Category: Flying Stories

New Kid on the Ramp: My First Day Flying From Chicago…

…SUCKED! Ok, maybe sucked is too strong a word. So, allow me to elaborate!

Goodbye NYC, Hello Chi-Town

Adios NYC!
Adios NYC!

Quick Note: For those of you who didn’t catch my comments on Twitter over the weekend, I recently made a base transfer at work from New York City to Chicago. There are various elements that play into this decision, mostly fewer day-to-day weather related delays, a better flight schedule, more days off (including weekends!), just to name a few.

The Morning Commute

Well, today started at home when the alarm clock knocked me out of my sleepy coma at 6 AM. This morning was no different than any other; wake up, shower, don the pilot costume, and head out to the airport for my morning commute. After the usual routine of losing my car in the employee lot, riding the shuttle to the terminal, dealing with the TSA, I arrive at the gate destined for Chicago O’Hare. How exotic right?

Getting to Know Chicago

It was a beautiful day to fly, clear skies, unrestricted visibility, and the flight to O’Hare offered many wonderful views of the Great Lakes and the Chicago skyline on arrival. But that’s about where the easy part of my day ended. You see, I haven’t been to O’Hare in years and I’ve never been based there previously so I had to learn everything in a Chicago instant. Things like location of the crew room, how to access the Secure ID Area, the cypher code for the crew room door, where the bathroom is (seriously, I had to walk outside on the ramp to access it!), kept me occupied for a few hours before it was time to make the donuts, as they say.

I decided to take a few extra minutes to make my way to the airplane since I didn’t know how far the walk was. Good thing, too. It’s one of those across-the-airport type of jaunts to get from crew room to airplane. As I approach the gate I see what appears to by my Captain waiting there. We greet and introduce ourselves and I mention that today is my very first day operating as a Chicago based pilot. You know what he says to me? “Me, too!” I just laugh and think to myself this will be like the blind leading the blind.

First Day Craziness

Our aircraft arrives to the gate late carrying with her a few maintenance squawks. The biggest one being our auxiliary power unit, also known as the APU, a small turbine generator that produces aircraft electricity and pneumatic air for things like air conditioning and engine starts, is out to lunch, caputo, broke. Great! That means we have to request an external air start cart (a huffer cart) to start the engine at the gate before disconnecting the external ground power, aka GPU, so the lights don’t go out on the flight deck. Queue the romantic music… JOKING. It also means no air conditioning. Luckily it wasn’t a Texas-hot kind of day.

So the first order of business during my pre-flight aircraft inspection is notify the ground personnel that we’ll need the huffer cart and external air conditioning for starters. The rampers response? “You’ll have to talk to that guy, he’s the lead.” I tell ‘that guy’ the same story. His response? “You’ll have to tell the next crew

Maintenance DOES have a sense of humor!
Maintenance DOES have a sense of humor!

what’s going on.” “I AM the next crew!” I exclaim. He says to me, “No, the next ramp crew, because that’s not my job.” Ahhh, yes there it is; the Chicago unionized rhetoric I heard so much about. No wonder half the nations airlines are swirling around the toilet. Ay dios mio!

Thank You Maintenance

Fortunately for us Mr. Maintenance came out to the aircraft to perform some routine tasks. He decides to check our APU to see if he can clear the squawk. After a few repairs and tests we have our beloved APU back. No, not Apu the slushy-serving Pakistani mini-mart owner from The Simpsons, but our auxiliary power unit. Maintenance gives us the ‘Omni, Omni, VOR’ blessing and leaves us to finish getting ready for departure.

Our takeoff clearance is to perform the O’Hare 5 SID, a standard instrument departure. With that departure comes some particular aircraft performance requirements in order for us to accept this procedure. Thumbing through the climb rate and engine performance tables I determine we can’t accept the O’Hare 5. Could that be right? The jet can’t climb fast enough to make the climbing restrictions? Nah, I read the table wrong! After recalculating and confirming the data with the Captain we both agree the departure procedure is well within our aircraft capabilities ONLY if…

…TO BE CONTINUED…

Read Part 2 of New Kid On The Ramp: My First Day Flying In Chicago

Halifax: A Deicing Story

ATIS is calling visibility 3 statute miles, light snow, ceiling broken at 1,500, overcast at 3,000, and winds from the south at 8 knots. But first…

We began the day by arriving to the plane at 0545 local. It was snowing and our bird was wrapped in a blanket of fluffy, white, precipitation goodness. Captain says, “I’ve got the walk around this morning.” How nice of him.

I prepared the flight deck for departure as I normally do, running the first flight of the day system checks and find everything to be in working order. Captain arrives from his preflight inspection to report “this much snow” inside the engine inlets. He motions with his hands to demonstrate the presence of roughly 4 inches of snow.

Snowy Ramp CYHZ
Click to englarge: Snow covered ramp in CYHZ – Halifax, NS.

It’s now time for push back, however, I can’t start the jet engines until the snow is cleared from the inlets. The ground personnel seem somewhat confused with my request. “Could you guys get a ladder and scoop the snow out of our engine?”, I ask. “Uh, sure. No problem.”

We push back from gate and start the engines, first the right engine, and the left. The ramp is slick and covered in snow so we delay our taxi checklist and leave the flaps retracted to avoid contamination buildup. The Embraer 145 flaps are located aft of the main landing gear. Taxiing on contaminated surfaces with flaps extended slings snow and ice off the tires to the underside of flaps. It looks like you ran over Frosty the snowman.

Company procedure states delaying flap extension as long as practical during ground operations for this exact reason. Besides, we needs flaps up for our deicing configuration anyway.

We arrive at deice pad 1 where the marshaller leads us into place. I run the deice configuration checklist; “both engines are running, APU (auxiliary power unit) is off, brakes are set, you may begin deicing.” I declare.

Deicing trucks descend upon us like a scene from ‘The Matrix,’ vehicles swarming all over, lights flashing, and red fluid dripping down my windscreen. 10 minutes later I’m told we are free of all contaminants and may exit the deice pad.

WestJet 737 Deice
Click to englarge: Deicing WestJet 737 in CYHZ – Halifax, NS

I check the deice fluid holdover charts and determine we have between 35 minutes and 75 minutes of precipitation protection before we would have to be sprayed down again. Holdover charts tell us how long the specific brand of deice fluid will protect the flight control surfaces. Certain variables such as outside air temperature, type and intensity of precipitation dictate how long the fluid will last before a safe takeoff is no longer permissible. With 0 degrees Celsius and light snow, we have plenty of time to make a safe takeoff. Perfect.

We proceed to taxi to Runway 23 for departure. Instructions are taxi via Golf, Foxtrot, and hold short of Runway 14. I overhear the tower clearing an Air Canada Jazz CRJ for landing. Winds are now from the south at 10 knots, gusting 20 knots. Delightful, considering the runway is 70 percent trace snow and only 30 percent bare and I’ve got a pretty good crosswind component. I brief, “If we have to abort the takeoff, it’ll be max reverse thrust and easy on the brakes so we don’t skid off the runway.” Now I’m really excited as we taxi onto Runway 23.

“Contact departure airborne, you’re cleared for takeoff Runway 23.”, the booming tower controller states. “Set thrust.” “Thrust set.” “80 knots.” “Crosscheck.” “V1, rotate. Positive rate.” “Gear up,” and away we go.