhat depressing sight. So much of this move has felt like moving backwards: back to first year FO pay, back to frigid Minnesota, back to living with roommates in a rented apartment. At least one thing is moving forward: my seniority. Another eight first officers are upgrading in February so I now have only 14 FOs above me. NewCo has moved up several deliveries and has begun several lines of flying more quickly than expected, so they're finally getting thin on Captains. It looks like I'll indeed be upgrading in April or even March. On Captain pay I'll be able to afford some furniture for the apartment and perhaps even internet access for more regular blogging!
Final amusing winter flying story: the day that we were stuck in Saskatoon, the plane was down on maintenance due to a leak in the crew oxygen system. The oxygen quantity went below minimum for dispatch just as we were getting ready to push back. The contract maintenance worker was able to refill the bottle within an hour but there was still a leak in the system; the captain and I weren't willing to fly it without knowing the location and cause of the leak. If it was from the oxygen bottle or associated plumbing, that's in the forward cargo compartment and it could create an oxygen-rich environment in that compartment (can you say ValuJet?). The mechanic mentioned that he's seen many bottles leak in bitter cold temperatures like those we were experiencing in Saskatoon, and went down to the cargo compartment to find the leak. He returned a short time later to say he couldn't find the leak using the standard method. The reason? The normal procedure is to spray water on the fittings and look for bubbles, but at -37C water freezes quite instantaneously!
This would be a superb time to bid four day trips with overnights exclusively south of the Mason-Dixon line, but in my infinite wisdom I bid a line that contained nothing but hi-speeds to the one place we fly in North America that's colder than Minneapolis: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Saskatoon redefines the word cold. Last Wednesday we spent the day there with a broken airplane. When we finally ferried it out at 8pm, the airport was reporting -37C (-35F), which is only three degrees from the JungleBus' minimum temperature for takeoff. The wind chill was -52C (-62F). I offered to Paper-Rock-Scissors the Captain for the preflight inspection, since that's our standard method of determining who flies which leg; he just laughed at me so I dutifully grabbed my flimsy pilot cap and headed out into the maelstrom. I returned a few minutes later without any feeling in my ears, nose, or face.
I'm apparently a glutton for punishment because I bid the exact same line for February. I didn't really want to, but it was the one line I could hold that had the days off I absolutely needed off (Dawn's birthday & my sister's wedding). I then set about trading away as many hi-speeds as I could in exchange for warmer overnights - which would be just about anywhere. In the end I only gained Pittsburg, Nashville, and Detroit overnights and accidentally scheduled myself to fly during the weekend I was hoping to go to Florida with Dawn and her parents. My trip-trading technique at NewCo can obviously use some improvement. I do have five days off at the end of the month; an airline buddy and I are talking about going to Mexico for a few days. I think after another month of Saskatoon that'd be a very welcome change of scenery.
Other than the cold preflights, winter flying isn't all bad. The plane performs pretty well in the cold air. The stronger, more southerly jetstream can make for bumpy rides but the JungleBus usually has the performance to climb to smooth air; it's nice not cruising through the tops at FL250 all winter like you'd do in the Q400. Frequent deicing can be a pain from a keeping-the-schedule standpoint but our flights are long enough that we can make up most of the time by cruising at Mach .78 or .80 rather than the planned .76. I imagine that monster lines of thunderstorms in the summer carry more potential for schedule disruption. There are more low instrument approaches and crosswind landings than you'd expect in the summer but I'm glad to get that experience in the plane before I upgrade.
Besides all the north-of-the-border flying, I got a healthy dose of winter driving on a cross-country road trip the weekend before last. Dawn and I have been living in her aunt's basement since I came back from Montreal, a rather less-than-idea living arrangement. We've been looking to get our own place, but our budget is rather limited given that we're still paying the mortgage on our still-unsold townhouse. We ended up getting a two-bedroom apartment with a single college friend of mine who just started flying for NewCo. His Subaru was still in Washington while he was in Montreal; once he was done, I met him in WA to bring back the car, which had every square inch of cargo space packed with his stuff and ours, as well as a monstrous roof bag. We detoured up to White Pass to go skiing with his cousin, and then set out at about 8pm Saturday with the intention of driving straight through to Minneapolis.
We managed to time it just right to be driving through the middle of a major winter storm for the first 500 miles. The snow was dumping in the Cascades, then a sleety mix near Ellensburg, then snow again at Moses Lake and rain on top of previous snowfall in Spokane, a slushy mix that started freezing as soon as we started climbing into the Bitterroots past Coeur d'Alene. It was harrowing for a while until we got high enough that it was pure snow, no ice. Dan's all-wheel drive Subaru performed admirably. Dan woke up and took over the driving duties for me at Lookout Pass, ID, which we crested around 3AM. I settled into the passenger seat and fell fast asleep.
I woke up an hour later to Dan's exclamation, "Oh #%#!!!" as the car slid sideways straight into I-90's center meridian ditch. We were still going about 30 mph when we hit the snowbank and the car plowed about 20 feet into the ditch before grinding to a halt. Dan tried reversing without any movement. We were stuck fast. I got out and pushed, to no avail. It was sleeting outside; we had again descended to an altitude where freezing rain on top of previous snow made the roads absolutely treacherous. A snowplow stopped and called the state patrol for us; I suggested that we see if we couldn't dig out the car. We didn't have a shovel so I used Dan's snowboard to scoop most of the snow away, and then Dan used an ice scraper to break through the bottom layer of snow and ice to give the tires traction against bare dirt. We scooped as much snow from under the car as we could, and then cleared a path ahead and behind it so that by rocking the car and pushing we were able to dislodge it from where the undercarriage was hung up on the snowbank and clear that spot out so we had about a 30' clearway where the car was fairly free to move. Then we scooped and stomped a path up to the shoulder of the highway. I moved the car to the very back of the cleared area and got as much speed as I could before we hit the second path and the car had just enough momentum to claw its way up the path and onto the shoulder. After 90 minutes of shoveling heavy, wet snow in sleet and rain, we were exhausted, soaked, and exuberant. We stopped in Missoula to change into dry clothes and have breakfast. The weather was decent the rest of the way, but the trip took 29 hours instead of the usual 22 and we pulled into Minneapolis at 3am on Monday morning.
