A New York Christmas Miracle

I'm a bit late in relaying this anecdote, but I think it's a fitting epitaph of my stint in New York as my time here draws to an end this month. On one hand I really enjoy flying out of "The World's Greatest City." The crews based here are great, the chief pilots notably laid-back, and I even like the passengers: I prefer New Yorkers' brusque frankness to the oblique passive-aggressiveness that we Minnesotans have elevated to an artform. On the other hand, absolutely nothing here comes easy. Just getting to work on time can feel like an epic battle. I'm almost always commuting in the night before, often on the jumpseat of an oversold flight, waiting for the crashpad van, finding an open bunk, speaking Spanish while shopping at the corner tienda, reserving a shower time, trying to sleep as roommates snore, waking with a jolt to silence my alarm, trying to gather my belongings in the dark without waking anyone, hunting down the missing iron, waiting for the Q33 bus in the rain, schlepping my bags through crowded Roosevelt station to catch the E-train, running to make the JFK Airtrain, walking half a mile down Terminal 4's B concourse to the crew room. After all that, the ATC reroutes, ground metering, congested frequencies, bewildering taxi routes, and last-minute runway changes are a piece of cake!

Which is why I was dreading the trip that ended on Christmas Eve. When I originally bid it, I looked for an early release but failed to consult the flight schedules. It turned out they were greatly reduced for the holiday: my airline's last flight out of JFK left at noon, and the last flight out of LGA left at 4:25pm. My trip was scheduled to end at JFK at 3:25pm; a one-hour connection between airports during rush hour seemed very iffy. The one other option to get home late that night was trying to jumpseat on a full Sun Country flight at 9pm. Fortunately I was flying with a captain who was in the same boat, and we resolved to get out of Orlando early and fly fast on our last leg. The week prior I had ended a trip with a 45-minute-early arrival from Orlando and a repeat performance seemed my best chance of going home for Christmas.

It started out so promising: the gate agents were gung-ho to get us out early, our dispatcher agreed, and a Mad Dog load of merry passengers showed up at the gate on time. We were loaded and ready to go at 12 minutes prior to departure. Unfortunately the ramp was understaffed, so it took forever to load the bags; we pushed back several minutes late. Then ATC switched our runway from to 18L due to a birdstrike on 17R, and for possibly the first time ever, Southwest was taxiing at a snail's pace - right ahead of us! Once off the ground, ATC was slow to turn us onto our route over the water, and we weren't even to cruise altitude when they slowed us to 250 kts for in-trail separation to New York. Halfway up the eastern seaboard, the vectors started. At one point ATC offered normal speed - if we were willing to turn 80 degrees off course! I thought he was joking, but he wasn't. On descent into JFK, we were switched to Runway 4L (we usually get 4R from the CAMRN arrival), requiring a hasty re-brief, reconfiguration, and running the checklist again. No sooner was that accomplished than the visibility dropped below minimums for 4L and we were switched back to 4R. As soon as we set up for that, the vis came back up and we were again sent to 4L! This all took place while being vectored through a maze of cells with pelting rain and moderate turbulence at minimum approach airspeed. We broke out a couple hundred feet above minimums, the captain made a beautiful landing, and the taxi to the gate was mercifully short. We parked at 3:40pm, only 15 minutes late in spite of everything - and 45 minutes before my flight was scheduled to depart from LaGuardia.

After that flight from hell, the last thing I wanted to do was hang around JFK for 5 hours to finagle a jumpseat. I decided to go for broke. I ran outside to the taxi rank and (for the first time in my life) jumped the queue to tell the marshaller that I had a tight connection to LGA; she waved me to the next open cab.

"Hey bud, how's traffic looking on the Van Wyck?" I asked the cabbie.

He grimaced. "The usual. Not good."

"Well, there's a plane leaving LaGuardia in 40 minutes and it might be my only shot to get home tonight. Think it's doable?"

He thought for a short second and then nodded determinedly. "Get in, I'll get you there!"

God bless New York cabbies; this guy was a pro among pros, flying like the wind, shifting lanes, slithering through snarled traffic, tapping the horn every time a hapless motorist contemplated getting in his way, jumping off the Van Wyck at one point to leapfrog a mess of brake lights in a single bound down a surface street. Ten minutes in he looked back, grinned, and said "You'll make it, no problem!" Sure enough, we pulled up to terminal C at 4:08pm, only 23 minutes after leaving JFK during rush hour! I thanked the guy profusely, wished him a Merry Christmas, and gave him $50 for my $23 fare. I walked up to the gate just as the gate agent called my name with a seat to Minneapolis, and had just enough time to stow my bags, sit down, and text Dawn that I was coming home. We had a lovely Christmas Eve together, and early the next morning we headed to my folks' place for a really nice family Christmas with all five of my siblings and their kids and significant others.

