Kick It Out?

The following video has been making the rounds on the interwebs, showing a landing on runway 27L at Chicago O'Hare on a windy day last week:

I initially thought the plane was an AA 737, but closer inspection shows it to be a JungleBus operated for AA by Republic Airways. I have about 5000 hours in the airplane and have made my share of crosswind landings up to and including the published demonstrated crosswind limit of 38 knots (one of which was on 27L at ORD, actually). At NewCo this was considered a hard limit inclusive of gusts, and our FAA principal inspector later lowered our limit to 28 knots steady with gusts to 38. The airplane handled crosswinds very well, with more than enough rudder authority even at 38 knots crosswind component, and enough nacelle and wingtip clearance to use proper wing-low crosswind technique. In big wind, you'd start to kick out the crab and establish the aileron input just before beginning the flare, at about 50 feet.

The technique shown in the video has been criticized by some pilots, and it's definitely not ideal (especially considering the crosswind component was only 15-20 knots), but I don't think the landing was nearly as hairy as the video shows. This was shot from a long ways off using a very high-zoom lens, which greatly exaggerates angular differences (note that 27L looks about 4000' long and 400' wide!). I would guess they landed with somewhere around 5-10 degrees of crab - again, not ideal, but likely within design limits for JungleBus' robust landing gear. Looking at the video, it appears that the pilot attempted to kick out the crab late in the landing flare and didn't put in a corresponding aileron input, which rolled the plane a bit left, where the wind caught the upwind wing, so they touched down on the downwind gear while still crabbed.

I think most airlines would prefer the occasional sideloaded landing to a wingtip or nacelle strike, and for this reason many actually teach a wings-level crosswind technique. The idea is to wait until late in the flare and then kick out as much crab as possible just before touchdown; if you time it right, the plane will be aligned with centerline but on the ground before any side drift develops. You still use some upwind aileron, but only enough to hold wings level. This is a commonly taught technique on the 747 and 737 due to low nacelle clearance, on Airbus products due to the flight control software making cross-controlling difficult, and on the CRJ-200 and JungleBus' little brother JungleJet due to low wingtip clearance. I do not know whether Republic teaches the "kick it out" method on the JungleBus or the JungleJets operated by sister company Chautauqua.

In the JungleBus you have 16 degrees of bank before striking a wingtip or a nacelle. The former requires an unusually high pitch and the latter a nose-low attitude. When landing in 38 knots of crosswind, the most bank I ever saw was about 6-7 degrees. You're typically using Flaps 5 with a lot of wind additive, so you're looking at approach speeds of 140-160 knots depending on weight. There's no reason to use the "kick it out" method; the plane sideslips and lands beautifully on the upwind main wheel with perhaps 3/4 rudder deflection and 1/3 aileron deflection on touchdown, and increasing the aileron deflection throughout the landing roll greatly aids in keeping the plane tracking down centerline. It's not very different to how I land the Cub.

The Mad Dog absolutely hates being landed with any crab at all; doing so nearly always results in a nasty bounce and dramatic gyrations as the tires skip across the runway. For this reason my airline teaches a very similar wing-low technique to the one I used in JungleBus, with cross-control inputs made somewhat lower but still fairly early in the landing flare. There is less wingtip clearance on the Mad Dog than JungleBus, and the ailerons are far less effective (they're manually controlled via cables to servo tabs); the control wheel is close to full deflection on touchdown at the crosswind limit of 30 knots. I know this because a few days before the above video, I landed in Atlanta with winds 310 at 38 knots (twice in one day, actually).

It's easy to pile on the pilots in the video above, but I can say that over the course of thousands of landings I've made some real doozies and was just fortunate that no cameras were rolling. The same goes for any professional pilot flying. The pilot may have well been planning on using a wing-low technique but got a last minute sinker and he was just trying to save it from a hard touchdown. The last few seconds before landing get really busy when the winds are howling, and not just because of the crosswind - it's because your airspeed is often bouncing around +/- 10 knots, and you're making fairly dramatic pitch & power changes in response to floaters and sinkers. At the end of the day, this guy landed on centerline, in the touchdown zone, at what looked like a fairly low sink rate, and the plane appeared to handle the sideload fairly well. This was one of the first windy days since last spring, everyone's knocking the rust off, and no doubt we'll all refine our technique considerably as winter approaches.