The moral of this story? If you're tempted to drive cross-country in the middle of the winter, don't. RedCo will fly you there in a fraction of the time for less than the cost of gas. Heck, half the time I think they'll charge you less than their cost of gas! [/shameless plug]
Blogging has been slow/nonexistent because we don't have internet in our new apartment yet so my only internet access is on my short overnights or during visits to Caribou Coffee. Heck, we don't really have furniture yet. The apartment is still mostly bare, a somewhat depressing sight. So much of this move has felt like moving backwards: back to first year FO pay, back to frigid Minnesota, back to living with roommates in a rented apartment. At least one thing is moving forward: my seniority. Another eight first officers are upgrading in February so I now have only 14 FOs above me. NewCo has moved up several deliveries and has begun several lines of flying more quickly than expected, so they're finally getting thin on Captains. It looks like I'll indeed be upgrading in April or even March. On Captain pay I'll be able to afford some furniture for the apartment and perhaps even internet access for more regular blogging!
Final amusing winter flying story: the day that we were stuck in Saskatoon, the plane was down on maintenance due to a leak in the crew oxygen system. The oxygen quantity went below minimum for dispatch just as we were getting ready to push back. The contract maintenance worker was able to refill the bottle within an hour but there was still a leak in the system; the captain and I weren't willing to fly it without knowing the location and cause of the leak. If it was from the oxygen bottle or associated plumbing, that's in the forward cargo compartment and it could create an oxygen-rich environment in that compartment (can you say ValuJet?). The mechanic mentioned that he's seen many bottles leak in bitter cold temperatures like those we were experiencing in Saskatoon, and went down to the cargo compartment to find the leak. He returned a short time later to say he couldn't find the leak using the standard method. The reason? The normal procedure is to spray water on the fittings and look for bubbles, but at -37C water freezes quite instantaneously!
Monday, January 14, 2008
The Sky Is Falling ( ! / ? )
Last week, months of persistent rumors were given credibility when one of the major US airlines publicly announced that they were holding merger talks with several other major airlines, including NewCo's parent company. This was mere confirmation of what had been spread as gospel truth by industry and general media for months despite firm denials by numerous executives that any such thing was in the works. Therefore, the announcement wasn't much of a surprise - after all, who believes a thing CEOs say these days? In a hundred years, I suspect the epithet "CEO" will be used as interchangeably with "liar" as "Benedict Arnold" is now with "traitor."
That said, a public announcement before God, the SEC, and the NYSE - not necessarily in that order - does seem to increase the probability of a merger actually coming to fruition by several fold. At least, that's how the markets took it: the stocks off all three companies involved shot up 20-30% the first day alone, and most other airline stocks inexplicably took a mighty jump too. Meanwhile, the aviation message boards were freshly abuzz with speculation as to what form the merger would take, which aircraft would be phased out and which bases closed, what the name would be, how many employees would be axed, and what other unholy unions the merger mania might spawn. The mood among airline pilots was uniformly gloomy. One wag posted the following darkly humorous checklist:
I'm still a little skeptical as to whether a merger is really going to happen. RedCo and WidgetCo doesn't make that much sense to me. Everybody points out that they have complimentary route structures, with a large European network for Widget, an extensive Asian presence for RedCo, and relatively little overlap in their domestic routes. Well, if there's so little overlap, how exactly will merging the companies save a ton of money? If merely offering customers an expansive worldwide network were the goal, couldn't the same thing be accomplished through a close marketing alliance like the one RedCo has with KLM? Everyone seems certain that the Bush DOJ will take a laissez-faire approach to this megamerger; certainly a more modest marketing alliance would survive scrutiny as well. One can make the argument that mergers will give the surviving airlines greater pricing power, but consider that capacity cuts have done nothing and will do nothing for the legacies' pricing power in a deregulated environment because there is always some low-cost carrier eager to swoop in and snatch any morsels of market share that fall from the legacies' table. With Open Skies rapidly approaching, that will soon hold true on transoceanic routes as well.
Merging the airlines will bring a host of problems. Take a look at the fleets, for example. The only overlap is the B757, plus some commonality between the DC9 and MD88/MD90. A merged airline would have the following fleet: DC9, MD88, MD90, B737, A320, B757, B767, A330, B777, B747 - and soon, the B787. Even Aeroflot has a less bastardized fleet! I think integrating the pilot groups is going to be just as messy as it has been at USAirways, since RedCo has a more senior pilot group than Widget. Even messier will be integrating RedCo's heavily unionized flight attendants, rampers, and customer service personnel with their non-union counterparts at Widget.
It's my opinion that this is not about making a healthy, prosperous long-term company and is all about creating wealth in the short term for a select few. It's already common knowledge that much of the pressure to merge has come from hedge fund managers and other private investment firms. With few other individual or institutional investors actively involved in corporate governance, they have the CEO and board of directors' ears. It helps that company executives themselves stand to profit handsomely from any transaction. The bottom line is that this may very well go through no matter how disastrous it will be over the long term. Think how much wealth was generated since the announcement, without anything really happening. Then again, maybe the whole thing will fall apart and the hedge fund managers will have to satisfy themselves with a few hundred million dollars in short-term profit taking.
In the meantime, I'm not worrying too much. There's not much I can do for now but try to get as much JungleBus time as I can and keep my eyes open for JungleBus-rated pilot opportunities here and overseas. If the worst-case scenario does happen, at least I got my ATP and a valuable type rating out of it. Till then, I'm just going to enjoy the flying and try to not listen to the gloomy rumor mill too much.
That said, a public announcement before God, the SEC, and the NYSE - not necessarily in that order - does seem to increase the probability of a merger actually coming to fruition by several fold. At least, that's how the markets took it: the stocks off all three companies involved shot up 20-30% the first day alone, and most other airline stocks inexplicably took a mighty jump too. Meanwhile, the aviation message boards were freshly abuzz with speculation as to what form the merger would take, which aircraft would be phased out and which bases closed, what the name would be, how many employees would be axed, and what other unholy unions the merger mania might spawn. The mood among airline pilots was uniformly gloomy. One wag posted the following darkly humorous checklist:
Loosening of scope.....................CheckWhen I accepted the job at NewCo I knew that RedCo being bought or merged was a distinct possibility. It's a risk I took. If the merger does go through, I could be out of a job. It's not that NewCo is going anywhere - both companies no doubt value having low-cost JungleBus feed - but that if RedCo furloughs pilots as a result of the merger, those pilots flow back to NewCo and displace the current pilots. The question is whether RedCo will really furlough, and if so how soon. The worst case scenario involves them parking a ton of DC9's towards the beginning of a speedy merger, resulting in massive furloughs and flowdowns to NewCo. In that case I could be out of a job in less than a year. The best case scenario involves early retirement payouts being offered to RedCo pilots as ALPA's price for blessing the merger, resulting in a mass exodus of everyone over 50 and few if any furloughs. Either scenario could happen, or something in between.
