Murphy's Law

Murphy's Law : If something can go wrong, it will. That was the case the other day on our last leg of the day. And of course that happens to be the last leg of the 4 day trip and the most crucial leg of the day because it is the one that will make or break my ability to make my commute home. The most underblocked flights you will ever find are the one's that are the last flight of the crew's trip. This would have been the case for this trip, but due to severe incompetence on the part of our out station personnel, we ended up being late.

Earlier in the day we had been delayed for about an hour waiting on an inbound aircraft. This compressed the rest of the day and caused the rest of our flights to turn into quick turns. As a crew we did the best we could to make the turns go as quick as possible. This included helping the flight attendant clean the cabin between flights and flying as quickly and safely as possible. By the time we got to our last turn, we had made up for the hour delay and then some. We were enroute to our last out station and were discussing our options for getting back to DTW early. Our scheduled arrival back into DTW was going to leave me about 30 min to catch my flight. Thats not a lot of time, but its managable if I really hustle. So in order to hedge my bets, while enroute to our last out station, we got approval from dispatch to leave 10 minutes early if all pax were at the gate and ready to go. We called the station when we were in-range and let them know, 1. we were going to be early and 2. we would like to leave 10 early if possible.

You would think with enough heads up and prior planning, the station would be prepared. Nothing could be farther from the truth. When we arrived, we parked at the gate right away. We were early, so the gate had plenty of time to off load the pax and bags and load everything back up. An efficient out station can get us turned in less than 20 min. Not the case this day. We spent 55 minutes blocked in at the gate. Not only did we arrive early, but we left late!!!! Things got so bungled, we ended up blocking out 5 minutes late. When stuff like that happens, it makes you want to pull your hair out and scream at the world, but that would accomplish nothing. Especially when theres more to come.

Murphy's Law not only applied to the turn at the out station, but for the rest of the flight. The next delay came in the form of de-icing. There was some light snow falling and its always better to de-ice than to not, so we headed over to the de-ice pad for a spraying. Thanks to an error by the de-icing crew, they needed to re-spray an area of the aircraft they missed on the first pass and added an additional 5 min to our already delayed flight and my ever evaporating chances of getting home. The next delay came from ATC. I was planning on flying fast on our way back to base, but ATC had other ideas. As soon as I leveled off at our cruising altitude and inched the airspeed up to 320kts, we got the bad news from the controller that he need us to slow to 250kts for flow control into base. Great. The next delay came from the company. When we sent in our in-range message, we found out our gate was C-36, the most distant gate we have in terms of distance from our ops/bag room and from the gate my flight was leaving out of, A-3. The next kink in the chain came from ATC again. We had planned on landing on the runway that was close to the gate. It was normal for us to land on this runway when approaching from the south west, yet this night, ATC had other plans. Instead of landing on the runway close to the gate, they wanted us to land on the farthest runway possible. Not only was it far on the ground, but we now had to fly over the airport, get in the pattern for the approach on the far side of the field and get dumped in on a 25 mile final. Arrrgh. As I'm sitting there looking at our arrival time on the FMS, every change we make to the flight plan eats away at my ability to make my flight home.

So, to complete the flight of delays, it would only be fitting that we have to sit and wait for rampers at the gate. We pull up to the gate....and wait....and wait....and wait. 9 minutes we waited for rampers to come park the plane. Wonderful. Needless to say by the time the pax got off loaded, I did my walk around, dropped my flight bag in ops and headed to the gate, the flight was loooong gone. Oh well, these thing happen.

Coyote Ugly

So, seeing as how I have a 5 hour airport appreciation tour today, I have a bunch of free time to sit around and do nothing. I figure I might as well finish my tales of Coyotes and drunken passengers.

So as I said in my last post, the 6 hour delay inccured in ATW created a domino effect on the rest of the day. The second domino to topple was our ROC turn. We were suppposed to do ATW-DTW-ROC-DTW-PIA-DTW and were supposed to duty off at 7:30pm Eastern. But due to our late departure from ATW, we were not going to make our ROC turn, so they canceled it. I miss out on 3+ hours of flying, get jipped out of 1.5 hours of pay(we only get paid 50% of the leg value if the flight cancels) and a bunch of passengers get delayed and have to go through the hassle of re-booking on other flights.

Domino number 3 was our PIA turn got delayed. Turns out the plane we had was going to do a BUF turn, then we were to take it to PIA. So instead of a 3:30 departure, we were now delayed until 6:00. This caused domino number 4 to fall because now we were scheduled to return to DTW after my commute home left. I was dissapointed I wouldnt make it home, but there was still an outside chance I could make the last flight to MSP in order to make the first flight to MKE in the morning (the first flight out of DTW in the morning was waaaay oversold, so was the noon flight). I could tolerate spending the night in the sleep room at MSP if I could be home by 10am the next day.