I'll look back on my time in New York fondly, and there's probably a good chance that I'll be back at some point. In the meantime, I'm really going to enjoy my much improved commute to and from work - 25 minutes down US-212 and I-494, maybe as much as an hour in bad traffic!

The Airfield That Time Forgot

In case you missed it, my July "Taking Wing" column recounted a Cub flight to one of my favorite airports around, Stanton Field. It's now available for free on Flying Magazine's website:

Taking Wing: The Airfield That Time Forgot

After the Storm

"Cleveland Center, NewCo 5831, checking on flight level three five zero."

"NewCo 5831, Cleveland Center, good morning...uh, are you really going to LaGuardia?"

"Yeah Cleveland, they tell us we are. We have our swimmies and goggles on."

I wasn't quite sure I believed it myself. Three days prior, the airport was under water, a lot of water, and dirty seawater at that. Hurricane Sandy proved to have just a bit more punch than I sampled flying through the very outer rings in my friend's Warrior, with storm surge of up to twelve feet in New York Harbor. LaGuardia didn't get that much, but it didn't need to; most of the airport sits mere feet above Flushing Bay. Floodwaters covered the runways, the taxiways, the ramps, and came all the way up to the various terminals. By Tuesday, photos of the flooded airport were circulating around the internet. I had a four day trip with turns through LaGuardia every day starting on Wednesday. I strongly doubted I'd be flying much of it.

Indeed, crew scheduling rang me up on Tuesday evening to inform me that Wednesday's schedule had been modified. Instead of flying MSP-CLT-LGA-MSN, I would fly the revenue flight to Charlotte and then reposition directly to Madison. That struck me as a little insane since we were scheduled to fly MSN-LGA on Thursday morning, and surely that wasn't happening! The crew scheduler said that WidgetCo had declined to cancel the flight just yet. Ok, then. Wednesday morning we flew to Charlotte, and then treated our brand new flight attendant to her first jumpseat experience on our Part 91 repo up to Madison. That night I kept expecting to hear from crew scheduling, but they never called.

So we dutifully showed up Thursday morning in Madison. Our plane was there. We had a gate agent, and his gate display said we were flying to New York. He had our release and paperwork pulled up. Indeed, the NOTAMs showed the airport open for business at 8am - but there were five pages of lights and signs and navaids out of service, it took me twenty minutes to work through the list! Basically, they were down to one runway (13/31), no ILSes, no approach lights, no VASIs or PAPIs or any other sort of crutch for us button-pushing airline-pilot types. So we loaded up our surprisingly light load and took off for New York, me still wondering if we'd really land there.

Well, we did. It was an easy arrival and a nicely challenging Expressway visual starting directly over the field, almost like an overhead entry to the downwind at a GA airport. Eyeballing our distance versus altitude the whole way through the circle, rolling out on a one-mile final at 300 feet, no sweat for a Cub pilot! Who needs a VASI? My first impression on arrival was how busy the airport was already, considering it had just opened for arrivals barely two hours prior. My second impression was how surprisingly clean it was. I was expecting a bit more of a post-apocalyptic vibe.

In fact, most of the busyness was WidgetCo traffic. Both of their terminals were already chock-a-block, before USAir had landed even a single airplane. Our rampers charged out enthusiastically as we approached the gate. The gate agent gave our flight attendant a big hug when she opened the door; we were her first flight. Being a few minutes early, I went inside the terminal and found things humming right along. The list of cancelled flights on the information screens was surprisingly short. Gate agents told me about the absolutely massive cleanup effort on Tuesday and Wednesday. They said Widget was housing and feeding pretty much all their employees in a nearby hotel, since the lack of public transit made it nearly impossible to commute between their homes and the airport. I asked about how the ground equipment survived the saltwater. Turns out somebody smart had convoyed all the ground equipment over to a nearby parking garage before the storm. Good on em.

Our exit wasn't quite as seamless as our entrance; we had to wait holding short of Runway 31 for a good 25 minutes before there was an opening in the arrivals big enough to let us take off. That's okay, we got to watch a bunch of Expressway Visuals and grade the efforts. I also noticed a few small signs of the flood around the taxiway - a sign bent backwards, a patch of seaweed on the tarmac. Overall, though, LaGuardia got back on its feet very quickly, a hearty credit to an oft-maligned airport. And WidgetCo did a magnificent job of getting their operation humming at nearly full strength only days after being inundated by a hurricane. I'm occasionally critical of airline mismanagement on this blog, but not this time. The situation was clearly very well managed. It was also resolved though a lot of hard work under difficult conditions by the fine folks Widget has working for them in New York. Bravo.