Catastrophic terrorist attack....Check
Recession.....................................Check
Bankruptcies...............................Check
Record pay cuts...........................Check
Termination of pensions...........Check
Elimination of work rules.........Check
Record high fuel..........................Check
Age 65...........................................Check
Mergers........................................Check
Second recession........................Check
Career destruction checklist complete to cabotage.
Standing by for the career change checklist.
I'm still a little skeptical as to whether a merger is really going to happen. RedCo and WidgetCo doesn't make that much sense to me. Everybody points out that they have complimentary route structures, with a large European network for Widget, an extensive Asian presence for RedCo, and relatively little overlap in their domestic routes. Well, if there's so little overlap, how exactly will merging the companies save a ton of money? If merely offering customers an expansive worldwide network were the goal, couldn't the same thing be accomplished through a close marketing alliance like the one RedCo has with KLM? Everyone seems certain that the Bush DOJ will take a laissez-faire approach to this megamerger; certainly a more modest marketing alliance would survive scrutiny as well. One can make the argument that mergers will give the surviving airlines greater pricing power, but consider that capacity cuts have done nothing and will do nothing for the legacies' pricing power in a deregulated environment because there is always some low-cost carrier eager to swoop in and snatch any morsels of market share that fall from the legacies' table. With Open Skies rapidly approaching, that will soon hold true on transoceanic routes as well.
Merging the airlines will bring a host of problems. Take a look at the fleets, for example. The only overlap is the B757, plus some commonality between the DC9 and MD88/MD90. A merged airline would have the following fleet: DC9, MD88, MD90, B737, A320, B757, B767, A330, B777, B747 - and soon, the B787. Even Aeroflot has a less bastardized fleet! I think integrating the pilot groups is going to be just as messy as it has been at USAirways, since RedCo has a more senior pilot group than Widget. Even messier will be integrating RedCo's heavily unionized flight attendants, rampers, and customer service personnel with their non-union counterparts at Widget.
It's my opinion that this is not about making a healthy, prosperous long-term company and is all about creating wealth in the short term for a select few. It's already common knowledge that much of the pressure to merge has come from hedge fund managers and other private investment firms. With few other individual or institutional investors actively involved in corporate governance, they have the CEO and board of directors' ears. It helps that company executives themselves stand to profit handsomely from any transaction. The bottom line is that this may very well go through no matter how disastrous it will be over the long term. Think how much wealth was generated since the announcement, without anything really happening. Then again, maybe the whole thing will fall apart and the hedge fund managers will have to satisfy themselves with a few hundred million dollars in short-term profit taking.
In the meantime, I'm not worrying too much. There's not much I can do for now but try to get as much JungleBus time as I can and keep my eyes open for JungleBus-rated pilot opportunities here and overseas. If the worst-case scenario does happen, at least I got my ATP and a valuable type rating out of it. Till then, I'm just going to enjoy the flying and try to not listen to the gloomy rumor mill too much.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Fly By Night
When I was new at Horizon, I was on reserve for about a year and a half. I knew it'd be significantly shorter at NewCo, but figured I'd probably do at least one month. Actually, it turned out to be only two weeks, because I got a regular line for January. That's encouraging but not particularly noteworthy. Here's the crazy part: it's a Monday through Thursday, weekends-off line. In 3.5 years at Horizon, I was never once able to hold that kind of line.
It turns out to have been a case of fortunate timing for me and rather unfortunate timing for several pilots senior to me. I went to Montreal a week earlier than the rest of my class, finished training more quickly than expected, didn't wait horribly long for IOE, and was then assigned a very efficient IOE schedule that went smoothly so I knocked it all out in one five-day stretch. The end result was that I (and my sim partner) finished IOE just in time to be eligible to bid for January. Meanwhile, everyone else in my newhire class (all senior to me) was one week or more behind me in the training cycle. Those one week senior to me, who I joined in Montreal, had delayed checkrides due to check airman availability issues. Several pilots in the class two weeks before me had their IOE delayed due to flight cancellations, sick check airmen, and other issues. The end result was that there were no less than eleven pilots senior to me who were ineligible to bid at the bid close, although they'll all be done with IOE before January. They'll get assigned to reserve, where they'll end up covering all the flying contained in the junior lines that went unawarded.
That alone does not explain why I could hold a normally coveted M-Th schedule, since I still had 16 FOs bidding senior to me. The other piece of the puzzle is that it's a CDO line, which many pilots bid away from. An explanation is in order. CDO stands for Continuous Duty Overnight. They're also known as hi-speeds, stand-ups, or a few unprintable names. The idea is that to maximize aircraft utilization without overnighting multiple crews, the same crew will operate the late flight into an outstation and the early flight back to the hub. On a CDO, you're technically on duty all night, and therefore aren't bound to the usual eight or nine hours of minimum rest. There's anywhere between three and eight hours between your last PM flight and first AM flight. Most airlines provide hotel rooms for your admittedly short nap, although a few regionals have made their crews sleep on board the aircraft during shorter CDOs (Mesa famously provided crews with plywood boards to make beds out of seat rows).
A lot of pilots dislike CDOs. They screw up your sleep schedule, and if you have family or other obligations that prevent you from actually resting during your daytime rest period, a few straight nights of CDOs will really fatigue a pilot. A few regional airlines with weak contracts (or non-union carriers) have CDO trips that are arguably unsafe, with multiple legs before or after the short overnight and duty times approaching the legal limit (16 hours). Another common gripe are lines that mix normal trips with CDO trips, which really screws with circadian rhythms and makes it hard to establish a good sleep schedule.