So this brings us to the most interesting flight of the day. The inbound flight to PIA was normal. Gusty winds caused my landing to be less than stellar, but it was passable none the less. The turn took longer than we had hoped due to our late arrival and the fact our gate was occupied for 20 minutes. So we finally loaded up, de-iced and headed to the runway. We double checked our flight times and saw that we were going to block in at around 15 hours of duty. Plenty legal seeing as how we are allowed up to 16 hours, but at 16:01 we are illegal and in big trouble. It was the Captains leg, so he was flying. We recieved take off clearance and proceeded to take the runway. The Capt. lined the plane up with the centerline and brought the thrust levers up. He called for me to "Set thrust" and at this point, I took my eyes off the runway and started fine tuning the thrust levers to set take off thrust. It was just as I was about to take my hand off the thrust levers that the Captain let out an "Oh Shit" and I felt the plane swerve to the left. I quickly looked up and saw a Coyote running at the aircraft on the runway. It was about 30 feet in front of us and running full speed ahead. We only had about a tenth of a second before we were going to run it over. It then made a quick u-turn and started running twords the edge of the runway right before it went under the plane and out of my line of sight. The Captain grabbed the thrust levers and aborted the take off. We were not going all that fast, less than 80 kts, so the abort was not as critical as a high speed abort. We cleared the runway, told tower what was going on and proceeded to run the aborted take off Q.R.H (quick reference handbook) procedure for an aborted take off.
We finished that up and taxied back to the gate. I hopped out and did a detailed check of the landing gear, fairings and fuselage. I didnt see any damage, guts or hair, so we must have missed it. I hopped back in the plane and started getting ready to go. By this time the Capt. was on the phone with dispatch letting them know what happened. I overheard him tell them the plane was fine, we still had enough gas to get to DTW and we were ready to go. It was at this point that crew scheduling wanted to get involved because they thought we were going to go over our 16 hours of duty and they wanted to cancel the flight. It took 10 minutes of conversation and convincing to prove to the schedulers that we could complete the trip and block in before the magical 16th hour when we turn into pumpkins. So after all that, it was finally time to head back to the motor city. We ended up blocking in right at 15:30 min of duty which left us with 15min to spare.

I gotta head to the gate, I'll finish the day on another post. The next flight was pretty interesting too.

All iced up

I thought the days of busting my hump for 16 hours a day were over, guess not. The other day was the longest day I've had in quite a while. It all started out in ATW. The forcasters had been calling for massive amounts of snow in the area starting in the morning. I rolled over and tried to slide out of the hotel before I woke the wife up. (She drove up to ATW to spend the night with me while I was working). It was 5:15am Central. I quickly checked the weather and saw that ATW had been getting freezing rain all night. The temps were right at 0 and the radar was painting an ugly picture. I checked Big Reds website and saw that the flight was still showing "On-Time". So I put myself on auto-pilot and did the shower, shave, get dressed dance. I headed down to the lobby to meet up with the rest of the crew to catch a 5:45am van. The first sign that things were nasty out was the ice covering all the cars in the parking lot. They all had a solid coating of freezing rain ice adhereing to all surfaces. The roads were just as slick. It was a slippery ride to the airport. Thankfully its a short ride from the hotel to the airport. As we pulled to the terminal and hopped out of the van we noticed some angry faces inside the terminal. That usually equates to cancelled or delayed flights. We grabbed our bags and asked the van driver to hang out for a few minutes in case our flight had canceled. It didnt, but we were told of an hour delay due to a ground stop into DTW. So the van driver headed back to the hotel and we went out to the plane to inspect the ice. The first clue that conditions were bad on the airport was the fact that the ramp was a complete sheet of ice. In order to demonstrate this fact to the disbelieving Captain, I took my flight bag and went flight bag bowling across the ramp. (For those who are wondering, it was out of sight from passengers and the only people who saw this were the Captain and Flight Attendant) As we approached the plane, we saw the full extent of the ice. The plane was covered in a solid 1/2 inch of ice. There were 6 inch icicles hanging from the wings and tail. We tried to open the door to the plane, but it was frozen shut. There was nothing we could do about it, so we headed back to ops. The freezing rain wasnt letting up, so the captain got on the phone with dispatch to inform them on the situation developing. Long story short, the flight was delayed indefinatly so the Capt. decided to head back to the hotel. Certainly didnt break my heart because Erin was still sleeping in the hotel room. I figured we could go get some breakfast. I called the hotel to have them send the van back, but to my dismay she said they were unable to do so. Appearantly the van slid into a snow bank and was out of action for the morning, so she called a cab for us. After about 45min the cab showed up and we headed back to the hotel. I managed to sweet talk the manager into giving us free breakfast coupons and proceeded to head back to my room. After filling up on the breakfast buffet, Erin and I proceeded to veg out in front of the t.v until the capt called and said we were heading back to the airport for another try.

Attempt number 2 was almost as comical as attempt number 1. The station managed to use an entire truck of de-icing fluid (700 gallons) trying to de-ice our plane. They then went over to re-fill the truck and while they re-filled, the plane iced over again. Most of their efforts were thwarted by mother nature. It wasnt until about an hour later when the freezing rain stopped and the heavy snow started that they were able to fully de-ice the plane. But by this time they had used all of the glycol they had and were now using Delta's de-ice truck. Glycol runs about $4.00 a gallon, so you can do the math on how much it cost to get our flight out. So after several de-icings, we finally blocked out 6 hours late. The domino effect has started. The rest of the day was just as eventful with an aborted take off and a drunk passenger smoking in a Lav, but those stories are for another day.

p.s spell check is inop on the blog, so please excuse my poor spelling.