Crossing fingers...

I realized today that I never feel like I have anything useful to write for this blog, but yet I LIVE aviation. So maybe I should be trying to find something at least a couple times a week to write about.

Currently I'm still awaiting recall; a combination of rumor mill and facts from management point to a possible recall in January to be back on the line in March. According to our DO we should be getting 2 A320s in March, then 1 in April and 1 in May. At the current rate of about 7 crews/airplane, this should require at least 42 recalls (assuming that NKS is keeping 1 A320 as the spare airframe that we so desperately need, as evidenced by our need to contract flying out while we had an extended maintenance issue a few months ago).

By guestimate I'm around 24 back in the list. Hopefully I'll get picked up by the first recall.

It's very frustrating to be sitting here with just under 600 hours and a type rating. A type rating with under 500 in type is useless enough, but add to that the fact that I'm practically uninsurable because I don't have an ATP (airline transport pilot, this requires 1500 hours of flight time plus some other requirements). This is why I have yet to find any sort of flying job. I can impress people enough with my flying skills, and I have a great cockpit personality, but they just can't afford to hire someone with under 1500 hours. And it's not their fault, so I can't be mad at them.

It comes down to my eagerness to get my first flying job without regard for the volatility of the industry and the idea of "paying my dues." I really should have stayed at ERAU and become a flight instructor. I may have been still there, no type rating and no jet time, but I know I would have had twice the flight time I do now and would have been in a better position when the economy recovers. But! There's no use looking back. I'm in a pickle and need to make the best of what I have gotten myself in to.

1. Get recalled. Knock the socks off as many captains I can.
2. Work hard, get some overtime in (as long as everyone's been recalled behind me) and get to ATP as soon as possible. This may be difficult if I get stuck on reserve.
3. Start looking for something more solid. JetBlue and Continental are my top two choices. I interned at CAL so that helps me when it's time to apply. Hopefully in 2 years I will know several people at JetBlue.

Most importantly - keep my head above water and my nose clean. Work Hard. Fly Right. (Thanks, Gordon.)

Crashpads on wheels? GREAT IDEA!!

I got a facebook msg from a pilot who's early on in his training. I decided I'd just copy/paste my response here because I'm feeling a little lazy today.

"LAX parking lot is home away from home for airline workers - Los Angeles Times

It's a pity. I wish I had more to look forward to pursuing a career in aviation. Have you heard of this kind of arrangement before?"

My response:
I saw that article too. Oddly enough, it's not the first I've heard of it. I have a friend who flies for Piedmont. His family bought and renovated an old bus for a family vacation. Nick was based in NC but got displaced to Roanoke recently. Instead of bothering to find a new crash pad he just put everything in the bus, hooked his jeep up to the back and found a KOA near the airport that had showers and wifi.

The sad thing is, I think it's a great idea. Here's my personal airline experience. Just after I got hired on at Spirit, they opened a San Juan base, which is where I got sent to. The crashpad there cost me $400/month, and I had to pay $12 each way in taxis to get to the airport. On top of my $800/month rent at home. After a 1 1/2 months there I was able to transfer back to FLL. My crashpad was $250/month, but at least I drove my car from Daytona to FLL every week so that I'd have a car while there (I was on reserve). Buuuuut after 2 months in FLL, after a round of furloughs, I got displaced to ACY. There aren't any crashpads in ACY since Spirit's the only show in town. I had to stay in a hotel and rent a car. Plus, everything out of ACY is day trips, so I had to have a hotel every night. Total cost for the month? $2400. Add that to my $800/month+utilities back home, and I was in the red for the month.

So after all that, I seriously see the plus of having a crashpad on wheels, and the next time I get displaced, I'm looking into a RV. :)

On the career thing: just keep the faith. That's why my older pilot friends tell me. You're in a good spot right now. By the time you get all your ratings people will be hiring again. It's not a glamorous career anymore, but when I'm cruising at FL390 amongst all the contrails I really couldn't care less ;)

The probation 15...