YVR

I haven't made the jump to an electronic logbook just yet. I want to, particularly every few months when I drag out my paper logbook to laboriously copy in entries, but the unenviable task of manually keying in my previous 9000 hours has thus far kept me from making the leap. But if I did have a fancy electronic logbook, I could whip out fun statistics like which airport I've landed at the most. I'm almost certain it's MSP. I suppose PDX and SEA would be close seconds from my time at Horizon, with the various other Alaska and WidgetCo hubs well represented.

But of non-hub airports, I'm guessing that I've flown into Vancouver BC (YVR) the most. It was a frequent Q400 destination from both Portland and Seattle, and it was one of NewCo's very first destinations; we've been flying there nearly continuously since 2007. I've bid it as much as possible, partly because it's one of my favorite destinations, and partly because the distance from Minneapolis makes for efficient pairings.

I've been back in Minnesota nearly five years now, and while I've come to a new appreciation of my native state, I do still miss living in the Pacific Northwest. The flight to Vancouver - across the Rockies near Helena, passing over Spokane, crossing the Cascades by Lake Chelan and descending just south of Mt Baker, then turning northwest over Bellingham - feels like a homecoming. Seeing the jagged peaks and emerald valleys of the North Cascades, the fir-carpeted islets of the San Juans set in the glittering Rosario Straight, and the snowcapped dome of Rainier floating serenely above it all puts a lump in my throat.

The city of Vancouver is one of my favorites anywhere in the world, the very image of what a modern world city nestled between the sea and a rugged wilderness should look like. Yeah, it's expensive, and you have the hassle of customs, and it's a bit of a hike from our crew hotel to downtown - but it feels like we've actually flown somewhere. Waking up in Omaha or Dallas or Louisville, you might as well have been teleported. If the layover is long enough, there's no shortage of things to do in Vancouver, whether it's barhopping downtown or walking in Stanley Park or hiking the Grouse Grind or watching seaplanes take off and land over a pint at the Flying Beaver. Even if you don't want to venture very far from the crew hotel, there's a lot nearby. I've never been bored in YVR.

The other thing about Vancouver is that the airport is quite easy to fly in and out of, considering it's the third largest city in Canada and its airspace is somewhat constricted by terrain and ubiquitous GA traffic. The downwind is seldom longer than 10 miles. They usually land us on 26R/8L, even when coming from the south, making for a short taxi straight into the gate. For some reason they restrict departures to 26L/8R, making for a somewhat long taxi out, but once you get to the runway you seldom wait more than a minute or two to depart. The departure off 26L is always gorgeous, with a big sweeping left-hand turn that takes in views of the Georgian Straight, Gulf Islands, Vancouver Islands, and Puget Sound to the south. Our usual departure takes us right over Mt Baker; I occasionally request a few miles deviation either side and give the passengers a nice view.

I had a regrettably short Vancouver layover last week, but the morning departure was as clear and beautiful as I've ever seen it. The sun was just peeking above the Cascades as we turned eastward, and by the time we were over Mount Baker all the snowy peaks were turned pink in the morning alpenglow. You could see as far south as Mt Adams, despite smoke from fires in that area. This was particularly exciting because that night, after my trip was over, I was flying back west once more for a weekend of hiking, dirt-biking, and beer-drinking with friends in Portland. The Pacific Northwest has had an exceptionally nice late summer; at one point Portland went 53 days without recorded rainfall.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention one other thing I like about YVR: our ground staff. The rampers, who are contractors and have been through some turmoil the last few years, are diligent, hard-working, and always ready to marshal us in when I taxi up. The WidgetCo gate agents are a friendly, helpful bunch, even for Canadians. Several are even readers of this blog. It's really nice to pull into gate 86 and see a smiling, familiar face at the jetbridge. This was a more common thing when we were a small airline and flew only a few places, but now we have so many destinations - and my trips are so varied - that there aren't many gate agents I'm on a first-name basis with anymore. YVR is a happy exception. 

Delayed

When I think about all the complexities of an airline, all the moving parts that need to work together for a flight to get out, and how "lean" most operations are these days, I'm frankly amazed that we ever run on time. Yet, this is the case far more often than not. The U.S. Department of Transportation has collected data on airline performance since 1995, and most years at least 75% of airline flights operated on-time (defined as arrival within 14 minutes of scheduled time). So far this year we're at nearly 84%. Typically between 1% and 3% of flights are cancelled, and around 1 in 500 are diverted enroute.