NewCo's contract, while weak in many areas, contains pretty good restrictions on CDO scheduling practices. Each CDO trip may contain no more than 12 hours of duty and five hours of block time, may only contain two flights (one out, one back), must have at least four hours of "rest", and each crewmember must be provided a hotel room. CDOs cannot be sprinkled throughout regular lines but must be grouped into "pure CDO" lines like the one I bid, and these have a number of restrictions such as no more than three consecutive CDOs and every stretch of two or three consecutive CDOs must be followed by at least two days off. That's part of what makes a CDO line palatable for me. The other thing is that I'm a very flexible sleeper, and I do well sleeping a few hours at night and then napping for a few hours in the daytime.
My schedule for most of the month is Saskatoon CDOs on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. I show up at Minneapolis at about 8:30am those nights and I'm released around 9:00am the next morning. I get about 5 hours of rest in Saskatoon - if everything goes right. The last few nights we were delayed by over an hour getting out of Minneapolis, making that nap in Saskatoon painfully short. I'm getting a few hours of sleep in the afternoons, though, so I'm pretty well rested the following evening.
In February I'll have those eleven FOs bidding senior to me, but there are six senior to them that are upgrading so I should only move down five numbers. In the meantime the amount of flying and number of normal lines will continue to increase so hopefully my luck in bidding holds for another month. I'm enjoying it while I can, because I'm sure I'll be on reserve for a while after I upgrade, especially when they open Detroit and Memphis bases and start sending airplanes there.
It turns out to have been a case of fortunate timing for me and rather unfortunate timing for several pilots senior to me. I went to Montreal a week earlier than the rest of my class, finished training more quickly than expected, didn't wait horribly long for IOE, and was then assigned a very efficient IOE schedule that went smoothly so I knocked it all out in one five-day stretch. The end result was that I (and my sim partner) finished IOE just in time to be eligible to bid for January. Meanwhile, everyone else in my newhire class (all senior to me) was one week or more behind me in the training cycle. Those one week senior to me, who I joined in Montreal, had delayed checkrides due to check airman availability issues. Several pilots in the class two weeks before me had their IOE delayed due to flight cancellations, sick check airmen, and other issues. The end result was that there were no less than eleven pilots senior to me who were ineligible to bid at the bid close, although they'll all be done with IOE before January. They'll get assigned to reserve, where they'll end up covering all the flying contained in the junior lines that went unawarded.
That alone does not explain why I could hold a normally coveted M-Th schedule, since I still had 16 FOs bidding senior to me. The other piece of the puzzle is that it's a CDO line, which many pilots bid away from. An explanation is in order. CDO stands for Continuous Duty Overnight. They're also known as hi-speeds, stand-ups, or a few unprintable names. The idea is that to maximize aircraft utilization without overnighting multiple crews, the same crew will operate the late flight into an outstation and the early flight back to the hub. On a CDO, you're technically on duty all night, and therefore aren't bound to the usual eight or nine hours of minimum rest. There's anywhere between three and eight hours between your last PM flight and first AM flight. Most airlines provide hotel rooms for your admittedly short nap, although a few regionals have made their crews sleep on board the aircraft during shorter CDOs (Mesa famously provided crews with plywood boards to make beds out of seat rows).
A lot of pilots dislike CDOs. They screw up your sleep schedule, and if you have family or other obligations that prevent you from actually resting during your daytime rest period, a few straight nights of CDOs will really fatigue a pilot. A few regional airlines with weak contracts (or non-union carriers) have CDO trips that are arguably unsafe, with multiple legs before or after the short overnight and duty times approaching the legal limit (16 hours). Another common gripe are lines that mix normal trips with CDO trips, which really screws with circadian rhythms and makes it hard to establish a good sleep schedule.
NewCo's contract, while weak in many areas, contains pretty good restrictions on CDO scheduling practices. Each CDO trip may contain no more than 12 hours of duty and five hours of block time, may only contain two flights (one out, one back), must have at least four hours of "rest", and each crewmember must be provided a hotel room. CDOs cannot be sprinkled throughout regular lines but must be grouped into "pure CDO" lines like the one I bid, and these have a number of restrictions such as no more than three consecutive CDOs and every stretch of two or three consecutive CDOs must be followed by at least two days off. That's part of what makes a CDO line palatable for me. The other thing is that I'm a very flexible sleeper, and I do well sleeping a few hours at night and then napping for a few hours in the daytime.
My schedule for most of the month is Saskatoon CDOs on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. I show up at Minneapolis at about 8:30am those nights and I'm released around 9:00am the next morning. I get about 5 hours of rest in Saskatoon - if everything goes right. The last few nights we were delayed by over an hour getting out of Minneapolis, making that nap in Saskatoon painfully short. I'm getting a few hours of sleep in the afternoons, though, so I'm pretty well rested the following evening.
In February I'll have those eleven FOs bidding senior to me, but there are six senior to them that are upgrading so I should only move down five numbers. In the meantime the amount of flying and number of normal lines will continue to increase so hopefully my luck in bidding holds for another month. I'm enjoying it while I can, because I'm sure I'll be on reserve for a while after I upgrade, especially when they open Detroit and Memphis bases and start sending airplanes there.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
FUBAR
Last Sunday I experienced one of the most completely screwed up days of flying I've ever had. Everything that could go wrong - except loss of life, limb, or license - did go wrong. The entire time I was thinking I'd have to write about it in the blog, but it got so ridiculous that I started doubting whether anyone would believe it all actually happened. Nevertheless, here's the whole sad tale: how weather and maintenance troubles were compounded by incompetence and apathy to create a miserable holiday travel experience for passengers and crew alike. It's a long post, but it was a pretty long day too.
We started in Missoula at 5:15am. Our schedule for the day was MSO-MSP-MSN-MSP, with a 1pm release time. The first hint of trouble was when the captain saw that we were flying Ship 609 and let out a groan. “This thing is the biggest piece of crap,” he exclaimed. “We've had nothing but trouble with it since getting it a few weeks ago.” Apparently he had flown it a few days prior and had the autopilot fail; it was still MEL'd, so we'd have to hand fly and stay below FL290 since RVSM airspace requires use of an autopilot. Also, he'd written up the cockpit door for opening in flight with a closed & locked indication; it had supposedly been fixed.