I didn't have a problem with the freshman 15 in college. I did enough walking to keep myself healthy, since I didn't have a car. I really didn't have a problem until I moved off campus (and had a car), but even then I only gained about 5 pounds.

Getting my first airline job, though, was a different matter. In less than a year my weight creeped up to 142 pounds, which for my height (5'0") was a BMI of 28!!! I didn't realize how chubby I had become until even my size 10 pants were getting tight (in high school I wore a size 4). I'm calling it "The Probation Fifteen."

One of the first things I did after I was furloughed was rejoin Weight Watchers. I can't say enough good things about their program. There is nothing you can't eat on WW, instead you're encouraged to eat things that are GOOD for you and keep you full. Sooner or later you learn that you may loooooooove a big ol' cheeseburger, but for the calories (or Points, as WW uses) you could eat a huge Greek salad and some pita chips with hummus, which (for me, at least) is a lot more satisfying. But if you want to have that cheesburger, go right ahead, just count the Points.

Well 2 weeks ago I finally reached my goal weight of 120 pounds. I'm back to the weight I was in high school. My BMI is 23, which is "normal." I wear a size 6 now, but that's alright, because after all I didn't have any "womanly curves" in high school, either.

I've promised myself that when I go back to work I WILL NOT GAIN THE WEIGHT BACK.

So I'm going to share my tips with you on how to keep the probationary (or reserve or line flying) weight gain from creeping up on you!

- If you can run, running is a GREAT way to exercise. MapMyRun.com is a cool site where you can find running routes all over the country. Also, GirlsWithWings tells me that most hotels can give you trail maps as well!
- Since I ruined my knees playing softball I don't run. And most hotel gyms lack an elliptical. So learn how to do exercises that don't require one! Fitness Magazine has really great resources. A lot you can even do in the hotel room. Or go swim laps in the pool! Do some exercise every day you're on your trip.
- Carry an insulated lunchbox. I have a Travelpro bag that has an insulated pocket, but most FA's I know swear by EBags.com for cute insulated totes. This way, even on 4 day trips you can carry healthy snacks like hard-boiled eggs, yogurt, string cheese, and maybe even some frozen entrees. Bring some extra zip-lock bags for ice. If you're lucky you'll have a fridge in your hotel room to refreeze those icepacks, but at the very least you'll have an ice machine!!
- Don't forget to carry workout clothes with you! If you pack them, you'll want to use them!
- I know some people even carry their workout videos with them. I don't always carry my computer with me on trips, but if you do, consider that! Of course, I don't know how appreciative any other hotel guests below you will feel about hearing you jumping around.

If anyone else has tips, I'd love to hear them!!

Another aviator flies west...

One of the great opportunities I've had in my life involve a very cranky old airplane at KTIX in Titusville, FL. A few weeks after we started dating David brought me down for the Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum open house. Tucked into a corner of tarmac was a group of guys called the Air America Foundation.

These guys, for years, have been putting their heart and souls (and blood and sweat) into restoring a Fairchild C-123K Provider to flying condition. I instantly fell in love with the airplane and became good friends with the crew. Almost every Saturday for the next year and a half I spent with my boyfriend and friends working on "Big Lou." Through AAF I've learned how to rivet and re-skin this beast of an airplane.



The heart and soul of this amazing organization was Paul Vasconi. With his motivating force and near-obsession (maybe it WAS a full-blown obsession, actually!) with the project, Paul managed to create an cohesive group of people who spent every weekend, and often weekdays, on the dream of restoring our baby to flight. Paul gathered donations, conscripted people to the cause and made sitting on top of a metal airplane in the middle of a Florida summer something we looked forward too all week long.

Unfortunately Paul passed away unexpectedly July 3rd. David and I miss him terribly. It's hard to believe that someone who had so much drive and energy towards anything he wanted to accomplish could be gone. He was a great friend and mentor.