Ode to JungleBus

Well, Basic Indoc class is over, and I'm officially a [nameless major airline] pilot, wings and all. It was a really good experience, extremely welcoming regardless of flow status and quite a bit more chilled out than previous indocs. But I still have to get through Mad Dog school, which starts in a week, with computerized home study until then. It will not be chilled out, it's notoriously fast and furious, so I'll be hitting the books hard this week. My life at NewCo already seems impossibly long ago, and the "brain dump" on JungleBus systems and procedures is already well underway. You have to forget your previous airplanes as an airline pilot, or that knowledge will interfere with the one you're flying now. But I can't let all things JungleBus slip from my brain without some acknowledgement. This is the airplane I've flown far more than any others in my career, a plane I came to know rather well. I left NewCo with 4801.6 hours in the JungleBus, which is slightly over half of my total time. In all that time I never had a serious systems-related emergency. I had perhaps a dozen maintenance cancellations in over six years. JB seldom let me down; she deserves a tribute before I become intimate with another mistress.

The first time I saw JungleBus, I was a Q400 FO at Horizon, who had recently lost their Frontier JetExpress flying only three years into a supposed 12-year contract. As our CRJ-700s came back from Frontier they were being put on inefficient routes like Portland-Seattle, and so the factors that would eventually lead me to leave Horizon were already evident. In Spokane, I saw a Republic JB in Frontier colors taxiing into the gate, and my initial reaction was profound dislike. It looked like a child's pudgy plastic toy airplane to me, and the fuzzy baby animal on the tail added to the impression. My critique of the airplane's aesthetics never entirely changed even after I was flying it. But that first impression was likely tinged by jealousy and frustration over my stalled career at Horizon. Six months later I was in class at NewCo, learning to fly that pudgy toy plane.

The training began with a home self-study CD-ROM, which seemed awfully slim on in-depth systems knowledge. I figured the classroom systems lectures would go into greater detail, but when I got to Montreal the ground instructors seemed to know even less about the plane than we did. Alarmingly, the same was true of our simulator instructors. The checkride examiners asked plenty about each control and button's function and system logic, but very little about the underlying systems themselves. I entered OE feeling like I knew less about this airplane than any I'd ever flown before - and despite that, got through in only 25 hours feeling pretty comfortable with line operations. And that wasn't me being superpilot; everyone was getting through with 25 hours of OE. I realized then that the lack of systems instruction wasn't a byproduct of a new airline or a relatively new type, it was an integral feature of a design meant to remove pilots and their pesky human failings from its operation to the greatest degree possible.

The JungleBus is in fact a fairly complex airplane, but from the flight deck it is simplicity itself. The overhead panel features a few rows of large, rarely-touched "dusty buttons" which select the systems to "Auto" or "Off." When everything is selected to its normal (auto) position, the switchlights are dark. The ram's horn yokes are beautifully ergonomic and nicely balanced, which they well should be since they're not connected to much of anything - it's all computer-augmented fly by wire with the exception of the ailerons, which actually have control cables running to their hydraulic actuators. The FADEC-controlling thrust levers glide smoothly from idle to the rating detent, which you seldom feel since the autothrottles are generally engaged before you ever get close to it. The secondary controls - Flaps, Spoilers - are big and unmistakable, and protect themselves by refusing to deploy when they shouldn't. The real heart of the cockpit, the Flight Guidance Panel, has quite a few easy to understand and use modes for lateral and vertical guidance - the most commonly used of which are the FMS-derived LNAV and VNAV. When everything is working, it's a rather easy airplane to fly. 

But what about when things break, you ask - what then? Again, the airplane makes it as simple for the pilot as possible. Most major systems go through extensive self-tests, transparent to the pilot, on aircraft power-up. If they fail their self-test, they display an error message and you call maintenance. The only systems the pilot tests himself are the fire protection, annunciator lights, and trim switches. After startup and proceeding through the flight, the EICAS system inhibits many faults, discreetly sending minor ones directly to the airline and displaying others after landing or shutdown. Only outright failures are shown on the EICAS display in real-time or close to it (most are inhibited between 80 knots and V1), and then the system prioritizes the order of their display so that malfunctions most likely to be the root cause of secondary faults are addressed first. You just pick the highest priority message and run the associated QRH checklist. Nine times out of ten, the checklist tells you to select the system off, wait sixty seconds, and turn it back to auto, and nine times out of ten this resolves the fault – the aeronautical equivalent of Ctrl-Alt-Del. If the QRH leaves any room for confusion, you can bring up the appropriate system schematic on the Multi-Function Display (MFD), and the status and relationship of every component in the system is displayed. If our instructors never placed much emphasis on knowing exactly what is powered by each hydraulic system, for example, their laxity makes a little more sense when you realize that the hydraulic synoptic page shows exactly what is being powered at any given time, no rote memorization required. My colleagues and I have often theorized that this airplane was designed to be flown in challenging third-world conditions by inexperienced, occasionally fatigued crews, and most of the time it will keep even this “lowest common denominator” crew out of serious trouble.

