Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away...

The loss of the B-17 Liberty Belle

2011-06-15T10:44:00.003-04:00

As I'm sure many of you heard, we lost a historic aircraft yesterday, the B-17 Liberty Belle. I saw this plane in Houston in 2007 and she was a beautiful piece of history. Absolutely wonderful.

I'd like to pass along an email I received from Ed Kindle, who is the President of the Air American Foundation in Titusville, FL. It's a message from the Liberty Foundation's chief pilot and clears up a lot of misconceptions about yesterday's incident.

Statement from Ray (Chief Pilot)

"First, let me start off by sincerely thanking everyone for the outpouring of support that we are receiving. I am sorry that I have not yet had the opportunity to return the many phone calls, text or e-mails that I am receiving offering to help. Again, thank you for all of the kind words that we are receiving and for incredible offers to help emotionally, financially and/or with the recovery process. I hope this statement will help fill in a few details that everyone is wondering about that led to the loss of our “Liberty Belle”.

Yesterday morning, both our P-40 and B-17 were scheduled to fly from Aurora, Illinois to Indianapolis, Indiana. We were in Aurora for the weekend as a part of our scheduled tour. Over the course of the previous week, we completed a scheduled 25-hour inspection on the B-17 which was completed by Saturday. On Saturday, the weather stayed below the required ceiling to give any passenger flights, however the B-17 flew in the morning on a routine training proficiency flight, performing several patterns. Following the flight, other maintenance issues arose that required us to cancel our Sunday flying schedule for repairs. The maintenance performed has not been, in any way, associated to the chain of events that led to Monday’s fateful flight, but is being considered in the preliminary investigation. However, due to the media’s sensational (mis)reporting, there is a large amount of misinformation that continues to lead the news.

Here is what we do know… Flying in the left seat of the B-17 was Capt. John Hess. John has been flying our Liberty Belle since 2005 and one of our most experienced B-17 pilots. He is an active Delta Air Lines Captain with over 14,000 hours of flying experience and flys a variety of vintage WWII aircraft. In the right seat was Bud Sittic. While Bud is new to the Liberty Foundation this year, he is also incredibly experienced with over 14,000 hours of flying time in vintage and hi-performance aircraft. He is a retired Captain with Delta Air Lines.

The news misidentified the P-40 as flying chase during the accident. I was flying our P-40, however I had departed 20 minutes prior to the B-17’s takeoff on the short flight to Indianapolis to setup for the B-17’s arrival. The aircraft flying chase was a T-6 Texan flown by owner Cullen Underwood. Cullen is one of our rated B-17 Captains and an experienced aviator tagging along as a support ship.

The takeoff of both aircraft was uneventful and proceeded on-course southeast. Prior to exiting Aurora’s airport traffic area, the B-17 crew and passengers began investigating an acrid smell and started a turn back to the airport. Almost immediately thereafter, Cullen spotted flames coming from the left wing and reported over the radio that they were on fire.

As all pilots know, there are few emergency situations that are more critical than having an in-flight fire. While it is extremely rare, it can (and sometimes does) indiscriminately affect aircraft of any age or type. In-flight fires have led to the loss of not only aircraft, but often can result in catastrophic loss of life. It requires an immediate action on the flight crew, as the integrity of aircraft structure, systems and critical components are in question.

Directly below the B-17 was a farmer’s field and the decision was made to land immediately. Approximately 1 minute and 40 seconds from the radio report of the fire, the B-17 was down safely on the field. Within that 1:40 time frame, the crew shutdown and feathered the number 2 engine, activated the engine’s fire suppression system, lowered the landing gear and performed an on-speed landing. Bringing the B-17 to a quick stop, the crew and passengers quickly and safely exited the aircraft. Overhead in the T-6, Cullen professionally coordinated and directed the firefighting equipment which was dispatched by Aurora Tower to the landing location.

Unlike the sensational photos that you have all seen of the completely burned B-17 on the news, you will see from photos taken by our crew that our Liberty Belle was undamaged by the forced landing and at the time of landing, the wing fire damage was relatively small. The crew actually unloaded bags, then had the horrible task of watching the aircraft slowly burn while waiting for the fire trucks to arrive. There were high hopes that the fire would be extinguished quickly and the damage would be repairable. Those hopes were diminished as the fire trucks deemed the field too soft to cross due to the area’s recent rainfall. So while standing by our burning B-17 and watching the fire trucks parked at the field’s edge, they sadly watched the wing fire spread to the aircraft’s fuel cells and of course, you all have seen the end result. There is no doubt that had the fire equipment been able to reach our aircraft, the fire would have been quickly extinguished and our Liberty Belle would have been repaired to continue her worthwhile mission.

