Back on the road.
After enjoying some home time for a week, I'm back on the road again. For the first time in a long time I'm back flying the Falcon again. Its nice to finally be flying it again because I prefer it over the Lear. Its easier to fly and has a roomy cockpit that I can stretch out in. I'm all cramped up in the Lear. Granted flying the big pig has its drawbacks, (loading and unloading, slow climber, not as fast as the Lear) but I still like it.
These past few days I've gotten to experience more heavy and high altitude take off's. The past few nights we have been flying into Toluca, Mexico elevation 8600ft. This is the highest elevation airport that I have ever landed at. Thankfully the runway is almost 3 miles long, because we use just about all of it to get airborne. Our first trip down there we were told our freight was going to be 1500lbs. The captain asked our handler several times what the weight was going to be and he promised 1500lbs. Dispatch also promised the same thing. With the high altitude of the airport, we were limited to a max take off weight of 26,000lbs. After we crunched numbers we figured out how much fuel we could take. I don't want to sound like a smart ass F.O. but before the captain ordered the fuel, we talked about how weight critical we were and that a lot of times the freight weight is not what is advertised. We discussed how it would be a good idea to wait till the freight showed up to put our fuel order in. Somehow he changed his mind with out talking to me and put the order in early. I know that he's the captain and he is in charge, but I thought we had an understanding that it would be a good idea to wait. Guess not. So the fuel truck arrives and fuels us up before the freight arrives. They add just enough fuel so that with our planned 1500lbs of freight we'll be right at max take off. Well in typical Mexican fashion, the freight shows up and its 1200lbs heavier than what we were told. So now we were 1200lbs overweight for take off. I didn't say anything to him, but in my head I was saying "I told you so!". We had several options available to us to help remedy the situation. We could A. leave freight behind , B. defuel or C. just load everything up and go sit somewhere on the field and burn gas till we were again at 26,000lbs. We spoke with the "powers that be" (dispatch) and they decided it would be best for us to go with option C. So we loaded up everything, lit the fires and taxied over to a remote spot at the airport and woke up the neighbors for about 10min. We set the brake and ran the engines at take off power for 10 min until we burned off the 1200lbs of extra gas. I estimated we wasted about $1000 in gas with that little stunt. Glad I'm not paying the bills.
So after wasting lots of $$, time and natural resources, it was time to depart. Only instead of going to our planned original destination, we now had to stop for fuel en route. So it was off to Leon to grab gas and then finally back into the states. Another delay in what was fast becoming a very long day. The trip into Leon was uneventful as well as our hops back into the states and to our base to swap out crews with the crew that would finish the trip due to our running out of duty time. Gotta love Mexico.
These past few days I've gotten to experience more heavy and high altitude take off's. The past few nights we have been flying into Toluca, Mexico elevation 8600ft. This is the highest elevation airport that I have ever landed at. Thankfully the runway is almost 3 miles long, because we use just about all of it to get airborne. Our first trip down there we were told our freight was going to be 1500lbs. The captain asked our handler several times what the weight was going to be and he promised 1500lbs. Dispatch also promised the same thing. With the high altitude of the airport, we were limited to a max take off weight of 26,000lbs. After we crunched numbers we figured out how much fuel we could take. I don't want to sound like a smart ass F.O. but before the captain ordered the fuel, we talked about how weight critical we were and that a lot of times the freight weight is not what is advertised. We discussed how it would be a good idea to wait till the freight showed up to put our fuel order in. Somehow he changed his mind with out talking to me and put the order in early. I know that he's the captain and he is in charge, but I thought we had an understanding that it would be a good idea to wait. Guess not. So the fuel truck arrives and fuels us up before the freight arrives. They add just enough fuel so that with our planned 1500lbs of freight we'll be right at max take off. Well in typical Mexican fashion, the freight shows up and its 1200lbs heavier than what we were told. So now we were 1200lbs overweight for take off. I didn't say anything to him, but in my head I was saying "I told you so!". We had several options available to us to help remedy the situation. We could A. leave freight behind , B. defuel or C. just load everything up and go sit somewhere on the field and burn gas till we were again at 26,000lbs. We spoke with the "powers that be" (dispatch) and they decided it would be best for us to go with option C. So we loaded up everything, lit the fires and taxied over to a remote spot at the airport and woke up the neighbors for about 10min. We set the brake and ran the engines at take off power for 10 min until we burned off the 1200lbs of extra gas. I estimated we wasted about $1000 in gas with that little stunt. Glad I'm not paying the bills.
So after wasting lots of $$, time and natural resources, it was time to depart. Only instead of going to our planned original destination, we now had to stop for fuel en route. So it was off to Leon to grab gas and then finally back into the states. Another delay in what was fast becoming a very long day. The trip into Leon was uneventful as well as our hops back into the states and to our base to swap out crews with the crew that would finish the trip due to our running out of duty time. Gotta love Mexico.
posted by Windsor at 12:18 PM
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