David and I have promised to not let AAF and Big Lou fail in Paul's absence, and I know the rest of AAF feels the same way. We will get Big Lou to fly someday. We'll continue to educate the people about Air America and the amazing airplane that is the C-123K Provider. That's our promise to Paul, wherever he is. David says he's up there flying B-17s and C-123s. Knowing Paul, he is.

In reference to Air France 447...

As several instances of unreliable airspeed/primary airspeed failures have been released by the NTSB (read this article by Reuters: U.S. probes altitude, speed data on two Airbus A330s), I was reminded that unreliable airspeed is one of the "memory items" I was taught while getting my A320 type rating.

Memory items are checklists for emergency situations that you are required to memorize, as immediate action is required by the crew (i.e. you might be dead by the time you pull out a checklist). Now there are a lot of situations where pilots know how to act without needing a checklist (engine failures, stalls, etc.) but there are some where the response isn't instinctual, so a memory items checklist is needed. I've heard of some airlines that had more than 20, luckily on the A320 we had 3.

Here's the memory item for "unreliable airspeed indication."

MEMORY ITEMS - If safe conduct of flight is affected:
Note: respect all stall warnings if in ALTERNATE LAW
1. Adjust pitch/thrust:
- Below THR RED ALT -- 15 degrees/TOGA
- Above THR RED ALT and below 10,000' -- 10 degrees/CLB
- Above THR RED ALT and above 10,000' -- 5 degrees/CLB
2. AUTOPILOT................OFF
3. FLIGHT DIRECTOR..........OFF
4. AUTOTHRUST...............OFF
5. Flaps....................Maintain current CONFIG
6. Speedbrakes..............Check retracted
7. Gear.....................UP

When at or above MSA or circuit altitude, level off for troubleshooting.

Basically, these pitch attitudes and power settings are there to keep you from stalling and give you a decent climb rate. It seems Airbus believes most unreliable airspeed problems are expected to be on takeoff, as the dividing line on pitch attitudes and power settings are based on whether you've passed the thrust reduction altitude, which is usually around 1,000' above ground level, where the pilots reduce engine power from TOGA (takeoff/go around - maximum power) to CLB (climb power, which the engines can sustain for long periods, unlike TOGA power).

After this there is a checklist which deals with resetting the ADRs and has tables of the correct pitch attitude and power setting for climb, cruise, descent and landing at a range of different altitudes in case the ADRs do not come back online. From what I've gathered from the news articles, in both instances it seems the crews were able to reset the ADRs successfully.

As with most Airbus emergencies related to data failures, it's more likely than not that the computers can be restarted quickly and the flight can continue normally. This is, as I mentioned before on another post, not an easy airplane to fly when things go wrong. Combine an emergency such as unreliable airspeed with a situation that Airbus may not have considered, such as the suspected severe thunderstorm activity, and it may have been a recipe for disaster that enveloped Air France flight 447.

Those boring announcements are there for a reason...

“All right, you can go ahead and let them up now.”

In pilot-speak, this is the captain telling me, the first officer, that he or she is satisfied that the flight is going to be smooth and the passengers should be free to move about the cabin. When I’m not flying the leg I get to make the announcement.

“*BING* Good morning, folks, from the flight deck. We’re currently at our cruising altitude of 36,000 feet. It looks like our ride should be nice and smooth today so I’m going to go ahead and turn off the ‘fasten seat belt’ sign. You’re free to move about the cabin but please keep your seatbelts on whenever you’re seated, just in case we run into any unexpected turbulence. Also if you could try and keep the aisles clear our cabin crew would really appreciate it. We’re showing an on time arrival, when we get a little closer I’ll be back to let you know what the weather looks like. Thank you for flying with us and have a great flight.”

Of course I don’t think 90% of the passengers actually listen to this announcement. I can’t blame them; before I was an airline pilot I didn’t either. But there’s a reason we make the announcements we do.