Let me go on the record by thanking the flight crew for their professionalism. Their actions were nothing short of heroic and their quick thinking, actions and experience led to a “successful” outcome to this serious in-flight emergency. John and Bud (and Cullen) did a remarkable job under extreme circumstances and performed spectacularly. While the leading news stories have repeatedly reported the “crash” of our B-17, fact is they made a successful forced landing and the aircraft was ultimately consumed by fire. Airplanes are replaceable but people are not and while the aircraft’s loss is tragic, it was a successful result.

This leads me into discussing the exceptional safety record of the Boeing B-17 and to hopefully squash the naysayers who preach we should not be flying these types of aircraft. Since we first flew the “Liberty Belle” in December of 2004, we have flown over 20,000 passengers throughout the country and if you count our historic trip to Europe in 2008, worldwide. Of the other touring B-17s, some of which that have been touring for over 20 years, they have safely flown hundreds of thousands of people. The aircraft’s safety record is spectacular and I am certain the overall cause of our issue, which is under investigation, will not tarnish that safety record. In fact, as many of you know, other B-17 have suffered significant damage (although not as bad as ours!), only to be re-built to fly again. From a passenger carrying standpoint, I can think of few aircraft that offer the same level of safety as the 4-engine “Flying Fortress”. As mentioned earlier, in-flight fires are extremely rare and certainly could affect any powered aircraft under certain circumstances. I would put my children today in any of the other touring B-17s to go fly. I suggest to anyone that was thinking of doing so when a B-17 visits your area to do so without giving our loss any thought.

There is wild speculation going on as to the cause of our fire and the affect to other operators. Please let the investigation run its course and report the findings. The NTSB and FAA were quickly on the scene and we are working closely with them to aid in the investigation. As soon as we receive some additional information, we will release it via the website http://www.libertyfoundation.org/.

The ultimate question remains, where does the Liberty Foundation go from here? After the investigation and recovery, we will determine our options. We are still committed to the restoration and flying of World War II aircraft. Again, we appreciate the support and people offering to help get us back flying.

Please check back for updates. I will close by thanking everyone that made our tour so successful. From the first day of the B-17’s restoration, thank you for all of you who labored to get her flying over the initial restoration years and to everyone that has worked on her out on tour since. Thank you to the crewmembers, tour coordinators and volunteers who gave up weekends and countless hours to support her on the road. And finally, thank you to the passengers, donors and media patrons that flew aboard and everyone who supported our cause. Hopefully, this will not be the end of the story, but a new beginning."

Regards,

Ray Fowler
The Liberty Foundation, Chief Pilot

Never rush. Ever.

2011-04-21T11:56:00.001-04:00

I have some important advice that I think can help any pilot reading this, whether they are waiting to solo or have 20,000 hours. You remember learning about "get there itis?" and telling yourself you'd never risk your license and life to get somewhere if the weather was bad? Or having a scary "never again" experience? Great! Get there itis is the cause of a lot of head scratching accidents.

But how many times have you rushed through preflight prep? Maybe you haven't yet. But you will, at some point, be in such a flustered hurry that you'll mess something up.

Maybe you're a calm person by nature and you never rush. But if your environment changes you may find yourself being forced into a hurry up role.

Unfortunately when you fly for an airline, on time performance is king. And you'll be given planes that have issues, or get your paperwork late, or find something wrong with the aircraft on your preflight. And inevitably, you'll be told "we don't have time for that."

YES YOU DO.

So here's some sage advice from someone who hasn't been in this industry long, but has been in it long enough to recognize a few things.

The ground personnel don't have pilot's licenses. That gate agent angry about a maintenance delay isn't about to fly on that airplane. The mechanic may NOT have done the whole procedure and you'll be the party pooper who delays the flight to make sure everything's legal. Just do it. Don't worry about being popular. And don't do it just when you think the FAA is watching. Have personal integrity.

Take the same amount of time on your walk around. Do the same cockpit prep you always do. Always double check your flight plan against the release (or the charts). Always check your NOTAMs, MELs and CDLs. You (and the other pilot, if there is one), are the FINAL authority on whether or not that aircraft is safe and ready to depart. It's your life and your ticket on the line.

MDPC - Punta Cana

2011-04-19T19:24:00.000-04:00

Note to self: the Dominican Republic does not run on island time!