Of course, JungleBus’ front-end simplicity is achieved through a great deal of back-end complexity of the electronic variety, and this means it is still prone to human error – but these errors can lay hidden within layers of code or imbedded on circuit boards for months or even years before surfacing in unexpected ways. In six years I’ve seen this airplane do some truly mind-boggling things, like spontaneously change a pilot-entered VNAV descent angle from a reasonable 3.5 degrees to an untenable 6 degrees, or abruptly turning 20 degrees off course upon crossing an intermediate fix where the airway didn’t bend. A good friend had a baffling situation where the pneumatic synoptic page showed that both pack valves had closed themselves and the cabin altitude was rapidly increasing. He quite reasonably made an emergency descent and subsequently diverted to our maintenance base in Louisville, where subsequent investigation showed that it was an indication error – both packs were working correctly and cabin altitude had actually remained steady at 8000 feet! I personally experienced a current surge event in one of the Secondary Power Distribution Assemblies (SPDA) that fried multiple circuit boards in one fell swoop, creating a puzzling array of seemingly unrelated faults; this fortunately happened on the ground, during the Power-On Self Test.

These type of events are not a slight against the JungleBus’ basic design; they happen in every modern airplane, and I dare say more often in many than in the JungleBus today (early on it had many more bugs to work through). I would say they are notable in the JungleBus primarily because most of the time the airplane does work so well that it lulls crew into less active monitoring than they might practice in a less reliable design. This complacency is the easiest way to get into trouble in a JungleBus, and usually not because of some insidious bug hidden deep in the software. Most of the time JungleBus crews screw up, they do it to themselves with bad input, and subsequently fail to catch the error through lax monitoring. Too often when the error is finally discovered, they attempt to fix the automation in a hurried, panicked manner rather than simply flying the airplane and having the other pilot fix the automation when time allows it to be done methodically. And this problem, I would argue, is a direct result of JungleBus’ design philosophy and the resulting way we have trained her crews. If you take so much of an aircraft’s operation out of a pilot’s hands, encourage him to continually use full automation, and keep him in the dark as to much of what his aircraft is doing, you cannot reasonably expect him to remain alert and engaged in the aircraft’s operation over countless uneventful hours, and you cannot expect him to become instantly attuned when something does go amiss. It goes against human nature. The FAA and the airlines have become quite aware of this and the pendulum is finally swinging the other way across the airlines and across fleets, toward a greater emphasis on manual flight skills and automation shedding when appropriate.

Fortunately, many of us who’ve been flying JungleBus for a while recognized her potential for creating automation dependency early on, and took our own steps to ward it off. We hand flew whenever appropriate, and occasionally turned off the autothrottles and flight director too. We backed up the VNAV with good old 3-to-1 ratio mental math (which saved my bacon on that spontaneous path angle change incident). We talked amongst ourselves and learned some of the more insidious “bad input, bad output” scenarios, like accidentally hitting PREV twice and setting ourselves up for an offside-localizer capture and subsequent reversion to ROLL HOLD mode. We talked to our mechanics and learned the nuts and bolts behind the Auto mode buttons. We opened the QRH in cruise with synoptic pages displayed on the MFD, unraveling the reasoning behind the procedures. We followed our progress across the country and played the “if everything goes blank now, where do I go?” game.

Fortunately, none of us ever had those “everything goes blank” scenarios actually happen. Everything generally worked very well. When JungleBus did throw us a curve, we usually caught it early on. When I made dumb inputs, my FOs almost always caught them before agreeing to “Activate.” Once in a while the autopilot and/or autothrottles would do something funky and I’d turn them off, and I’d appreciate all over what a wonderfully honest, smooth-flying airplane it is when you just fly the damn thing – a big Cherokee, really. JungleBus never did anything to put me or my ticket in danger, as long as I just paid attention. I finished my stint at the regionals with a clean record and about 7000 accident-free, violation-free, and mostly uneventful airline hours. I have useful training & prior experience, great coworkers, and two very different but ultimately very good airplanes to thank for that. Goodbye, JungleBus. I’ll miss you. 

That Sinking Feeling

One of the most frequent questions I get from non-pilots - after "what route do you fly" - is "don't you ever get bored up there?" The quick, obvious answer is "of course." Modern airline flight is thankfully routine and devoid of frequent surprises, and a certain amount of enroute ennui is inevitable. I've written before about ways that I combat that, such as talking to crewmembers and following our route on a road atlas. But there's a big difference between being occasionally bored enroute, and being completely bored with the job. I've known more than a few people who find airline flying terribly dull. I see where they're coming from, but I also think it's what you make of it. I would probably find it tiresome as well if I didn't bid different routes every week, make an effort to get to know my crewmembers and do things with them, and make sure I get out of the hotel and explore our layover cities. Those things keep the job fresh, and every once in a while something even happens in flight to shake up the routine a bit. Of course, I'm seldom appreciative at the time.

