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.
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.
posted by Windsor at 4:30 PM
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