2011-04-19T19:07:00.002-04:00

See? I'm making an effort to write more. Keep reading and leaving comments and I'll keep writing!

Today is day 1 of 4: pretty easy day, a flight down to FLL and then flights to Punta Cana and back. You may think that the DR runs on island time but you'd be mistaken! The slam dunked us into the airport, leaving us high and fast. The A320 series aircraft are very "clean" aerodynamically. Less drag means a lot better fuel efficiency than most jets, but also means that you can't slow down at the same time you're descending.

The best technique with Fifi is to get down at a higher airspeed, then slow down when you're level. Today we had another aircraft (who shall remain nameless) come running up our behind! It was a Boeing, which can get down in a hurry at a faster speed than we can. Sometimes non-Airbus pilots just don't realize that, and in this case they ended up doing S turns on final to get some distance between them and us.

I could go on and on about how the responsible thing would have been to start slowing when we did (and we made a radio call to warn them we were slowing to approach speed), but I wasn't flying their airplane. I was just watching them come up behind us on TCAS.

Punta Cana is BEAUTIFUL, by the way. The terminal is made to look like it's a bunch of thatched roof buildings! Adorable. I'm adding this town to my list of places to visit for more than 30 minutes!

The pairing from hell returns...with avengance.

2011-04-18T11:59:00.002-04:00

So thanks to crew scheduling, we actually have a pairing that looks like this, one I'm "lucky" enough to fly 3 times this month:

ACY-PBI-DTW-RSW <- day 1, 7:50 minutes of block
RSW-DTW-LGA-MYR-ACY <- day 2, 7:44 minutes of block.

The first time I flew this pairing I ended up with 16:41 block over the two days...it's possible to fly more than 8 hours/day as long as it's something outside company's control - in this case our flights flew over block because of strong headwinds and weather deviations.

Last week our first day went pretty decently, we only arrived an hour late, in just after midnight instead of at 1:40 A.M. the last time around.

By the way, RSW tower closes from 0000-0600 local. So we're 0 for 2 landing with a controller in RSW this pairing. The horror! How did we manage? It's called a CTAF and position reports. It's not a big deal. I'm looking at you, CNN/Fox News/ABC News/media at large. (steps off soapbox)

Unfortunately last week we had a mechanical issue as we were trying to leave RSW. The A320 seems to be susceptible to mechanical issues that aren't even "mechanical." In our case we had some computers (that manage the PA system as well as our lavatory/cargo smoke detection) that refused to stay online. We thought it had something to do with the airplane not wanting to accept the ground power, however we couldn't test this theory as our APU (aux power unit, an on-board generator) was deferred.

After about 6 hours of troubleshooting company decided to ferry an A319 over from FLL, which we then took to DTW. We didn't depart until 8 hours after we were supposed to. Luckily 90% of our passengers were nice about it. The other 10%...karma will get back at them eventually.

Since we arrived in DTW so late they had already found another crew/airplane to take our last three legs. Instead we had to deadhead home the next morning (our day off, boo!). And since we don't have any direct flights from DTW-ACY during this part of the year, we had to deadhead through PBI. Ouch.

On the bright side: I got an extra 6 hours of pay out of the ordeal. Which makes up for the 6 hours or so that the captain and I spent helping maintenance, which of course we were not getting paid for. C'est la vie.

I head to ACY tonight as I have an early show tomorrow. Tomorrow and Wednesday I have a nice, easy pairing and a long FLL overnight (yay I can go to the gym!). However, Thursday and Friday I have to fly the pairing from hell again.

Wish me luck.

something good finally

2011-04-16T17:50:00.000-04:00

I realized (thanks @jasonensminger) that i neglected to actually post about last week's trip! And here I am on another trip. Time flies! I went to visit my parents and completely forgot.

Last week I had a pretty easy 3 day trip. Our first day was uneventful, a miracle in my option when you have to go to LaGuardia twice. We had a nice, if short, layover in NYC, just enough for me to hit the gym and get some sleep.

Our 2nd day we headed to FLL and flew a Cancun turn! First, you really get a better sense of close Key West is from Cuba when you're in the air. From over EYW you can easily see the coast of Cuba. It's standard practice to enter Cuban airspace on flights to the Southern Caribbean, and airlines make arrangements with the Cuban government (through the US State Department) for those rights. Overall the Cuban ATC is fantastic, although local traffic typically speaks Spanish with the controllers.