Last Friday I flew a daytrip to Steamboat Springs, Colorado (actually Hayden, KHDN) and back. Now, in the winter I tend to bid more 3- and 4-day trips to cut down on the driving and get out of the snow for a few days a week, but the computerized Preferential Bidding System (PBS) that builds my schedule determined that staffing required I fly one daytrip, and added it to my January line. I hadn't flown to Steamboat in two years, partly because we only do it in the winter and I avoid winter daytrips, and partly because I avoid Steamboat specifically due to the low credit time (4.5 hours roundtrip) and operational challenges associated with it. Fortunately, when I looked at the weather before heading to the airport, Steamboat Springs had clearing skies and it was forecast to be a nice day.

When I got on the airplane in MSP, mechanics were on board clearing an MEL. One air cycle machine ("pack") had been deferred, limiting the airplane to 31,000 feet, but now it was fixed. I called our dispatcher to take the MEL off of the release and get the phone briefing that our company requires before all flights to Steamboat Springs. On a bad day, some of the issues I would discuss with the dispatcher might include snow removal and runway braking status, maximum landing weight considering contamination and climb performance limitations due to terrain and icing, permissible load out of MSP considering our landing weight, weather at alternate and second alternate airports, and potential problems getting into Steamboat considering that we can only land on Runway 10 with a 3 knot or less tailwind when it's snowing, and the fact that 28 is served only by an RNAV approach with relatively high minimums. Besides that, we might also talk about performance limitations for the return flight, and whether the booked payload out of Steamboat might require taking a reduced fuel load and a tech stop to refuel in Denver on the way back to MSP. This day, however, there were no such troublesome matters to discuss. "There's a little bit of snow just moving out of the front range now," said our dispatcher, "but Steamboat and surrounding area should stay clear. No alternate needed." He added that though he had planned the flight at FL300 for the now-removed MEL, we could go up to FL360 to save fuel. With that he cheerily wished us a good flight. I briefed the First Officer - who I had flown with several times - on what we had talked about, and continued with my preflight routine.

We were about 55 minutes into the flight when "MESSAGE RECEIVED" popped up on our FMS screens. It was a text from our dispatcher. "New Hayden TAF just out would require an alternate. Are you ok continuing without one?" Per the regulations and our Flight Operations Manual, the well-known 1-2-3 rule (alternate airport required if within +/- 1 hour of arrival, less than 2000' ceiling and 3 miles visibility is predicted) only applies to preflight planning. If we take off and then the predicted weather goes below 1-2-3, we are permitted to continue without an alternate if the Captain determines it is safe to do so. The FO and I eyed the amended TAF. It was drastically worse than the original, showing 1/2 mile visibility in snow until after our ETA, and winds picking up heavily from the west around then. "I'm pretty sure that's below minimums at Hayden," said my FO. We flipped through our Jepp plates. Sure enough, the minimums for the special ILS Z Rwy 10 are 3/4 mile visibility. If the winds from the west were more than 3 knots - a seeming certainty - the RNAV Rwy 28 approach requires 1 & 3/8 mile vis, with a MDH of 514' above touchdown elevation. I used the ACARS "Weather Request" function to pull up the most recent METAR. Sure enough, it was 1/2 mile visibility in moderate snow with 8 knots of wind from the west. Clearly, continuing without an alternate would be sheer madness. My FO agreed vigorously.

I decided to do a little homework before responding to our dispatcher. I pulled up the weather for Denver; it was fine. Laramie and Cheyenne are closer and the weather was good at both, but a quick review of their 10-7 (Company Info) pages showed that neither is a regular line airport, and a divert to either would involve sitting on an FBO ramp and depending on them for services they may or may not be able to provide in a timely manner. If a divert was in the offing, I'd best avoid those two. I checked our fuel and did some quick calculations. Thanks to our higher-than-planned cruise altitude, we would be arriving with about 600 lbs more fuel than originally planned. If we diverted to Denver, I wanted to land there with no less than 3500 lbs (2640 is official reserve but it would be foolishness to land at a busy airport with that little, especially with unforecast, unsettled weather around). We had just enough fuel to fly one approach at Steamboat Springs, go missed approach, and divert to Denver. If the weather was still below minimums when we got to Steamboat, we had no more than five minutes of holding fuel.

I typed a message back to our dispatcher. "New TAF and METAR shows below minimums at HDN. Request Denver alternate, FOB 9.2, show 6.4 on arrival at HDN, bingo to DEN 6.0. Also, please call HDN ops and request most recent MUs." Hayden is a designation Special Winter Operations Airport (SWOA), which is the reason we can't land with no more than 3 knots tailwind when it's snowing. It also requires runway friction numbers (MU being one type) or a braking report from a transport category aircraft less than an hour before our arrival. The dispatcher replied promptly: "Hayden MUs 39/41/33 as of 5 minutes ago. A320 just landed reported good braking." We were landing in only 40 minutes, so that met the requirement. "Denver alternate looks good, add that to your release, sending numbers to your printer." The ACARS printer spit out a new flight plan page with amended fuel required numbers that roughly matched my calculations, though a bit less conservative.