The mountain peaks were still enshrouded in pre-dawn gloom as I pushed up the thrust levers to begin our takeoff roll from Missoula. The Captain called off V1, then “rotate” and I pulled back on the control column and rotated to 11 degrees pitch and the plane began to lift off. Suddenly there was a loud crash and the darkened cockpit flooded with light. I kept flying. “Positive rate, gear up.” At 400 feet I called “Nav,” and then at 1000 feet: “Flight Level Change, Speed 210.” Then I glanced back and confirmed that the cockpit door had indeed come crashing open on rotation despite a “closed and locked” indication. The Captain was able to pull it closed with his right hand but was unable to get it to latch or lock. He asked if I was okay flying the departure by myself, and when I said I was, he took off his headset and slid his seat back to a more advantageous position for wrestling with the door. At 7600 feet I began the left turn back towards Missoula VOR for the transition from the KONNA2 departure, and shortly thereafter the Captain got the door to cooperate and joined me again. “That's definitely getting written up in Minneapolis,” he said grimly.
Halfway to MSP we used ACARS to pull up the most recent ATIS and it was worse than forecast: 1 ½ mile visibility in light blowing snow with strong gusty winds out of the northwest. The Captain, like most at NewCo, is on “high minimums” since he has less than 100 hours in the JungleBus; this requires adding ½ mile and 100 ft to all approach minima, making the minimum visibility for MSP one statute mile or 4500 RVR. We got frequent updates but fortunately the visibility held steady at 1 ½ mile. I flew the bumpy, gusty approach and saw the runway well above decision altitude.
Fixing the cockpit door delayed us by about a half hour, and then we had to get deiced before departure. The weather in Madison wasn't great, about the same as it was in Minneapolis but forecast to get better. We had a Green Bay alternate, and although the weather wasn't really good there it was forecast to be well above alternate minimums by the time we'd get there. Our dispatcher gave us decent contingency fuel but some got burned during the lengthy de-ice process; we were still well above minimum fuel when we took off.
The flight to Madison was very quick; we were barely leveled at FL230 when I got the newly updated ATIS with some very bad news: ¾ mile visibility in blowing snow with strong gusty winds out of the west. We got instructions to hold over the final approach fix for the ILS for runway 21. As soon as we knew we couldn't get in yet, the Captain had me message our dispatcher via ACARS with current fuel load and a request for updated weather in Green Bay. Once established in holding, the Captain had me fly (no autopilot, remember!) so that he could figure out our fuel state and options for diverting. He messaged our dispatcher again, still with no reply. He asked Madison approach for Green Bay weather and it, too, was making a mockery of the forecast: ¼ mile visibility in freezing fog and blowing snow. We had to come up with a new diversion plan. The Captain texted our dispatcher to request a new alternate, but wasn't hopeful about a prompt reply and started looking at his options.
Madison notified us that Milwaukee, a mere 60 miles east, was reporting VFR weather. That sounded like a wonderful place to go until we realized that MKE approach plates had been removed with the last Jepp revision. Whoops. Chicago was doable with our current fuel if there was no delay getting in, but that's always a big gamble with Chicago. Our dispatcher finally sent us a message telling us to go to Des Moines; that required 6000 lbs of fuel and we were now down to 4800. The dispatcher had apparently assumed we had enough fuel because of our message from nearly a half-hour prior! The Captain was disgusted and was about to pull the trigger on going to Milwaukee – approach plates or no – when our dispatcher told us they wanted us in Cedar Rapids. Despite high winds the weather was still decent there and we had the approach plates. We had just enough fuel to fly there and still land with 3000 lbs, which is basically “minimum fuel” for a JungleBus. We quickly got re-cleared, pointed our nose southwest, and climbed to a more fuel-friendly altitude of FL240. With “captainy work” complete, the Captain took the controls back.
When I called Cedar Rapids operations a few minutes before landing, they informed us that the gate was not plowed and we'd have to sit tight at remote parking for a while. The JungleBus has no airstairs and the station didn't have jetstairs, so the passengers would have to remain on board. When we touched down in Cedar Rapids, they'd already been on board 3 hours for a flight that was supposed to take 38 minutes! We sat on the ramp for almost another hour until the gate area was plowed; the passengers were on the edge of revolt. Everyone clapped when we announced that we'd be starting our engines and taxiing to the gate.
We soon discovered that being able to taxi to the gate and being able to use the gate are two very different things. As soon as we were parked our marshalers bolted for an adjacent gate. I called operations to figure out what was going on. Cedar Rapids is a small station that's run by another RedCo Regional. They only had a few people working, and it turned out that both of them were needed to turn a scheduled flight that was arriving soon. “We want to get this one out on time. It'll be at least an hour before we can get the gate up to your plane.” The Captain got on the radio and told him in no uncertain terms that was unacceptable: “These people need to get off the plane, now.” The station manager was unmoved. We called our dispatcher, then the chief pilot, and then tried to call the company president before salvation arrived in the form of a United Express gate agent (Air Wisconsin, actually) who had some experience with the JungleBus and agreed to drive the gate. She ended up working the whole flight. She was wonderful – in fact, she was the only real support we got all day, and she wasn't even affiliated with RedCo. Absolutely pathetic.
Our passengers got themselves fed and composed while we waited for the weather in Madison to improve. When it did we loaded everyone up and pushed back to get deiced. By now it was 5:30PM, so we'd been on duty 11 hours, which was longer than we'd thought our day would be but was well under the usual 15 hours maximum duty or 16 hours with reduced rest. We'd be able to make it to MSN and MSP just fine so long as everything went smoothly. Yeah, right!
Deicing in Cedar Rapids took about 45 minutes, first because the rampers apparently had trouble with the deice truck and then because their headset was broken so they couldn't communicate with us. With the station being understaffed, there was nobody in Ops to relay our radio calls to them. They ended up driving around the terminal to Ops to talk to us via radio, then came back to deice us, then returned to Ops to give us our numbers. It was 6:30pm by the time we took off from Cedar Rapids, four and a half hours since we had landed.
The flight to Madison was short and bumpy. The visibility was improving but the winds continued to howl out of the west. The crosswind component was near our maximum for a contaminated runway. I saw Runway 21 shortly after the final approach fix but the approach was still a real workout with continuous moderate turbulence and a 25 degree crosswind correction angle as low as 1000 feet. I told the Captain I'd plant it on and then unintentionally made my smoothest greaser to date, a big no-no on a contaminated runway with a crosswind. Fortunately, the runway was actually pretty bare and braking action was quite decent. “Great landing!”s and handshakes abounded when the passengers deplaned and I privately found it deliciously ironic that their highlight of the whole ordeal was my one screwup.