As for CUN - wow, what an airport! The ground crew was extremely professional, the gate agents nice, the cleaners had the airplane interior sparkling and smelling like a Bath and Body Works before we left. The terminal is brand new with clearly painted lead in lines for the gate. After push back the ground crew performed a FOD walk, looking for foreign object debris that could damage the aircraft.

Mexican ATC is pretty laissez-faire so you can't expect the explicit taxi clearances that you'd get from US ATC. Ours was "follow United to runway 12R." Hmm, ok!

Day 3 started out rough - no one wants to wake up at 3 am. It was worth it for the flight to LGA. Flying over the ocean up the east coast we had a fantastic sunrise to enjoy. Heading into New York we were cleared to descend to 4000 feet and "fly direct to the bridge and then proceed north up the river." Best. Clearance. Ever.

This is apparently an old school LGA approach, where you fly to the Varranzano Bridge (which I'm sure I didn't spell right), then turn left, head right at the Statue of Liberty (!!!) and fly up the Hudson river. At 4000 feet. It was a fantastic tour of New York City. Immediately below and to our right I could see Ground Zero, the Empire State Building (which is even more impressive from the air), the lights of Time Square and Central Park. All in the early morning clear-as-glass air. North of Manhattan just make a right turn to intercept the final approach course and shoot the visual approach to runway 22. A-mazing. Definitely one of the top 3 flights of my life (one of the others was my very first flight in a jet, in which we did much the same approach).

Blue skies!!

oy. what a week.

2010-12-29T15:57:00.002-05:00

SNOWPOCALYPSE!!!

One of the reasons I love being an airline pilot is that work is never the same. Even if you're flying the same route for a whole month, the weather is always changing, you have mechanical issues or the occasional medical emergency.

I don't think I've ever worked such a long week with so little flying!! I was "late-called" at 3m Xmas Eve (without even a "hey, sorry about this," from scheduling, blah). They needed to send me to Detroit that night for a 3 day trip. Unfortunately during the winter we don't have direct flights to DTW from Atlantic City, so I had to deadhead through West Palm Beach.

Thank goodness my parents gave me a Kindle as an early Xmas present. <-- I've been thinking this repeatedly over this week.

Xmas eve in DTW is bad enough but I was extra-cranky because I did not have time to pack food before running out the door. I think I had pop tarts for dinner (so healthy!).

Xmas we were scheduled to fly from DTW to Ft. Myers and up to Chicago. The day went easily and the crew was all pretty cheerful. Nothing makes you feel better about working on a holiday like realizing how many people are in the same boat!! The whole crew tried their best to be un-cranky. Our captain was pretty hilarious and kept us laughing most of the trip.

Sunday we were supposed to fly to Ft. Lauderdale and on to LaGuardia. Remember what was happening on Sunday in the Northeast? As we flew to FLL I picked up the LGA weather via ACARS. I believe it was along the lines of 35 to 45 knot winds out of the northwest with visibility anywhere from 1/2 mile to 4 miles and blowing snow. We knew we weren't going!

Unfortunately it took a few hours for dispatch to agree with us, untilthey finally cancelled the flight and sent us to the hotel. The best part of that day was calling scheduling after we saw "cancelled" on the flight board for our flight. Their answer? "It's not OFFICIALLY cancelled yet." But you're telling the passengers it is. "Right, but we're not ready to release you yet." Read: we're trying to figure out where else we can send you. We're finally told that the next morning they're going to deadhead us on a 5:10am flight to LGA, after which we'd fly to DTW. We were scheduled to also fly a RSW turn after this, but due to the long duty day, they dropped the turn and assigned it to another DTW crew.

Granted, the forecast for LGA at 7am the next morning is the same as it is now. And the news is forecasting over a foot of snow. Everyone else has already cancelled their flights for the next day. But not us, nonono. Neither rain nor sleet nor blizzard of the year will prevent us from going to LGA.

We dragged ourselves to the airport at 4am Monday morning. LGA is closed. JFK and Newark are also closed. It seems nothing north of Norfolk is open. But we haven't cancelled the flight yet. Commence the eye-rolling. Eventually the flight in cancelled, of course. But we're rescheduled to deadhead on the next flight. Which is scheduled to leave at 7am...but has been delayed until 9:30am.

By checking the FAA website, we're able to see that LGA isn't going to open until at least 4pm. JFK and Newark later than that. Here's the thing -- LGA is the redheaded stepchild of the unholy trifecta that is JFK-EWR-LGA. Hell will freeze over before LGA opens before the other two, much larger airports.