With that the FO and I set about reviewing Hayden's 10-7 sheets, which are a full eight pages long as opposed to most airports' 1 or 2 pages. About half of these applied to our arrival, and included quite a few review items we had already considered and a few we had not (e.g.: call CTAF 15 minutes out to get all the snowplows off the runway!). We briefed the ILS Z Rwy 10, noting that the missed approach procedure is different than the normal ILS in our FMS, as well as the RNAV 28. Runway 10 also had a Complex Special procedure to consider for an engine failure during missed approach. While discussing these items, we kept requesting a new METAR on the ACARS every five minutes. Special METARs kept coming out, but showing little improvement. Denver Center issued a descent clearance and we started down. I silently cursed myself for not requesting more fuel with any snowfall anywhere in the mountains. I know from experience just how unpredictable mountain weather can be. Oh well...it's not helpful to dwell on that now, I told myself, and concentrated on the task at hand.

We were passing through 18,000 feet when Denver Center triumphantly informed us that Hayden's new weather was 6 miles in light snow, ceiling 2200 broken, wind 230 at 4, and asked us which approach we would like. The weather at the airport was good enough for the RNAV Rwy 28, but I suspected it would be worse east of the airport, where we would be approaching from. The southwest wind was just light enough to land on 10. My FO requested the ILS Rwy 10. The controller immediately cleared us direct to the Hayden VOR, 12000' until established, cleared for the ILS Rwy 10 approach. I called for the approach checklist a bit early, overflew the VOR, joined the backcourse, and passing INEDE hacked the timer for a good-ole-fashioned freight-dog-style procedure turn onto the ILS. We broke out of the clouds right at INEDE inbound, and the sight was about what I expected: a clear airport with a wall of snowfall immediately east, over the town of Steamboat Springs. The snowplows confirmed on CTAF that they were clear of the runway, and we landed on the nicely plowed runway without incident. We did have to wait a few minutes for the gate, as the [nameless major airline] A320 that had landed 45 minutes prior was still loading up for its return to Salt Lake City.

Thankfully, it snowed only lightly for our departure and our outbound load was light enough to fill up on gas without a Denver tech stop. Our winter considerations did not stop with departure: it was snowing with low ceilings in Minneapolis. Still, with multiple long runways, oodles of snowplow capability, no performance restrictions, and Cat II approaches, Minneapolis is a walk in the park after Steamboat Springs. I smiled and relaxed as we cruised northeastbound over Nebraska with absolutely nothing to see on the ground and little chatter on the radio. Sometimes, a little enroute boredom is a wonderful thing.

Just What Are We Doing Up There, Anyways!?

Since my piece in Flying came out, I've heard a lot of feedback - from friends, coworkers, Flying's readership, and those of you following this blog - and the vast majority has been gratifyingly positive. That said, eight years of running a blog with open comments has taught me to expect some haters - and endowed me with a thicker skin to them - and indeed a few did come out of the woodwork. The source was a little surprising: fellow regional pilots, albeit of the anonymous forum variety. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, as the regional forums had a lot of hate for Captain Sully, the most high-profile, eloquent, and truthful spokesman our profession has ever known. So I was prepared to ignore the haters, until I realized that their gripes contained a kernel of truth.

A few of my fellow regional pilots took exception to the second half of the sentence, "The autopilot and autothrottles keep the airplane right on course, flying more smoothly than I am able." The general public already thinks we're overpaid and underworked, the argument goes; I just gave them ammunition by claiming the automation is a better pilot than I am.

I'll admit that sentence was overblown. It's not even particularly accurate: I would like to think my flying is smoother than the autopilot most days, for the 10-15 minutes per flight I fly manually. But it was part of a paragraph describing the high level of automation in the JungleBus, which does result in very low workload in good-weather cruise flight. This was the second beef my fellow regional pilots had with the article: I depicted a low-workload day, thus tempting the general public to think that all we ever do is sit, eat, chat, and stare out the window.

I considered writing up a "day from hell." I actually started on it. But the reality is that such an article, besides being boringly boastful, would have been less truthful than the one I wrote. Maybe I have extraordinarily good luck, but I would guess that I have a "day from hell" less than 10% of the time. Conversely, at least half of my flights pass with nothing out of the ordinary happening. I chose to use such an ordinary day - and uneventful cruise flight - as a framing device for talking about the regional industry and regional pilots as a whole. I thought it was more truthful, more interesting, and it was what I really wanted to write about.