When we turned off the runway in Madison, I retracted the flaps and shortly thereafter got the ding! of a master caution along with a Flap Handle Disagree message. I ran the QRH which instructed me to reposition the handle to match the actual position of the flaps, and was rewarded with Slat/Flap Fail and a host of other messages. This was no good at all. This had all the earmarks of being broke hard. We called maintenance control while we waited for a Chautauqua E145 to deice so we could get into our gate. When we pulled in at 7:30 pm, maintenance personnel were there to meet us as they'd been working on a RedCo A320 that had been on the ground waiting for a part since 6 am. That part was, as you may have guessed, in our very own cargo hold.
Timing out was now a very real threat. We'd gone on duty at 6:15am central time, so the normal 15 hours max duty time would require us to be on the ground at Minneapolis by 9:15 pm. That clearly wasn't going to happen. However, if we used eight-hour reduced rest, then we'd be good until 10:15pm. When we got the paperwork it showed a flight time of 42 minutes so we figured we'd need to take off by 9:33pm to be legal. However, when cutting things so close we agreed it'd be prudent to run our calculations by crew scheduling and make sure they concurred. The captain called and asked their opinion. The crew scheduler was completely frazzled; unforecast low visibility across the area had thrown the operation into disarray and he had a half-dozen crews close to timing out. He promised to call us back.
We headed upstairs to keep the passengers abreast of what was going on. Many of them had been at the airport since 5am, for the aforementioned canceled A320 flight. Some had been waiting since 6am the previous morning. They were understandably at their wits' end but were grateful that we were keeping them in the loop. One man who was on his second day confided to me that we were the only positive contact he'd had with RedCo through the whole ordeal. I didn't tell him that we're not even RedCo but the cost-slashing bottom-feeder subsidiary.
The maintenance guys rebooted the airplane a few times and it was yielding positive results. I headed up the jetway to give the good news to the passengers. I hadn't been horribly positive in my previous assessment so the news that the flaps would get fixed was welcomed all around. The bigger question was whether we could beat the clock. Crew scheduling still hadn't called. The Captain asked me to call them back; I kept getting a busy signal but finally got through only to be royally chewed out for calling the crew scheduler when he had said he'd call us back. The Captain and I weren't really willing to leave without talking the crew scheduler but figured we could get loaded up and ready to go before he called. We summoned the gate agent, who'd had a long day and had been rather brusque with us to this point, and told him that we had 40 minutes to get loaded, pushed back, deiced, and taxi to the runway. He flatly stated that this was impossible and it would take at least 30 to 40 minutes to get the people boarded. The Captain said that if that was the case then there was no point as we'd have to turn around and deplane them when it became clear we couldn't get off the ground by 9:33pm. “Fine, I'm canceling the flight,” snapped the gate agent as he turned to head up the jetbridge. I guess that's that, said the Captain. We awaited crew scheduling's inevitable call.
It wasn't the call we expected. “Why aren't you off the ground yet? I show you fixed!” They hadn't even been informed that the flight was canceled and were furious to find that we were sitting doing nothing while the precious final minutes ticked away. It was too late now. There was no way to make it to the runway in time under the best-case scenario. Crew scheduling asked us if we wanted to ferry the airplane back under FAR 91, which has no duty time limitations. We were all tired but felt that we could make the flight safely, and just wanted to go back to our families for Christmas Eve Day. We said yes, and then the Captain and I plodded up the jetbridge once more to retrieve the paperwork for the ferry flight.
Big surprise: all the passengers were still standing around, looking at us expectantly as we entered the gate area. The gate agent had not canceled the flight as he threatened; he had not told the passengers anything. I was furious, at this point I felt like going up to the guy and screaming at him. It wouldn't help, though, it could only come back to hurt me. I held my cool and helped the Captain explain to the passengers why we couldn't legally take them. Meanwhile the gate agent spoke to ops on the phone. I later found out that he told them – within earshot of many passengers – that he believed the Captain wanted to time out so he could spend the night in Madison.
Of course as soon as we canceled we went from top priority to last priority. After the passengers left, the gate agent started to do so before I reminded him that we still needed our flight paperwork. “Of course I can wait on you, I've been doing it for over two hours already,” he grumbled. Then he changed his mind: “I gotta be downtairs. Call Ops for your paperwork.” Ops had just sent our paperwork over the printer when the Captain emerged from the restroom, and then I realized that we were both locked out of the gate with no way to get in.
We called ops with no answer. We waved for rampers. We searched for other gate agents. We tried waving to our flight attendants through the terminal windows and cockpit windows. Nobody saw us. I'm not sure how long we were locked out but it was at least a half hour. The day was getting more and more ludicrous. Finally we were able to get ahold of Ops and they sent a ramper upstairs to let us in. We quickly set up for the flight, pushed back, and got the heck out of dodge.
The weather had passed by MSP when we finally touched down around 11:30pm, but the day had a few annoyances left in its bag of tricks. Our gate was occupied and we taxied around the airport for a few minutes; then the rampers guided us into the gate wrong and we had to remain on board while they located a tug and realigned us so the gate agent could open the door. It was 12:15am by the time Dawn picked me up in front of the baggage claim. It was an 18 hour day for three measly scheduled legs.
It turned out to work well for me. Crew scheduling gave me the 24th off in an unusual fit of compassion, although I had been scheduled for reserve. Dawn and I had our Christmas that morning, and then traveled to my parents' place for the extended family Christmas that afternoon and the immediate family Christmas that night. I did end up getting called to fly a Vancouver turn on Christmas Day but that was alright because the 24th was a fine Christmas. I did, however, have to restrain myself from hysterical laughter every time a family member asked, “So, how are things going with NewCo? Are they a good company?”
We started in Missoula at 5:15am. Our schedule for the day was MSO-MSP-MSN-MSP, with a 1pm release time. The first hint of trouble was when the captain saw that we were flying Ship 609 and let out a groan. “This thing is the biggest piece of crap,” he exclaimed. “We've had nothing but trouble with it since getting it a few weeks ago.” Apparently he had flown it a few days prior and had the autopilot fail; it was still MEL'd, so we'd have to hand fly and stay below FL290 since RVSM airspace requires use of an autopilot. Also, he'd written up the cockpit door for opening in flight with a closed & locked indication; it had supposedly been fixed.