Of course, the 2nd flight is cancelled. Dispatch has also cancelled the LGA-DTW flight because even if we were to get into LGA, there wouldn't be an airplane for us to fly. They tell the captain they're deadheading him back to DTW on the next flight and sending me back to ACY. Woo! I get to go home a day early!

Except that ACY is closed. Until at least 12pm.

The 7am ACY flight is, like the just-cancelled LGA flight, delayed until 9:30. I get on the airplane anyways to get out of the terminal and hang out with the crews (there was another pilot and 2 flight attendants trying to get home as well). Our terminal, as one of the FAs so "delicately" put it, was starting to resemble a UN refugee camp. The empty A320 is much more hospitable.

They don't cancel the flight until 11:30am, which is becomes apparently that ACY won't open until that night, if at all. And since I reported for duty at 0425, my 16 hour duty day would be up at 2025. If we weren't scheduled to land before 8:25pm, I couldn't even go on the flight. The next available flight would end up leaving about that time. After 12 hours in the airport I got the phone call to head back to the crew hotel. I'd fly the flight back to ACY at 7am Tuesday.

At 6:45am Tuesday, as I'm checking over our flight plan, I get a phone call from scheduling. "We need you to fly the airplane back from ACY. We'll send you home tomorrow night." Well, crap. I'm a reserve pilot so I didn't have much choice in the matter. The ACY turn was uneventful, the weather was beautiful except for the crazy surface winds at ACY and the conditions of the airport.

KUDOS to the ground crew at ACY. That place looked like Canada they got so much snow! We could barely see the runway surface when we arrived. I doubt it will look much better tonight when I get there (although the winds have died down significantly).

This is day 6, so thankfully I know I'll be home tonight as long as the flight goes alright. I've never had such a long trip with so little flying! After tonight's flight I'll have another 17 hours for my logbook. Oy.

I'm just happy I wasn't a passenger during this blizzard. I feel so bad for the people stuck in airports. At least I knew I had a free hotel room waiting for me every night. This IS my job so I didn't have to worry about missing work (or vacation for that matter). I hope everyone gets to where they're going very soon!

An interesting flight!

2010-11-01T15:39:00.002-04:00

99% of the time my flights are really uneventful. But the other 1% of the time? Boy oh boy.

Last week I flew one of our most annoying pairings. Out of ACY we fly a Boston turn back-to-back with a Myrtle Beach turn. I usually love short hops. Unfortunately with 3 quick turns, if something goes wrong at any point in the day, you end up running behind the whole time! Additionally you rarely end up finishing this pairing before midnight.

Unfortunately, this was during that nasty weather system last week that resulted in so many headaches for pilots all around the country. Our flight, which is supposed to depart at 1608 local, was already delayed until 1700 by the time I checked in for the flight. After doing my walk-around I called up clearance to get our route clearance and estimated departure time. Now we'd been delayed to 1740! Ouch. On a day with 3 30-minute turns, we're already running seriously late.

The problem was, of course, the weather. Low ceilings in Boston had caused a ground delay program to be issued. This happens whenever an airport cannot handle its normal amount of traffic. By delaying aircraft departures they can meter the amount of traffic inbound, reducing holding times and possible diversions.

We finally departed for Boston at 1750 and were pleased to fly without speed restrictions (our normal cruise is Mach 0.78). I picked up the weather en route to find out the bad news: the fog had arrived. Calm winds, a temperature/dewpoint spread of 1 degree, visibility of 1 1/4 mile and 100 foot overcast ceilings. Uh oh!

We approach Boston and ask the approach controller if they've opened up runway 33L for approaches, which has a CAT II approach (enabling us to fly to lower minimums). Apparently they had not, which was fairly reassuring. If no one was getting in to land, they would've opened up 33L. Instead traffic was landing 22L. We continued taking vectors from approach and realized, after being turned north, then south, then north again, that we were following the conga line of airplanes onto the final approach course. All the while burning straight through our 1000 extra pounds of fuel (Since fuel is still expensive (and it costs fuel to carry fuel), we're typically dispatched with our enroute fuel, reserve fuel as per the FAA regulations, taxi fuel and normally about 1000 pounds extra.). You can view our course on flightaware.com.

The captain decided that if we weren't cleared for the approach with 6500 lbs of fuel remaining that we would have to go to our alternate (in this case, Manchester). We wanted to have enough fuel to reach Manchester and shoot two approaches. Aircraft ahead of us were landing, but as anyone who's been in fog can tell you, you never know when it's going to suddenly thicken. Fortunately we were cleared for the approach with 6900 pounds of fuel on board. Now all we have to do is see the runway lights at 216' and the runway at 116'! At this point the captain says to me, "I can't stress enough the importance of you seeing those runway lights." No pressure!!