But the criticism isn't entirely unwarranted. Several non-flying friends & family, upon reading the article, remarked on their surprise that I do so little at my job. Furthermore, Bob Collins, who writes the News Cut blog for Minnesota Public Radio and frequently comments on this blog, had the same takeaway. And he's a pilot! So while the ennui of uneventful cruise flight is a major part of the modern pilot's life, perhaps I should have been less glib in writing about that aspect for the uninitiated. Even on an uneventful day, there actually is a lot of work that goes on, more than I really think about. Yesterday was a great example - on the same routing as depicted in the article, no less.

Yesterday morning began with a soaking thunderstorm in Dallas. Dawn had come on the overnight with me, and we braved water-clogged freeways to have breakfast downtown with two good friends. The storm had moved to the east by the time we showed up at the airport, but it had delayed many inbound flights. I put Dawn on a delayed Minneapolis flight and waited for our aircraft to LaGuardia. It pulled up to the gate only 20 minutes before scheduled departure time of 12:20. To make the turn go faster, I read through the release at the gate, pulled up the radar to confirm that our dispatcher's routing up the backside of the storm and through a gap in mid-Arkansas was doable, and ran my own fuel calculations to see how much holding fuel we would have if the storms starting to pop up west of LaGuardia shut down the airport. As soon as the last of the inbound passengers deplaned, my crew dragged our bags down the jetbridge, greeted the inbound crew, and began our preflight checks. For me, this consists of scanning the logbook for errors, recent service checks, and recurring writeups, checking emergency equipment, "making my nest" with my flight bag, headset, and jepp binders, performing my flow items, and programming our flight plan and performance perimeters into the FMS. That complete, my FO Eliot and I briefed the weather, our ATC clearance, expected payload, takeoff performance, engine-out procedures, abort items, departure procedure, and our programmed route. Eliot then read the Preflight Checklist. By now passenger loading was complete, so I made a welcome aboard PA, the ramp lead brought our load manifest, Dottie the "B" flight attendant brought the passenger count, and Eliot programmed these all into the FMS and sent a Weight & Balance ACARS request. Our takeoff performance data came back a few minutes later, and Eliot entered the thrust and flap settings and Vspeeds into the FMS while I reviewed the data. Inga our "A" flight attendant announced that the cabin was secure and shut the cockpit door. I ran through my before start flow and called for the checklist, which Eliot read before calling ramp control for pushback. When we got our clearance, I released the parking brake. Then and only then did Eliot and I start getting paid. All the above was a freebie for the company, even though it is hugely important to the safe outcome of the flight.

We were moderately heavy at 82,000 lbs - too heavy for single-engine taxi - so I had Eliot start both engines as we were being pushed back. After wave-off I asked him to set our planned takeoff flap setting, Flaps 1 - relatively rare, used in this case to aid engine-out climb performance in the scorching Dallas heat. We ran the before taxi checklist, and Eliot called ramp and then ground control for taxi clearance. The route - "Taxi 17R via Kilo, Echo Golf" - was straightforward, but we reviewed it on the airport diagram before beginning our taxi. Six minutes later, we were cleared for takeoff, and I pushed the thrust levers up to the rating detent as we began rolling down the 13,000 foot runway, scanning the engine instruments for any abnormalities. When Eliot called "rotate," I was careful not to pull back on the yoke too hard. It's fairly easy to strike the tail on Flaps 1 takeoffs, and because we use average passenger weights, it's not uncommon to have imperfect weight & balance that results in a mistrimmed aircraft.

At 400 feet I called for "NAV" and began following the FMS-generated guidance for the AKUNA2 RNAV departure. At 1000 feet I called for "VNAV, Speed FMS," but kept the airplane pitched a bit higher than the flight director guidance, as we had a relatively steep crossing restriction to make despite the hot air and heavy airplane. I hand flew through 13,000 feet, and then asked Eliot to turn on the autopilot. We had climb checks at 10,000 and 18,000 feet, and then at cruise altitude we asked ATC for ride reports and turned off the seat belt sign for a while, until we reached the line of weather we had to pick our way through. This was less eventful than I feared, for although we were in restricted visibility due to blow-off from the storms, we were able to use the radar to find a pretty wide gap that let us pass unmolested. Even after the line, we deviated six or seven times for cumulonimbus popping up along the route, although it was all scattered enough that we never had to turn more than 10 or 15 degrees. Midway through the flight, I ACARSed our dispatcher inquiring about the storms west of LaGuardia, and he replied a few minutes later saying there were multiple cells popping up. I kept refreshing the LaGuardia D-ATIS every half-hour, but good weather prevailed at the airport.