NewCo turns in frequent on-time performance of 90% or more, but it's not necessarily due to superior management or pilots (as much as I'd like to claim the latter). It's mostly a function of where we fly. I've landed the JungleBus at 83 airports in 40 states and five Canadian provinces, which is amazing for a small airline of 42 airplanes (and there are a dozen additional destinations I've never landed at). This is because WidgetCo is a bit schizophrenic about how to use us, as they are with all ten of their regional partners. Right now we're doing a lot of west coast flying out of Salt Lake City, which is very good for on-time performance. Last year, though, we did a lot of flying up and down the east coast out of Washington-National Airport. The year before that, we did a ton of flying out of New York's LaGuardia Airport, to the extent that we nearly opened a crew base there. Our on-time rating took a huge hit then.

The northeast airports - particularly PHL, EWR, LGA, JFK, and BOS - have the most air traffic congestion, along with mega-hubs ORD and ATL. This has such a big impact on airline operations that when WidgetCo wanted to rid themselves of a troublesome long-term contract with Mesa Airlines, they simply moved their airplanes to JFK, waited for the inevitable, and then terminated the contract for poor performance. During JFKs evening peak, a two-hour taxi is fairly common - and that's without weather. In the summer, a single air-mass thunderstorm 100 miles west can shut down most departures. In the winter, it doesn't take much snow to bring ground traffic to a grinding halt. The DOT's three-hour rule further complicates things. Even on decent weather days, it's pretty common to have a EDCT (Expect Departure Clearance Time) to the northeast airports.

Most places outside the northeast, though, delays are usually weather-related, and tend to vary seasonally. Minneapolis, Chicago, and Detroit suffer in the winter. Thunderstorms regularly shut down Dallas and Atlanta in the spring and summer. Los Angeles hums right along in all seasons.

Behind weather and air traffic control, unplanned maintenance is a common cause of delays. Most of the time, airplanes are scheduled for maximum utilization with few breaks, so any unplanned maintenance results in a rolling delay for the rest of the day unless the airline has a spare airframe handy somewhere along the way. For this reason, many minor items can be deferred for later repair through the use of a Minimum Equipment List (MEL). When I find that something has broken, the first thing I reach for is the MEL book, followed shortly thereafter by the aircraft logbook and my phone to call Maintenance Control. We discuss whether the discrepancy can be deferred, whether it should be deferred, and if not, what our plan of action is. I try to get an estimate of how long it'll take mechanics to arrive at the airplane and how long it will then take them to either fix the discrepancy or at least arrive at a diagnosis. If passengers on board, I try to give them an update on our status every fifteen minutes or so. If we haven't started boarding, I pass along information to the gate agent.

With experience, one develops a sense of which maintenance problems will be resolved quickly and which ones will have you sitting a while, and you can act accordingly. With a long anticipated delay, both passengers and cabin crew will be happier with the passengers off the airplane. If at a hub, I'll start bugging dispatch about getting a different airplane in these cases. If I think it'll be resolved quickly, I'll start or continue boarding and have everything ready to go on my end as soon as we get the logbook back. It's important to communicate with the ground crew, as they otherwise often get left out of the loop and will wander off to other airplanes; you can find yourself finally ready to go but with no personnel to load the last bags or push back the aircraft. Over time, I've learned to overestimate maintenance delays when talking to passengers, as they have a way of dragging out long than expected; best to under-promise and over-deliver.

In my experience, the most common source of delays is simply receiving the airplane late from another crew at the start of your day. I've had days where this has occurred three times, every time I had a plane swap. It's frustrating, especially during an already-long day when delays cut into already-short rest time.

Once delayed, your goal is to get back on-time or as close to it as possible, although always within the bounds of safety. It is possible to get so fixated with going fast that you make mistakes. There are usually some easy, common-sense steps, though. You can request a more convenient runway from ATC. You can request more direct routing from center. You can change your altitude based on aircraft performance and winds aloft, and you can fly at a faster cruise mach number. This may result in worse efficiency, but sometimes it's worth it to get the airplane back on time - particularly early in the day, when making up fifteen minutes makes all subsequent flights that day fifteen minutes closer to on-time. On long flights that tend to be over-blocked, it's possible to make up 30 to 45 minutes in one flight. That said, it's important is to make sure you don't short yourself on fuel you might need later. I'm far more likely to cruise at Mach .81 and FL300 going to Billings on a clear day than I am going to Newark with forecast thunderstorms. You need to coordinate with your dispatcher, and take on extra fuel if necessary.

The other time to make up delays is on subsequent ground turns. The key here is communicating with ground personnel. They'll know you're coming in late, but expressing the need for a quick turn and the crew's willingness to pitch in helps put them in high gear. Small things like starting the APU early to shut the engines down quickly, helping clean the cabin, and running gate-check bags out to the rampers can help shave off minutes.