We saw the runway lights at, I'm not kidding, 280'. Another second and we would've had to go around and proceed to our alternate. Visibility at the time was, in RVR, 6000 TDZ, 1800 midpoint, 5000 rollout. Definitely the lowest I've flown in so far!

We proceeded to the gate and turned the airplane in record time! As we taxied out and waited in line for our departure off 22R, we heard 3 or 4 airplanes go around. It's all luck when you're flying into a fogged-in airport!

To make matters worse: we still had 3 legs to go!! The weather back in ACY was super-windy, which is typical for this time of year. I got to land in a 20-knot crosswind, which is not-so-much-fun but I'm getting better at it. Our Myrtle turn, which is usually uneventful, was full of thunderstorms and speed restrictions (into Myrtle!! unheard of). We were so beat on our last leg that we were happy to find out that the winds had calmed and our flight, after dodging a few thunderstorms, was easy. While driving to the hotel (which I got so I wouldn't have to make the 2 hour drive home) I was struck by how fatigued I was. On a day that was perfectly legal, only about 7 hours on duty, done by 1am, 5 hours of flight time, I had never EVER been so fatigued. Goes to show how an 8 hour day, with a low workload, can be easier than a shorter workday with a higher workload.

Thanks for reading :) This is day 7 of 13 for me on reserve (I had my one day off yesterday, I used it to sleep!). I'm looking forward to the end of the week and a few days off!

The slow season on reserve

2010-10-06T14:48:00.007-04:00

The weeks in between Labor Day and Thanksgiving are historically low travel periods for airlines. Kids are back in school and not many people are taking vacations. Flying for an airline that mainly caters to vacationers, September and October are very slow months. In fact, in 2008, my furlough occurred immediately after Labor Day. Basically, right now I'm just happy that I'm not back in that same spot.

I only flew 30 hours in September, way down from the 80 hours a month I've been flying since June. To be honest, it was a relief! I was exhausted. I didn't want to see an airplane ever again! I felt like I hadn't slept in my own bed in 3 months. I'm pretty sure in August I actually slept more in our crew hotel in Ft. Lauderdale than I did in my own bed.

Unfortunately as a result of the busy schedule I had to drop my graduate class. The first 3 weeks of the class I flew so much that I could not keep up with the coursework. The transition (the period of time when one month is ending and another begins, and is typically a hectic period for scheduling; I flew 10 days with only 2 days off in the middle) really did me in. I hope to pick back up with classes soon.

While my days off have been pretty chock full of fun activities (visiting family, exploring Pennsylvania) my reserve days haven't been. When I'm on reserve I really can't venture too far from the house. Our airline rules stipulate that I must be in the cockpit ready to go w/in 3 hours of a phone call from scheduling, if that flight is scheduled to leave by then. Typically I get an assignment the day before but you never know when someone will call out sick for their trip at the last minute. It takes me 2 hours and 10 minutes, on average, to drive to the airport, which luckily is plenty of time to park, get through security and get to the airplane (gotta love working at a small airport!). The captain will typically do the walk around and other checks normally left for the first officer if he knows he or she is coming in on a late call out.

In short, I'm basically stuck to an area that includes my apartment, the airport my boyfriend flies out of, and the grocery store.

I've always been interested in cooking and baking. Living with someone who will literally eat ANYTHING really helps; I can make anything I can think of and I know David will eat it. And being on reserve gives me the time and opportunity to stay at home and explore dishes that I would typically never dream of making.

Here's most of my cookbook collection:

I'm completely obsessed with Irma Rombauer's "Joy of Cooking." Every recipe I've made out of this has been perfect. Many of the recipes date from pre-WWII. I'm not sure why this is, but I love the idea that I'm making something that a woman in the 1930s was making.

Another incredible success was the chocolate babka from Gourmet. Babka is a traditionally Eastern European dessert, a sort of sweet bread loaf with chocolate filling. I've grown up on babka's brought back by my Bubbe from NYC.

After being inspired by Mrs. Wheelbarrow on a recent NPR episode, I tried my hand at canning. I made her Apple Pie Jam, which tasted delicious but unfortunately did not set up as firmly as jam should be. It's more of a marmalade. Not bad for a first try, though!