Over central Pennsylvania, we were given a new clearance changing our arrival from the Milton 4 to the HAARP 2. Soon we began hearing LGA-bound aircraft on the Milton 4 being issued holding instructions, and I remarked on our luck to escape this. No sooner had the words escaped my lips than we were cleared back direct to Milton, hold as published, expect further clearance in a half hour! Eliot programmed the hold into the FMS and I began calculating our bingo fuel. A half hour of holding would put us right at it, with a diversion to Allentown a distinct possibility. I was just about to text our dispatcher when New York Center cleared us direct to BEUTY, deleting the hold. Whew! For the rest of the arrival, we passed big cells on either side, but only had to deviate slightly once. On the descent, Eliot retrieved the newest ATIS, obtained landing performance data, programmed the arrival and v-speeds, sent our in-range message, and read the descent and approach checklists when I requested them.

LaGuardia was landing 22 and departing 31, so over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge approach control sent us direct to LGA, and then heading 070. I heard several aircraft ahead of us being cleared for a short approach, so I slowed down and configured early, and thus was able to get down when we were turned in early to a short approach from 4000 feet. I commanded flap and gear extension in sequence, and was slowed to approach speed in landing configuration with the engines spooled up by 1000’ AGL, our mandatory stabilized approach altitude. The wind was gusty and we had ice speeds due to an earlier encounter – rather ridiculous, since it was 82°F at the airport – giving us a rather fast approach speed of 149 knots to a 7000 foot runway. I made sure not to float much but still made a fairly soft touchdown, applying the brakes and reverse thrust quickly and decelerating briskly to turn off at Taxiway Charlie.

I called “Flaps zero, after landing checklist,” and Eliot’s hands went through the flow pattern as he switched his audio panel to Comm 2 and called ramp control to check on our gate. Meanwhile I turned left onto Bravo and talked to ground control, who told me to turn right on Echo, Left on Alpha, hold short of Foxtrot. Eliot came back on to inform me our gate was open but the alley was occupied, and would be for 10 minutes. He relayed this information to ground, who shunted us back over to Bravo short of Juliet behind an idling American Eagle E145. I made a PA explaining the situation to the passengers, and then we listened to both ramp and ground control frequencies for further instructions. Ramp apparently forgot about us, for when Eliot made an inquiry six or seven minutes later they immediately cleared us into the gate. Ground sent us in via Juliet, Alpha, November. We had landed on time, but blocked in late due to the delay.

The return leg was much like the first, except that we were severely load limited due to a high fuel load, hot temperatures, and LaGuardia’s short runways. I ran a preliminary performance calculation, consulted with the rampers to find the number of bags, and concluded that we could take up to 72 people, or 74 if at least 4 were “half-weights,” ie children under 12. I took a walk through the gate area, counting the number of children, and told the ground agent we would be able to take all 68 confirmed passengers and 6 nonrevs who had been told they wouldn’t get on the plane. In fact, when our final performance came back, we were 500 pounds under Max Runway Takeoff Weight, thanks to an outside air temperature 1°C cooler than planned. The takeoff required Maximum Thrust with no derate, Flaps 4 (normally only used when runway length is the limiting factor), and Bleeds Off. I was even more attentive than usual to the slightest flicker of engine instruments on the takeoff roll down Runway 31; the EGTs were very nearly at their maximum. An abort anywhere near V1 would require us to do everything absolutely perfect if we weren’t to go sailing into Flushing Bay. The engines stayed running, though, and we lifted off at 145 knots with about 1500 feet of pavement remaining.

We spent the return leg dodging scattered thunderstorms that had grown a bit since the previous flight, and raced an isolated cell approaching DFW. We won the race handily and touched down on Runway 35C a few minutes early. I said goodnight to the deplaning passengers, shut down the ship’s power, collected my bags, and headed out to the curb with my crew. The hotel van took 25 minutes to come, and then it was 15 minutes to the hotel. We had a 14 hour overnight, affording me enough time to visit a nearby bar & grill for a slice of pizza and a pint of microbrew.

For all that, if you had pulled up a barstool next to me, ordered a Moose Drool Brown Ale, and asked me how my day was, I would’ve shrugged and said “Pretty much the usual. Dodged a few storms. Almost got held going into LaGuardia. Pretty heavy on the way out. Fairly typical day.” And it was. Eliot and I still chatted quite a bit in cruise. I pulled out the atlas and followed along. We called the flight attendants halfway to New York to tell them a joke because we were bored. We still worked plenty over the course of the day, and we still had numerous opportunities to use the skill and judgment we’re paid for, but having relatively little to do during the interminable hours of cruise flight is an undeniable part of the modern pilot experience, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. That wasn’t really what the article was about, but since the topic has been brought up…now you know the rest of the story!

Curse of the Last Day

I reached up to the overhead panel and flipped on the taxi light, with pitifully little effect; the beam was swallowed whole by the night. The tarmac was dark and wet, with angry little puddles whipped into foam by raindrops and incessant wind. Low scud clouds scooted overhead, smothering any sign of the impending daybreak and reflecting very little light from the slumbering airport. Taxiway and runway lights cast soggy halos that smudged together in an impressionistic blur, and even yellow signage was indistinct, shrouded in mist. "Geeze, always darkest before the dawn, eh?" I remarked.