One thing I do find a bit ludicrous is the obsession many airlines, most gate agents, and some pilots have with "On-Time Zero" or "D-0," basically making sure the airplane isn't even one minute late in departing. Some people go to extraordinary lengths to get the door closed and the parking brake dropped by departure time, even if there's still a lot that needs to be done and the airplane can't actually move for another five or ten minutes. Mind you, all that's at stake is the airline's own internal records. So far as the DOT is concerned, the airplane is on-time until it's fifteen minutes late. The gate agent, however, is often called to account by their supervisors if the plane is even one minute late. This was particularly bad at Northwest; Widget is a bit less extreme about it, although some gate agents still get really wrapped around the axle about it. My own philosophy is that I'll do my job efficiently and will do what I can to help get the flight out on time, but won't cut corners just for the sake of some meaningless internal record that has absolutely no effect on whether we actually get to our destination on-time or not. I've been called by the chief pilots office over very minor delays in the past, and that's always the answer I've given them. I've never been in trouble over it.

As you can see, most delays are out of the crew's control, and we typically do a lot to help mitigate them. There is one exception to this rule: a withdrawal of enthusiasm, or WOE. It usually occurs during contentious contract negotiations. The idea is that if the company is stonewalling or applying undue pressure to the pilot group, the pilots do their job as defined in the contract, and nothing more. You don't have to try to deliberately delay the airline, that takes care of itself. You simply fly the same way whether the plane is delayed or not. Because airlines have become so used to pilots going above and beyond and have built their schedules accordingly, the operation falls apart when the pilots don't make the extra effort. It can be very effective; as recently as 2007 a WOE campaign resulted in Northwest deleting some of the most onerous provisions of their pilots' bankruptcy contract. Whether it's legal is another matter entirely, as a number of judges have ruled that even a withdrawal of enthusiasm constitutes an illegal work action under the Railway Labor Act. This interpretation, however, hinges on the WOE being coordinated. It's apparently hard for management and their accomplices in the legal profession to imagine that pilots who are being told how little they are worth to their companies might be a bit less than willing to go the extra mile, on their own and without the urging of their union.

Beyond the Fishbowl

The vast majority of the trips I fly involve multiple landings at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP). It's where I'm based so at the bare minimum the trip will begin and end there, and in between we usually connect through MSP at least once a day. This recent trip is fairly representative:

Day 1: MSP-GRR-MSP-OMA-MSP-IAD
Day 2: IAD-MSP-MSO
Day 3: MSO-MSP-IAH
Day 4: IAH-MSP-JAX-MSP

Minneapolis is a great airport to fly out of. It's not ridiculously busy, has a pretty efficient layout, has very good ATC, and delays are few except in the worst winter weather. All the same, constantly landing at the same airport can get a little old. Moreover, being the home of my company's headquarters and its largest crew base, MSP is "the fishbowl." You're always running into chief pilots and check airmen and company bigwigs, most of whom are very nice people eager to shake my hand and call me by my first name and say nice things about me. I hate that. It's been a longstanding goal of mine for my employer to forget I exist. Jeppesen updates necessitate an occasional stealthy foray into the crew room, but otherwise my "productivity breaks" are spent in the opposite corner of the airport.

Last year we were doing a bunch of flying out of New York's LaGuardia Airport, Washington's National Airport, and Atlanta. Some of our trips avoided Minneapolis altogether, and you were virtually based in one of those three airports during the trip. The change of scenery was nice, but I hate east coast flying. It's just too much work - and not fun, interesting work like, say, a VOR-A approach to minimums in the mountains. It's constant frequency changes, inflexible routing, impatient controllers, and ever-present delays. You're not really out of the fishbowl either, it's just filled with different and much bigger fish. Given the choice, I'd fly nothing but Minneapolis-Missoula, thankyouverymuch!

Last week, though, I flew the trip of my dreams. We didn't pass through Minneapolis once and never ventured east of the Mississippi River. I didn't fly more than two legs a day. The weather was beautiful except for five minutes of marine layer IMC each day. We got fed crew meals. It was productive, with 25 hours of pay for four short days of work. The layovers were long and the happy hour specials lucrative. I don't know why I didn't bid this trip all month long. It looked like this:

Day 1: MSP-MCI
Day 2: MCI-LAX-MCI
Day 3: MCI-LAX-MCI
Day 4: MCI-LAX-MCI (Deadhead MSP)

This was my first time back to LAX since flying for Horizon. It's even more ridiculously easy coming from the east; they sequence you 200 miles out and clear you for the approach while you're at 18,000 feet over Big Bear Lake. The majority of my 2400 non-airline hours were spent flying out of Southern California, while my FO had never been there, so on the long flights out west I regaled him with tales of near-misses and lost students and 3-mile VFR days and lunch at Flo's and the time I just about took out the powerlines at the end of Big Bear's runway (the west end, fortunately). Fortunately for my FO, we had clear weather and spectacular scenery to occasionally shut me up. Here are some good samples:


I would've bid this trip for all of November except I, um, forgot to bid! My "standing bid," which exists for such a birdbrained eventuality, is very basic, requesting only maximum days off. Accordingly, I got a very good 19 days off, despite having three very inefficient training days at the end of the month. More surprisingly, I got Thanksgiving and a random Thursday I needed off despite my standing bid neglecting to mention either requirement. Perhaps I should forget to bid more often!