The mountain peaks were still enshrouded in pre-dawn gloom as I pushed up the thrust levers to begin our takeoff roll from Missoula. The Captain called off V1, then “rotate” and I pulled back on the control column and rotated to 11 degrees pitch and the plane began to lift off. Suddenly there was a loud crash and the darkened cockpit flooded with light. I kept flying. “Positive rate, gear up.” At 400 feet I called “Nav,” and then at 1000 feet: “Flight Level Change, Speed 210.” Then I glanced back and confirmed that the cockpit door had indeed come crashing open on rotation despite a “closed and locked” indication. The Captain was able to pull it closed with his right hand but was unable to get it to latch or lock. He asked if I was okay flying the departure by myself, and when I said I was, he took off his headset and slid his seat back to a more advantageous position for wrestling with the door. At 7600 feet I began the left turn back towards Missoula VOR for the transition from the KONNA2 departure, and shortly thereafter the Captain got the door to cooperate and joined me again. “That's definitely getting written up in Minneapolis,” he said grimly.
Halfway to MSP we used ACARS to pull up the most recent ATIS and it was worse than forecast: 1 ½ mile visibility in light blowing snow with strong gusty winds out of the northwest. The Captain, like most at NewCo, is on “high minimums” since he has less than 100 hours in the JungleBus; this requires adding ½ mile and 100 ft to all approach minima, making the minimum visibility for MSP one statute mile or 4500 RVR. We got frequent updates but fortunately the visibility held steady at 1 ½ mile. I flew the bumpy, gusty approach and saw the runway well above decision altitude.
Fixing the cockpit door delayed us by about a half hour, and then we had to get deiced before departure. The weather in Madison wasn't great, about the same as it was in Minneapolis but forecast to get better. We had a Green Bay alternate, and although the weather wasn't really good there it was forecast to be well above alternate minimums by the time we'd get there. Our dispatcher gave us decent contingency fuel but some got burned during the lengthy de-ice process; we were still well above minimum fuel when we took off.
The flight to Madison was very quick; we were barely leveled at FL230 when I got the newly updated ATIS with some very bad news: ¾ mile visibility in blowing snow with strong gusty winds out of the west. We got instructions to hold over the final approach fix for the ILS for runway 21. As soon as we knew we couldn't get in yet, the Captain had me message our dispatcher via ACARS with current fuel load and a request for updated weather in Green Bay. Once established in holding, the Captain had me fly (no autopilot, remember!) so that he could figure out our fuel state and options for diverting. He messaged our dispatcher again, still with no reply. He asked Madison approach for Green Bay weather and it, too, was making a mockery of the forecast: ¼ mile visibility in freezing fog and blowing snow. We had to come up with a new diversion plan. The Captain texted our dispatcher to request a new alternate, but wasn't hopeful about a prompt reply and started looking at his options.
Madison notified us that Milwaukee, a mere 60 miles east, was reporting VFR weather. That sounded like a wonderful place to go until we realized that MKE approach plates had been removed with the last Jepp revision. Whoops. Chicago was doable with our current fuel if there was no delay getting in, but that's always a big gamble with Chicago. Our dispatcher finally sent us a message telling us to go to Des Moines; that required 6000 lbs of fuel and we were now down to 4800. The dispatcher had apparently assumed we had enough fuel because of our message from nearly a half-hour prior! The Captain was disgusted and was about to pull the trigger on going to Milwaukee – approach plates or no – when our dispatcher told us they wanted us in Cedar Rapids. Despite high winds the weather was still decent there and we had the approach plates. We had just enough fuel to fly there and still land with 3000 lbs, which is basically “minimum fuel” for a JungleBus. We quickly got re-cleared, pointed our nose southwest, and climbed to a more fuel-friendly altitude of FL240. With “captainy work” complete, the Captain took the controls back.
When I called Cedar Rapids operations a few minutes before landing, they informed us that the gate was not plowed and we'd have to sit tight at remote parking for a while. The JungleBus has no airstairs and the station didn't have jetstairs, so the passengers would have to remain on board. When we touched down in Cedar Rapids, they'd already been on board 3 hours for a flight that was supposed to take 38 minutes! We sat on the ramp for almost another hour until the gate area was plowed; the passengers were on the edge of revolt. Everyone clapped when we announced that we'd be starting our engines and taxiing to the gate.
We soon discovered that being able to taxi to the gate and being able to use the gate are two very different things. As soon as we were parked our marshalers bolted for an adjacent gate. I called operations to figure out what was going on. Cedar Rapids is a small station that's run by another RedCo Regional. They only had a few people working, and it turned out that both of them were needed to turn a scheduled flight that was arriving soon. “We want to get this one out on time. It'll be at least an hour before we can get the gate up to your plane.” The Captain got on the radio and told him in no uncertain terms that was unacceptable: “These people need to get off the plane, now.” The station manager was unmoved. We called our dispatcher, then the chief pilot, and then tried to call the company president before salvation arrived in the form of a United Express gate agent (Air Wisconsin, actually) who had some experience with the JungleBus and agreed to drive the gate. She ended up working the whole flight. She was wonderful – in fact, she was the only real support we got all day, and she wasn't even affiliated with RedCo. Absolutely pathetic.
Our passengers got themselves fed and composed while we waited for the weather in Madison to improve. When it did we loaded everyone up and pushed back to get deiced. By now it was 5:30PM, so we'd been on duty 11 hours, which was longer than we'd thought our day would be but was well under the usual 15 hours maximum duty or 16 hours with reduced rest. We'd be able to make it to MSN and MSP just fine so long as everything went smoothly. Yeah, right!
Deicing in Cedar Rapids took about 45 minutes, first because the rampers apparently had trouble with the deice truck and then because their headset was broken so they couldn't communicate with us. With the station being understaffed, there was nobody in Ops to relay our radio calls to them. They ended up driving around the terminal to Ops to talk to us via radio, then came back to deice us, then returned to Ops to give us our numbers. It was 6:30pm by the time we took off from Cedar Rapids, four and a half hours since we had landed.