The most ignored direction we give our passengers is “please keep your seatbelts on whenever you’re seated.” I understand that they don’t want to wear the seatbelts any more than necessary. After all, if the flight has been smooth so far, and if we hit any turbulence, they’ll have time to get their seatbelts on, right?

I realized a few weeks ago that I didn’t really have a good way of explaining turbulence and what causes it to appear out of, literally, the clear blue sky. So here’s what I hope is a good explanation, concentrating on high-altitude turbulence that jets encounter.

While flying at high altitude you can encounter turbulence both within clouds and in clear air. The former is caused by convective currents.

Inside a cumulus cloud, air is cooling and sinking as well as warming and rising. You’ve seen this if you’ve watched a thunderstorm “build” (as warm, unstable air is lifted) and dissipate (as the warm air cools, it condenses, becomes saturated with water, and sinks again – this is when it’s raining). All these convective currents buffet the airplane as it flies through them. Luckily most jets fly above where most cumulus clouds thunderstorms form, with the exception of very strong thunderstorms. These can have vertical extends well above 45,000 feet, and these we fly around.

This kind of turbulence can be very dangerous, but since flying into thunderstorms is so risky, we use weather radar to go around all but the smallest cumulus clouds. Contrary to popular belief, we don’t TRY to make the ride rough. But sometimes, due to traffic or just the widespread nature of a storm system, we can’t go around it. However, since your flight crew knows that a cumulus cloud will hold at least some turbulence, we would never have the seat belt sign off if we anticipated flying through any.

The other common form of turbulence we encounter is called mountain wave turbulence. This is caused by air currents moving over the tops of mountains. On the leeward side of the mountain the air becomes very turbulent. I haven’t flown across any tall mountain ranges so I can’t offer much insight on mountain wave turbulence besides that.

The most critical form of turbulence with concern to passenger safety is Clear Air Turbulence, or CAT. This is turbulence that occurs without any sort of visual cue or warning, and is the reason we ask passengers to keep their seatbelts fastened whenever they’re seated.

CAT is caused as an aircraft moves between different bodies of air that are moving in different directions at different speeds. This occurs most often around the jet stream or frontal systems. I’ve flown with captains that were good enough at reading weather reports that they could tell by the “winds aloft” report where there would be some turbulence. Winds aloft is a weather report that lists the speed and direction of winds at different altitudes at certain locations – over commonly used navigation facilities and airports. The reporting starts at 3000 feet (with a few exceptions) and continue up to FL390 (39.000 feet).

By interpreting the change in wind speed and direction along the route, you can determine where you’re most likely to encounter CAT. If we use this technique to establish the likelihood of hitting CAT on the flight, we can anticipate the need to keep the fasten seat belt sign lit as well as ask the flight attendants to remain seated until we are sure the danger is past.

A quick search of the NTSB’s Aviation Accident Database revealed over 30 aircraft incidents involving CAT over the last 10 years. In the majority of the accidents the only injured people were the flight attendants, who are especially vulnerable to turbulence since they are not seating during the majority of the flight. Most of these incidents resulted in G loads to the airplane of less than +2Gs and -1Gs, which is about what you feel on a roller coaster. Imagine being on a roller coaster without your seatbelt on!

In several accident reports I’ve read, the flight crew had no reason to expect CAT. At most, weather was observed several miles ahead. In the vast majority of cases, no warning was given to the cabin. In a Northwest Airlines incident in 1972, five flight attendants and nine passengers were injured, two of them seriously, when the Boeing 747 entered “an area of unforecast and unexpected severe clear air turbulence when numerous occupants did not have their seatbelts fastened.” (NTSB report number: NTSB-AAR-72-27)

So please, when the flight crew asks you to keep your seatbelt on whenever you’re in your seat, do it! I guarantee your captain and first officer are doing the same.