The weather has been cold and rainy all week, so I've been inspired to make stews and soups. I don't have pictures of my butternut squash and chicken soup or yesterday's ratatouille, but here's the beef and barley stew I made last night. I made it from a Weight Watchers recipe, which uses parsnips and celery root to replace the potato. They're starchy enough that you don't even miss it!

In the future you can expect a nice mix of flying, cooking and knitting, which are swiftly becoming my top 3 hobbies. I joke around and tell people that "inside this airline pilot is a 1950s housewife screaming to get out." Maybe a girl will read this and see that you CAN be kick-ass and girly. It's not hard, all you need is a little cabin fever.

Blue Skies!!

A320 parking brake incident

2010-09-23T20:32:00.006-04:00

The NTSB released a preliminary report on the tire blowout incident on an August 26th JetBlue flight. Thanks to Airline Pilot Central for the article.

The NTSB decided that the A320's parking brake was on when the aircraft landed, resulting in the main landing gear tires blowing out and a small fire. Thankfully all the passengers and crew evacuated safety.

I went straight to my manuals to determine whether or not the pilots should have received any indication that their parking brake was on in flight. Here are two screen shots from my manual so you can see for yourself. I won't go into the specifics of which computers monitor the parking brake or anything heavy like that because I want this to be a quick and dirty post. Please post or tweet me questions and I will write a more detailed description tomorrow (when there aren't fall premiers on TV distracting me).

This page illustrates the 10 different phases of flight that the computer's logic uses to decide when to display messages or when to inhibit them. This says that if the parking brake is one during phases of flight 6 and 7, a single chime and master caution will be generated. This would present as a amber memo on one of the center display units, an aural DING!! and the master caution lights will illuminate. This is any time after the plane has climbed through 1500 feet until it touches down.

On the next page we see that when the parking brake is on during all other phases of operation, which are considered normal times to have the brake on, the crew will get a normal green annunciation.

It will be interesting to watch the investigation progress to see if the crew did receive the caution from the airplane's computers. There is a tendency among A320 pilots to label some cautions erroneous. I've had plenty of cautions that we investigated only to find that there wasn't a problem in the first place, a downside to flying such a computer-reliant machine.

EDIT: Thanks to Tweep @thermalhound for the following reminder: "Just read your blog on PARK BRK on. FYI not all a320s on same s/ware so some only display PARK BRK ON on ECAM but no "DING!""

He makes a very good point. These logics are out of my airline's manuals, and JetBlue's software on their A320s very likely differs in many ways from ours. So take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.

Line checks, SOPs and reserve, oh my!

2010-05-31T15:15:00.000-04:00

Greetings! I have great news! As of May 29th I’m a full-fledged first officer once again! I passed my proficiency check in the full-flight simulator and flew 15 hours on the line. After those 15 hours I had to take a line check, as specified by the new “pro pilot guidelines.” As a result of the Colgan crash in Buffalo, the FAA instituted new rules for airlines with low-time pilots. I already meet the “time in type” requirement but since I have not flown with the airline for 13 months I’m still part of the program.

Just mention “line check” to most pilots and they break out into a cold sweat. But if you’re proficient in the aircraft, always abide by your standard operation procedures (SOPs) and keep your charts and manuals updated, a line check won’t be so stressful. The problem lies when pilots suffer a “brain dump” after their yearly training. They forget their limitations, have a tendency to not follow SOPs and will have a stack of chart revisions in the bottom of their flight back. There’s a simple solution: don’t dump all that useful knowledge the day after your proficiency check!
My personal flying philosophy is “fly like you’ve trained. Fly the same way every day, and when something goes wrong, you’ll perform how you’ve been trained to perform.” The best pilots I’ve flown with are the ones that follow their SOPs. There shouldn’t be any surprises in the cockpit, at least within the crew. SOPs are designed so that, even if you just met your captain five minutes ago, you can still safely operate a flight.

Enough soap box!

Currently I’m sitting at TPA, my home airport (for now!). Tomorrow is June 1st and I have a reserve line this month. When you’re on reserve you are on call during a certain time period (this month it’s 0200-1600) and the company will assign you flights that have not been covered. Most of the time you’re assigned flights that weren’t covered by scheduling during the initial bid period and sometimes you are filling in for a pilot that’s called in sick. Since I have to work in the morning I’m taking a flight this afternoon to ACY.

I was scheduled to be on reserve the 1st and 2nd, but have already been assigned a trip for those two days. I called crew scheduling this morning just to make sure my line check/training paperwork had been put through (making me available to fly the line). They said it had and that they already had a trip for me! Technically they can’t call me on my day off. They would have called at 2am tomorrow morning, though! So I’m glad it worked out.

