Roll the trucks
One of the nice things about airline flying is that for the most part, there is no "pucker factor". What I mean by that is, there are not a lot of tense moments where you really have to start excercizing your pilot abilities. Flying freight, you have your fair share, part 121 is a lot more tame. Having said that, I can only think of once or twice where there has been some pucker factor at my airline. The other day was one of them.
So there we were about a half hour into our flight from IND to LGA, we had been level in cruise for about 5 minutes, diligently studying our manuals when we get a single chime master caution and the overspeed clacker starts going off. "The manual's" get tossed to the side while we look to see what the problem is. It was a Flaps Fail Caution message. Crap.
The CRJ-200 has been having flap issues for years. This plane is just an overgrown Challenger corporate jet and is actually not very well designed for airline use. One of the glaring issues is with the flaps and flap actuators, they have the tendency to fail quite a bit. Today was my day to have a flaps fail problem. Luckily for us, we got the easiest of the flap failures to have. We were in cruise flight, flaps at zero degrees, had lots of gas and plenty of options available. It could have been much, much worse. Take an Air Canada Jazz flight for example, they had the worst scenerio possible. On approach to an airport in northern Canada, the weather was so bad at the destination airport that they had to go missed. The pilots went to raise the flaps and the flaps failed at 45 degrees down. Now they are in trouble. What they did, caused even more trouble and came very close to crashing. Instead of declaring an emergency and landing back at the original destination, they decided to divert to their alternate airport. The big problem with that is with flaps at 45 degrees down, you are limited to 170kts and your fuel burns are going to be astronomical. Long story short, they landed at their alternate with 500lbs of fuel on board. They absolutly had to land because they did not have enough fuel to go around. They had about 2 minutes of fuel left when they landed. Since this incident, Bombaridier and the FAA have thrown several band aid's at the fix in the form of AD's, but have yet to come up with a working fix.
So back to the flight at hand, we ran the QRH for the flaps fail and between the two of us in the cockpit, we decided the best course of action would be to divert to DTW. We were a little past Cleveland when the caution message went off, so DTW was the best fit for us in terms of distance and suitability. We clued in dispatch as to what was going on and informed him that we were going to divert. We told ATC we had a problem and were going to head to DTW. They asked if we were going to declare and emergency. Had it been clear and a million, we probably would not have, but seeing as how there were storms in the area of DTW and the ceilings were around 800agl, we decided the priority handleing would be beneficial. We made a big u-turn and headed back west to DTW. We descended down early to burn off as much fuel as practical before coming in for a landing. It was the first time I'd ever declared the full emergency. We got cleared direct to the airport as soon as we made the turn. Thats the first time ever that we headed to the field without doing an arrival. After every flight we usually debrief the flight and ask ourselves what we we did right, could have done better, ect. After making the turn to DTW, it was at this point in the flight where I could have done something better. I was the one to make the passenger brief to the pax, I tried to be as clear and concise as possible, but when you are making stuff up on the fly, there are bound to be a few ahhh's and um's in there. I made sure I hit the high points that we were diverting to DTW, the plane was safe, it was a precautionary landing and after landing they will see the fire trucks on the side of the runway, but not to worry because they were there just as a precaution. On the descent in, we had to dodge a few TS cells, but the ride was still good. We got vectored in for a 10 mile final and flew the ILS to 22L into the airport. It was interesting because our ref speed at flaps zero was 165kts, I hadnt done an approach that fast in a long time. The approach and landing were nice and smooth. We used a lot more runway than we normally do, but that was to be expected. The fire trucks followed us down the runway just to be safe in case we smoked our brakes. The plane was fine after landing so we taxied to the gate.
Overall the pucker factor was pretty low, it was basiclly a non-event, but was definatly out of the norm. After a few hours on the ground, we swapped planes, loaded up the passengers and headed back on our trip.
So there we were about a half hour into our flight from IND to LGA, we had been level in cruise for about 5 minutes, diligently studying our manuals when we get a single chime master caution and the overspeed clacker starts going off. "The manual's" get tossed to the side while we look to see what the problem is. It was a Flaps Fail Caution message. Crap.
The CRJ-200 has been having flap issues for years. This plane is just an overgrown Challenger corporate jet and is actually not very well designed for airline use. One of the glaring issues is with the flaps and flap actuators, they have the tendency to fail quite a bit. Today was my day to have a flaps fail problem. Luckily for us, we got the easiest of the flap failures to have. We were in cruise flight, flaps at zero degrees, had lots of gas and plenty of options available. It could have been much, much worse. Take an Air Canada Jazz flight for example, they had the worst scenerio possible. On approach to an airport in northern Canada, the weather was so bad at the destination airport that they had to go missed. The pilots went to raise the flaps and the flaps failed at 45 degrees down. Now they are in trouble. What they did, caused even more trouble and came very close to crashing. Instead of declaring an emergency and landing back at the original destination, they decided to divert to their alternate airport. The big problem with that is with flaps at 45 degrees down, you are limited to 170kts and your fuel burns are going to be astronomical. Long story short, they landed at their alternate with 500lbs of fuel on board. They absolutly had to land because they did not have enough fuel to go around. They had about 2 minutes of fuel left when they landed. Since this incident, Bombaridier and the FAA have thrown several band aid's at the fix in the form of AD's, but have yet to come up with a working fix.
So back to the flight at hand, we ran the QRH for the flaps fail and between the two of us in the cockpit, we decided the best course of action would be to divert to DTW. We were a little past Cleveland when the caution message went off, so DTW was the best fit for us in terms of distance and suitability. We clued in dispatch as to what was going on and informed him that we were going to divert. We told ATC we had a problem and were going to head to DTW. They asked if we were going to declare and emergency. Had it been clear and a million, we probably would not have, but seeing as how there were storms in the area of DTW and the ceilings were around 800agl, we decided the priority handleing would be beneficial. We made a big u-turn and headed back west to DTW. We descended down early to burn off as much fuel as practical before coming in for a landing. It was the first time I'd ever declared the full emergency. We got cleared direct to the airport as soon as we made the turn. Thats the first time ever that we headed to the field without doing an arrival. After every flight we usually debrief the flight and ask ourselves what we we did right, could have done better, ect. After making the turn to DTW, it was at this point in the flight where I could have done something better. I was the one to make the passenger brief to the pax, I tried to be as clear and concise as possible, but when you are making stuff up on the fly, there are bound to be a few ahhh's and um's in there. I made sure I hit the high points that we were diverting to DTW, the plane was safe, it was a precautionary landing and after landing they will see the fire trucks on the side of the runway, but not to worry because they were there just as a precaution. On the descent in, we had to dodge a few TS cells, but the ride was still good. We got vectored in for a 10 mile final and flew the ILS to 22L into the airport. It was interesting because our ref speed at flaps zero was 165kts, I hadnt done an approach that fast in a long time. The approach and landing were nice and smooth. We used a lot more runway than we normally do, but that was to be expected. The fire trucks followed us down the runway just to be safe in case we smoked our brakes. The plane was fine after landing so we taxied to the gate.
Overall the pucker factor was pretty low, it was basiclly a non-event, but was definatly out of the norm. After a few hours on the ground, we swapped planes, loaded up the passengers and headed back on our trip.
posted by Windsor at 7:24 AM
3 Comments:
Good work.. Do you know the flight number for that AC Jazz incident? I didn't know the CRJ was so prone to flap problems..
Nicely handled! I bet that runway comes up quick at 165!
Tom, Sorry, I dont have the flt number. It was somthing we were talking about in re-current training the other week.
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