Places I've Flown

View Places I've Flown in a larger map.

Red = NewCo
Green = Horizon
Blue = Light Plane
Orange = Nonrevving

(Another) New York Story

From our position at Gate 5, I couldn't see the lightning flashing over the skyscrapers of Manhattan or the tenements of the Bronx, but the flashes were reflected in the dark, heavy clouds above. Even inside the JungleBus cockpit, the air was thick with the smell of rain. A week after my introduction to LaGuardia, I was back for another turn, but this was shaping up to be a potentially much longer visit. I reloaded the radar screen on my phone. It showed an angry purple line just over the Hudson River. The storm was moving fast, 40 knots or better by my guess. Our flight attendant Eric handed in the passenger count, and First Officer Rob bent over the FMS to punch in the numbers and request our weight and balance numbers. A Captainly decision was in order.

Realistically, there was no way we were going to take off ahead of the squall line - not during the 5 pm rush at LaGuardia. The real question was whether we wanted to ride it out at the gate, or while in line for takeoff. It didn't particularly matter from a passenger standpoint; they were all on board already, and the gate agent wasn't going to want to deplane them for the 20 minutes it would take the line to pass. If we pushed back now, we would have an on-time departure - something the company has really been emphasizing lately - and a spot in line for takeoff once the airport reopened, potentially saving an hour or more of additional delay time. If we stayed at the gate, we would have to wait at least ten minutes after the storm passed to push back - that's how long it takes the ramp to reopen after a nearby lightning strike - and would then be competing with everyone to get out at the same time, a sort of ground-bound reenactment of my experience over Ripon. "Let's get out of dodge before the ramp closes," I decided. The gate agent closed the main cabin door, retracted the jet bridge, and waved goodbye as the first fat droplets of rain smashed onto our windscreen.

We pushed back from the gate just in time; the flashes were becoming brighter and more frequent, and the ramp closed only a minute or two after our ramp crew disconnected us at Spot 34. We started one engine and called for taxi; Ground Control informed us that the airport had just closed for departures, but we could taxi westward on Bravo, pull in tight behind a Cactus Airbus just past Mike, and shut down our engines. We did so, and then watched the western sky go completely black as the storm rolled across the airport. The southerly wind started blowing hard, shaking the plane with each gust. Planes and buildings on far side of Runway 4/22 disappeared into the rain, and within another minute a veritable wall of water was upon us.

Visibility shrank to almost nil in the extremely heavy rain. We were pulled up fairly tight behind the USAirways A320, yet I could barely see his tail, and couldn't make out his winglets or red beacon. The grassy areas between Taxiway Bravo and Runway 13 filled with rainwater within minutes. I would later learn that wind gusts approaching 100 mph were recorded in other parts of the city, and one man in Brooklyn was killed by a falling tree. For all its fury, though, the line took no more than five minutes to pass. As suddenly as it began, the rain petered out, the aircraft ahead of us reappeared, and the setting sun's golden rays burst through the gloom.

It took nearly 30 minutes for departures to resume. The wind was still favoring Runway 13, which would run departing aircraft right into the storm that had just passed. Instead, a steady stream of arrivals landed on Runway 22. Gridlock soon ensued as many of these arrivals could not make it to their gates due to the crush of outbound aircraft, or because their gates were still occupied by delayed departures. The departure line behind us snaked down Bravo, then back up Alpha to past Mike - completely cutting off access to and from the Widget and USAirways terminals. Finally, departures started trickling out, but the lineup on Bravo didn't budge until an hour after we pushed back. At that point, I estimated at least 40 aircraft ahead of us for departure.

Now I was seriously second-guessing my decision to push back before the storm. We had undoubtedly saved our passengers an hour, probably more, by doing so. However, the dreaded Three Hour Rule was rearing its ugly head. For those who are unfamiliar with this debacle, earlier this year unelected bureaucrats at the Department of Transportation decreed that air carriers could spend no more than three hours on the ground without giving their passengers an opportunity to deplane. The fine for violating the rule is a draconian $27,500 per passenger - more than $2 million on a full JungleBus, or more than the price of one of our engines. The Number One Imperative for airline pilots - short of "don't crash" - has become "don't violate the three hour rule." We have detailed procedures established for lengthy taxi delays, one of which decrees that you must begin a return to the terminal after two hours at any airport where congestion could significantly delay your taxi back. LaGuardia definitely qualifies in that regard.