"Charlie Four is that way," countered the more practically-minded Rob, pointing to a half-visible sign on my left. I nudged the thrust levers forward an inch, and the 75,000 pound airplane crept forward into the inky void of a deserted Pittsburgh International Airport. It was 6:15am, eastern time.

Ding, dong.

I had groped my way out to Taxiway Bravo when the high-low chime of the cabin interphone sounded. Rob and I exchanged glances as he pressed the answer button on his audio panel. I could only hear his side of the conversation: "Hi, this is Rob...oh, really...okay...no way to turn them off?...oh, I see...okay, I'll tell him." Rob hung up and turned to me in the darkened cockpit. "That was Bill" - our lead flight attendant - "and he says the cabin lights are completely screwed up. They turn off when he turns them on, and vice versa, except that sometimes only half of them do it, and they won't dim." I grimaced - such a typical JungleBus malfunction. In older airplanes, lights just burn out. In this one, they become possessed.

We told ground control we needed to pull off to the side to sort some things out, and he diverted us onto the even darker Charlie deice ramp. I set the parking brake, powered up my cell phone, and dialed Maintenance Control. As I suspected, the only reset procedure for the cabin lights was to power down the airplane and power it back up. This had to be accomplished at the gate. Rob called operations while I gave the passengers the bad news, and then we fumbled our way through the dark back to the terminal.

As expected, a three-minute power reset exorcised our electrical demons, but it took longer to sign off the logbook, re-enter our flight plan and performance data in the FMS, and realign the IRS. By the time we pushed back the second time, 45 minutes late, the clouds had lightened to a grim steely grey. We were engulfed almost immediately after takeoff, and didn't break out into bright sunshine until FL220. We were hoping to make up a little time enroute to LaGuardia, but New York Center slowed us down and then descended us early, back into thick, moisture-laden clouds. It was raining heavily at 10,000 feet; fat raindrops slapped the cockpit windows noisily. The usually spectacular Manhattan skyline swept by unnoticed, dank and sullen, as we strained to see LaGuardia Airport for the Expressway Visual. We spied it seven miles out and were immediately cleared for the sweeping arc around Citi Field that is spectacular fun on a nice day, but a bit stressful when you're struggling to see through the rain. Rob made a fine approach and landing.

After the usual stuttering LaGuardia taxi to the gate, we arrived nearly as late as we departed Pittsburgh. At least the gate agents were motivated for a quick turn: they began boarding within two minutes of the last passenger deplaning. I retrieved the paperwork from the gate podium and returned to the cockpit to begin preparing for our flight to Dallas. Just then a blue-shirted mechanic burst in through the cockpit door.

"We're changing your number four tire. We need everyone off the airplane."

Rob and I exchanged quizzical looks; he had just done the post-flight inspection and had mentioned nothing about a bad tire. "Show me," I said, and followed the mechanic out the door. The tire was indeed fairly bald, with little if any tread remaining in places, but there were no cuts and no cord showing through, which is usually the criteria that prompts a tire change. "They tell us to change them when there's no tread," the mechanic insisted. Fair enough; I wasn't going to argue with a mechanic taking the conservative course of action for once. I returned to the jetbridge to herd all the passengers there back up to the terminal, told the gate agent to stop boarding, then went back to the airplane and made a PA requesting that everyone on board deplane. The frustration on many of the passengers' faces was evident.

Nearly everyone was gone when the mechanic came bounding back up the stairs from the ramp. "We're not going to change it after all!" he exclaimed. "Maintenance control didn't realize you're taking it to Minneapolis today, we're just going to put it on RT for three flight cycles." I thought a minute; long, dry runways were awaiting us in both Dallas and Minneapolis. "Yeah, let's go."

The gate agent threw up his hands and laughed almost manically when I told him we were good to board after all. Bill had a crooked grin on his face when I returned to the airplane. "You know it's the curse of the last day, don't you?" Yeah, the thought had crossed my mind. This was day four of a four-day trip, and we were all eager to go home. It's pretty uncanny just how often that's a recipe for things to go wrong. The vast majority of my diversions and major mechanical events have taken place on the last day of a trip. I'm not very superstitious, but I've almost come to expect it.

But this time, our luck apparently turned.  The tire episode, while frustrating, didn't delay us by much. We still managed a 35-minute turn. After a relatively short-for-LaGuardia 30 minute taxi out, the flight to Dallas was pleasant and, with only 40 knot headwinds, a mere 3 hours 10 minutes long. Dallas gave us a good turn, we didn't get stuck behind any American jets being taxied by the bankruptcy judge, and we made it to Minneapolis only a few minutes late to enjoy the remainder of a stunningly beautiful autumn day at home. Not much of a curse, I thought...this time!