The flight to Madison was short and bumpy. The visibility was improving but the winds continued to howl out of the west. The crosswind component was near our maximum for a contaminated runway. I saw Runway 21 shortly after the final approach fix but the approach was still a real workout with continuous moderate turbulence and a 25 degree crosswind correction angle as low as 1000 feet. I told the Captain I'd plant it on and then unintentionally made my smoothest greaser to date, a big no-no on a contaminated runway with a crosswind. Fortunately, the runway was actually pretty bare and braking action was quite decent. “Great landing!”s and handshakes abounded when the passengers deplaned and I privately found it deliciously ironic that their highlight of the whole ordeal was my one screwup.
When we turned off the runway in Madison, I retracted the flaps and shortly thereafter got the ding! of a master caution along with a Flap Handle Disagree message. I ran the QRH which instructed me to reposition the handle to match the actual position of the flaps, and was rewarded with Slat/Flap Fail and a host of other messages. This was no good at all. This had all the earmarks of being broke hard. We called maintenance control while we waited for a Chautauqua E145 to deice so we could get into our gate. When we pulled in at 7:30 pm, maintenance personnel were there to meet us as they'd been working on a RedCo A320 that had been on the ground waiting for a part since 6 am. That part was, as you may have guessed, in our very own cargo hold.
Timing out was now a very real threat. We'd gone on duty at 6:15am central time, so the normal 15 hours max duty time would require us to be on the ground at Minneapolis by 9:15 pm. That clearly wasn't going to happen. However, if we used eight-hour reduced rest, then we'd be good until 10:15pm. When we got the paperwork it showed a flight time of 42 minutes so we figured we'd need to take off by 9:33pm to be legal. However, when cutting things so close we agreed it'd be prudent to run our calculations by crew scheduling and make sure they concurred. The captain called and asked their opinion. The crew scheduler was completely frazzled; unforecast low visibility across the area had thrown the operation into disarray and he had a half-dozen crews close to timing out. He promised to call us back.
We headed upstairs to keep the passengers abreast of what was going on. Many of them had been at the airport since 5am, for the aforementioned canceled A320 flight. Some had been waiting since 6am the previous morning. They were understandably at their wits' end but were grateful that we were keeping them in the loop. One man who was on his second day confided to me that we were the only positive contact he'd had with RedCo through the whole ordeal. I didn't tell him that we're not even RedCo but the cost-slashing bottom-feeder subsidiary.
The maintenance guys rebooted the airplane a few times and it was yielding positive results. I headed up the jetway to give the good news to the passengers. I hadn't been horribly positive in my previous assessment so the news that the flaps would get fixed was welcomed all around. The bigger question was whether we could beat the clock. Crew scheduling still hadn't called. The Captain asked me to call them back; I kept getting a busy signal but finally got through only to be royally chewed out for calling the crew scheduler when he had said he'd call us back. The Captain and I weren't really willing to leave without talking the crew scheduler but figured we could get loaded up and ready to go before he called. We summoned the gate agent, who'd had a long day and had been rather brusque with us to this point, and told him that we had 40 minutes to get loaded, pushed back, deiced, and taxi to the runway. He flatly stated that this was impossible and it would take at least 30 to 40 minutes to get the people boarded. The Captain said that if that was the case then there was no point as we'd have to turn around and deplane them when it became clear we couldn't get off the ground by 9:33pm. “Fine, I'm canceling the flight,” snapped the gate agent as he turned to head up the jetbridge. I guess that's that, said the Captain. We awaited crew scheduling's inevitable call.
It wasn't the call we expected. “Why aren't you off the ground yet? I show you fixed!” They hadn't even been informed that the flight was canceled and were furious to find that we were sitting doing nothing while the precious final minutes ticked away. It was too late now. There was no way to make it to the runway in time under the best-case scenario. Crew scheduling asked us if we wanted to ferry the airplane back under FAR 91, which has no duty time limitations. We were all tired but felt that we could make the flight safely, and just wanted to go back to our families for Christmas Eve Day. We said yes, and then the Captain and I plodded up the jetbridge once more to retrieve the paperwork for the ferry flight.
Big surprise: all the passengers were still standing around, looking at us expectantly as we entered the gate area. The gate agent had not canceled the flight as he threatened; he had not told the passengers anything. I was furious, at this point I felt like going up to the guy and screaming at him. It wouldn't help, though, it could only come back to hurt me. I held my cool and helped the Captain explain to the passengers why we couldn't legally take them. Meanwhile the gate agent spoke to ops on the phone. I later found out that he told them – within earshot of many passengers – that he believed the Captain wanted to time out so he could spend the night in Madison.
Of course as soon as we canceled we went from top priority to last priority. After the passengers left, the gate agent started to do so before I reminded him that we still needed our flight paperwork. “Of course I can wait on you, I've been doing it for over two hours already,” he grumbled. Then he changed his mind: “I gotta be downtairs. Call Ops for your paperwork.” Ops had just sent our paperwork over the printer when the Captain emerged from the restroom, and then I realized that we were both locked out of the gate with no way to get in.
We called ops with no answer. We waved for rampers. We searched for other gate agents. We tried waving to our flight attendants through the terminal windows and cockpit windows. Nobody saw us. I'm not sure how long we were locked out but it was at least a half hour. The day was getting more and more ludicrous. Finally we were able to get ahold of Ops and they sent a ramper upstairs to let us in. We quickly set up for the flight, pushed back, and got the heck out of dodge.
The weather had passed by MSP when we finally touched down around 11:30pm, but the day had a few annoyances left in its bag of tricks. Our gate was occupied and we taxied around the airport for a few minutes; then the rampers guided us into the gate wrong and we had to remain on board while they located a tug and realigned us so the gate agent could open the door. It was 12:15am by the time Dawn picked me up in front of the baggage claim. It was an 18 hour day for three measly scheduled legs.
It turned out to work well for me. Crew scheduling gave me the 24th off in an unusual fit of compassion, although I had been scheduled for reserve. Dawn and I had our Christmas that morning, and then traveled to my parents' place for the extended family Christmas that afternoon and the immediate family Christmas that night. I did end up getting called to fly a Vancouver turn on Christmas Day but that was alright because the 24th was a fine Christmas. I did, however, have to restrain myself from hysterical laughter every time a family member asked, “So, how are things going with NewCo? Are they a good company?”
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