Therefore, we had less than one hour to get off the ground, and a good 40 planes ahead of us. On good days, LaGuardia's maximum departure rate isn't much over 40/hour, and this was not a good day. When we returned to the terminal, it would likely entail another two to three hours of delay, assuming they didn't just cancel the flight altogether. All in the name of "Passenger Rights!"

But then a funny thing started happening: the Three Hour Rule actually worked in our favor as aircraft in line ahead of us began hitting the two hour limit and requesting to return to their gates. In many cases they were on the west side of 4/22, only ten or fifteen aircraft from departure, and it took ground control a long time to get them back across the runway and slowly working their way back on already-congested Taxiway Alpha. Those of us on Bravo, however, moved ahead steadily. I kept dispatch appraised of our progress every fifteen minutes or so, and continued to make PAs and ask our flight attendants about the mood in back.

At taxiway Golf-Golf, the lineup split into two: those headed north and west from New York proceeded straight ahead on Papa to Runway 13, while those of us going south stayed straight ahead on Bravo to cross 4/22 at Echo. One of the south departure gates, WHITE intersection, was still closed by the storm; those of us filed over WHITE had to be recleared via BIGGY, and then re-sequenced to provide adequate separation in trail. When we finally reached Echo, we were cleared to cross 4/22 and take a right on Delta-Delta, and told to contact clearance delivery for our reroute. The clearance delivery frequency was predictably jam-packed, and it took several minutes for Rob to get a word in edgewise. We had less than 20 minutes left. Once our reroute was copied, entered into the FMS, verified, and briefed, we told ground control we were ready to roll. He told us to hold short of the windsock and monitor tower, who would sequence us. Aircraft were converging from DD, CC, BB, and Papa; with less than 10 minutes remaining, our fate was wholly dependent on however ATC chose to sequence us.

"NewCo 5837, you're next, left on Golf and Papa, hold short of runway 13." We're getting out after all! We were cleared into position behind a departing Dash 8, waited for a United 757 landing on 22, and then cleared to take off. We roared down Runway 13 and lifted off one hour and 55 minutes after we pushed back.

We got lucky. I'm still not sure whether my decision to push back ahead of the storm was the correct one. Given the massive gridlock in the storm's wake, its possible that pushing back 40-60 minutes later would have still entailed a 2 hour taxi-out. The bottom line is that the Three Hour Rule makes it very difficult to operate at an airport like LaGuardia in anything other than perfect conditions. It has done absolutely nothing to improve the average passenger's experience; far the opposite. That hasn't stopped the unaccountable cretins at the DOT from claiming moral victory and proposing a new bevy of "passenger rights" rules. Even worse, they're playing fast and loose with the rules they do have in place, as evidenced by them fining United $12,000 for "wasting valuable Department resources" by dutifully reporting four delays that exceeded three hours!

These fools deserve to be run out of Washington on a rail, as do the politicians who allow this chicanery to go on. This is a bipartisan politican rant, by the way: while the Obama Administration owns this DOT, Secretary Ray LaHood is a Republican, and it's not like Republicans haven't appointed their share of idiots to the DOT (here's looking at you, Libby Dole). A pox on both their houses: our entire political establishment is corrupt and rotting. Come November, only one principal will guide my voting: no incumbent will receive my vote. A country where a vast, unaccountable bureaucracy has the ability to confiscate vast amounts of wealth based on arbitrary rules they impose at whim might not feel like much of a democracy - but by God, at least we still have the ability to Throw The Bums Out!

Big Apple Arrival

If I had my way, I'd never fly anywhere but Montana. The scenery is beautiful, the people friendly; the flying is just challenging enough to be interesting, but ATC is relaxed and delays are few, making for a pretty stress-free experience. All this is true of most of the west coast, actually, but Montana has all these qualities in spades. Alas, I don't get to fly west all that often anymore.

Instead, the great majority of my trips these days send me east from Minneapolis. Flow control, holding, last-minute reroutes, ATC inflexibility, clogged frequencies, postage-stamp sized sectors, gridlocked taxiways and ramps - these are a few of my least favorite things, and they are all permanent features of east coast flying. In fact, the severity of these problems seems to vary in direct relationship with one's proximity to New York City. Flying to any of the NYC airports - JFK, LGA, and EWR, "The Trifecta of Suck" - is just asking for a screaming migraine. I can't imagine being based there, which probably guarantees I will be at some point.