(For more details on weather, pick up “Aviation Weather,” another great FAA publication (AC 00-06A).)

Oh Murphy, I hate you

Last Thursday I finally got to take my CFII checkride. For the first time before a checkride I felt calm, I felt like I knew the material backwards and forwards and could handle the flying portion of the checkride. I attribute this to the fact that I had a week's notice and spent plenty of time that week studying. No last-minute rush to finish up the lesson plans or realizing you've missed studying a critical section of knowledge.

I even managed to eat breakfast that morning, another pre-check first for me. Normally I'm so nervous that I can't stomach anything. But this time I had some semblance of calm knowing that this would be my last FAA checkride for a very long time. I probably won't have another checkride that isn't for work, unless I choose to get my multi-engine instructor rating in the future, or go for seaplane ratings.

FAA checkrides involve an oral exam, consisting of knowledge/judgement-based questions, and a flight check. The FAA has what's called "pratical test standards," which give guidance to examiners on what to test candidates on. It's basically a checklist of certain items they need to hit on during your test. Some of this is accomplished in the oral and some of it on the flight, or a combination thereof.

I won't hit much on my checkride itself other than that the oral and flight both went very well, with the exception of what follows. But I did pass :)

Murphy's Law (as defined by UrbanDictionary.com):
1. If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.
2. The law that says anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

My flight school has two Cessna 172SPs, SA and PJ. I was scheduled to take SA on my checkride, but the manager of the flight school asked if I could take PJ. SA only had about 5 more hours before it needed a 100-hour inspection (required of all airplane for hire) and she wanted to try and extend that over the weekend. So I preflighted PJ, filed a flight plan and we got ready to go. PJ was very reluctant to start but we attributed this to the engine and the outside air being hot (fuel injected airplanes are very susceptible to vapor lock). We taxied to the runway to do our engine runup...and the left magneto was bad (there are 2 on each airplane, and they help generate the power for the spark plugs, more or less). After attempting to clear the mag several times (this is accomplished by leaning the mixture and running the engine at high RPMs to "burn off" whatever is choking the spark plugs) we brought the airplane back to the ramp.

So here we are, filing a revised flight plan and taking SA, the original airplane we were suppose to take. Whoops.

And in case that wasn't enough, now we got to argue with Tampa Approach.

Normally Tampa Approach is fantastic. But that day was a GREAT flying day, both for VFR and IFR. The ceiling was just under 3000 feet so you could get some decent actual instrument time in. We had filed IFR just in case and picked up our flight plan with Tampa. We requested and received a hold so that I could demonstrate holding, and then requested a full VOR approach into Lakeland Regional. And were denied due to traffic. So we canceled our IFR flight plan (now seeing that the clouds were high enough so that we could operate under VFR), contacted Lakeland and asked for the full VOR approach. Lakeland said they could accommodate us and instructed us to proceed direct to the LAL VOR. When we were about 4 1/2 miles north of the VOR Lakeland said "Oh SA, Tampa said they can take you now."

This struck me as odd, but ok, let's talk to Tampa. I check in with them and hear this: "SA turn 360 immediately you are entering Lakeland's airspace!"

Me: "Um...SA turning 360 but sir we were just talking to Lakeland, they cleared us for the full VOR approach and then told us we could talk to you."
ATC: "Oh. Standby. OK SA heading of 290 vectors for the full VOR approach."
.....Me: "290 on the heading, vectors for the full VOR approach."

After another 10 minutes of vectoring we're back to where we were, 4 miles from the VOR and cleared for the approach *facepalm* Sometimes I really don't understand ATC.

At one point the examiner said, "well you know what they say about Murphy's Law" and I just responded "I hate that guy."

But all in all I passed with flying colors, got complimented on my crosswind landing technique (apparently this is the FAA's new "topic of concern") and came back just in time to be there when one of Jim's students got back from his first solo (woohoo!!). Just with a little more excitement than I would've preferred!