Although I've long been well acquainted with Newark's wonders, thus far I've managed to mostly avoid JFK and stay completely away from LaGuardia. This has been through a combination of lucky and purposeful bidding, as well as the occasional strategic trip trade. A lot of other guys see a New York airport and dollar signs flash before their eyes: there's an excellent chance of picking up over-block on these flights. I'm more than willing to help them out, as the hassle and stress isn't worth the extra money to me. With NewCo's increasing presence in New York over the last few months, it's getting tougher to stay out. The last few months, I've flown into JFK several times. And then last week, I could avoid LaGuardia no longer.

I actually had two LaGuardia turns, one at dusk on Wednesday night and the other at dawn on Friday morning. Keith, the FO I was flying with, had been into LGA a number of times so I had him fly the first turn, while I took the second. We got some holding on the arrival on Friday night due to gusty winds forcing a runway configuration change; after landing, taxiway gridlock and a last-minute gate change (to a remote pad, utilizing air stairs and a bus) upped the stress level for a few minutes. On departure a few hours later, it took 20 minutes to push back and over an hour to taxi out thanks to extreme congestion and some VIP activity on the airport (we departed #2 behind Air Force Two). The turn on Friday morning involved quite a bit less hassle, but the lineup for departure was still fairly long. Congestion is an unavoidable fact of life at an extremely popular airport that is inherently limited by its configuration and is hemmed in between Queens and Flushing Bay with no room for expansion.

Despite the hassle factor, I rather enjoyed the visits to LGA thanks to being able to fly the famous Expressway Visual approach to 31. LaGuardia actually uses another neat approach, the River Visual, whereby one steams up the Hudson at low altitude for the full length of Manhattan before cutting straight across the Bronx on final to Runway 13. The Expressway Visual offers a little less in the way of skyline appreciation but makes up for it with nice seat-of-the-pants flying that's a rare treat in a transport category aircraft.

You can find the approach plate here. Approaching from the southwest on the Milton Three arrival, we were cleared to DIALS early on and spotted the twin white tanks before we reached the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Cleared for the visual approach, we descended to 2500 feet until reaching the tanks, then turned right to intercept and follow the Long Island Expressway through Queens. Approach handed us off to tower, who told us we were #2 to land after traffic on left base and cleared us to land. I clicked off the autopilot, cleared the flight director, and called for "Flaps 3, Speed 160" as I began a 3-degree descent. There is no vertical guidance on this approach until you pick up Runway 31's VASI at relatively low altitude, so you take a guesstimate of flying miles remaining and maintain a descent that puts you at 300 feet for every mile to the runway.

Passing through 1500 feet, I called "Gear Down, V-Approach, Landing Check" and Keith read the landing checklist as we slowed to our approach speed of 131 knots. Coming abeam Meadow Lake, I rolled into a 20-degree left bank to follow the Flushing River out of Flushing Meadows Park, pirouetting nicely around
Shea StadiumCiti Field. Passing 500 feet, I shallowed my bank to make a sort of slightly curving final approach all the way to the runway; tall cranes by the mouth of the Flushing River prevent us from making a straight-in final the last 500 feet, as is usual practice. The VASI came into view; we were right on glidepath. On about a half-mile final, I finally leveled the wings completely. The winds were gusting out of the north, and as I came over the threshold I kicked in left rudder to align the nose on runway heading while using right aileron to keep the upwind wing slightly down. Squeak-squeak-squeak went the right main, left main, and nosewheel, just the way I like it; our light weight allowed me to use minimum reverse and medium braking to slow in time to make the taxiway Tango turnoff, just the way tower likes it.

I'm sure a lot of my GA pilot readers are looking over my description and thinking "What's the big deal?" Visual approaches by reference to surface features are the rule rather than the exception in light planes. The context that you're missing is the stultifying routine of the great majority of airliner arrivals. For us, the rule is being vectored onto a 20-mile final for an ILS-served runway 10,000 feet long, 3 miles in trail, 160 knots to the marker - over and over again. Turning off the autopilot, flight director, or even autothrottles (gasp!) are about all you can do to provide some variety, and even this is barely enough to keep the rust off. Good stick and rudder skills are seldom needed in the airline world; here, being a good pilot is primarily about effective crew coordination and decision-making skills. Chances to go beyond being a cockpit manager, to go back to being a pilot, are relatively rare and genuinely cherished. The Expressway Visual 31, or the River Visual 13, or the Carnesie Visual 13L/R at JFK, or the River Visual 19 at DCA are what passes for fun flying in the airline world. Well, that and flying to Montana!

If you'd like to see what the Expressway Visual looks like the cockpit, here's an excellent video on youtube. This crew is approaching from the northeast, so they overfly LaGuardia and Manhattan before turning in at Prospect Park, but the approach is otherwise the same from about the 5:40 mark.