Tomorrow I will be flying ACY-BOS-FLL-DTW, starting at 0930 and getting into DTW around 1930. I overnight in DTW then fly one early-morning leg back to ACY at 0600. I can even get back to Tampa the same day! I’m so happy to be back flying. Hopefully the trip goes smoothly! Details at 11 ;)

SOPs and SMAC

2010-05-16T18:49:00.002-04:00

We've been very busy for the past week, so I apologize for not updating! Today was my first procedures training FTD after three wonderful days off.

Unlike in the systems integrated training from last week, this week's FTDs place emphasis on flows, checklists, call outs and approach procedures. Today my partner and I each performed an emergency descent, a RNAV approach and a NDB approach. RNAV and NDB approaches are flown almost exactly the same in the A320, using what's called the APP NAV strategy.

With the APP NAV strategy the aircraft actually uses raw data (i.e. the NDB signal) as a backup to GPS waypoints. Basically, the NBD final approach fix is treated the same as the GPS waypoint FAF on the RNAV approach. You monitor raw data while performing the NBD approach but rely on the airplane's GPS and IRS navigation to shoot the approach. Just follow the flight directors and VOILA, you're there.

Actually, we're taught the fly the whole thing on autopilot until the runway environment is in sight! Then you can click off the autopilot and land the airplane. If you don't see the necessary requirement to land before reaching the approach minimums, you initiate a go-around by moving the thrust levers to the TOGA detent. The A320 will do the entire go-around without any additional pilot input. If you wish to fly the published missed approach you press the heading bug to tell the autopilot you wish it to fly the missed and it will fly to the altitude, fix and hold right there until you tell it otherwise. Lazy? yes. Neat? TOTALLY.

Tomorrow we'll be concentrating more on the correct call outs and practicing the approach briefing. Call outs are crucial to following standard operating procedures (SOPs) and help with situational awareness for both crew members. The newest and most critical is the "stable/unstable" call out. More about that tomorrow!

I owe you a post!

2010-05-08T10:32:00.002-04:00

I'm sorry that I haven't been updating daily, but even ground school is exhausting! I have a day off today, however! Today's agenda is to take advantage of the great weather and study by the hotel pool.

Tomorrow I start SITs. In the SIT we practice operating the aircraft systems in situations more like what we'll be seeing on the line. I hope I do well! It's been 18 months since I've been in the cockpit so I feel out of practice. After I've gotten enough UV rays today I'll come back inside to practice my flows on the cockpit posters I have in my room.

I'm going to avoid discussing our union issues in the blog, as I'd rather keep my mind on training. I will say, however, that I truly hope the union and the company come to an agreement before a strike -- striking keeps us out of the cockpit and keeps the company from making money; it's not good for either party. At the same time, however, we won't sacrifice our quality of life. You can read the Airline Pilots Association's press release here.

The other day in class we discussed landing distance multipliers and factors that necessitate an increase in approach speed. After the Southwest Airlines runway overrun at Midway airlines have focused on ensuring adequate runway distance available.

We spent a decent chunk of time on a new flow chart that we can use to decide how many knots we need to add to our approach speed, as well as any increases in runway distance (called multipliers). A small change in aircraft configuration due to a malfunction or even a strong crosswind can increase landing distance by 10% to 35%.

Our normal Vapp in the A320 is around 123-126 knots. Some malfunctions such as inoperative flaps will significantly increase Vapp. Approach speed sometimes must be increased up to 20 knots.

The procedure keeps you aware of how the malfunction (or weather) can affect your landing speed and distance, something that pilots flying any type of airplane, from a C150 to an A380, could definitely apply.

Another major safety initiative highlighted in our training is stabilize approaches - but I'll save that for another blog post!

Ground school, day 1

2010-05-03T19:25:00.002-04:00

Today was our first day of ground school! We received new manuals, Jeppesen charts and IDs (we had to turn these in when we were furloughed).

The purpose of ground school is to bring us back up to speed on aircraft systems and company procedures. Today we spent about 9 hours on systems, and still didn't finish the whole review! It's assumed that, since this is recurrent, that you have a basic grasp on the A320 systems so most of the information involved non-obvious facts.

The first thing pilots perform when entering the cockpit for the day is to perform a cockpit preparation and preflight. We used this as the backbone for our systems study. The pilots check the various systems to make sure nothing is broken. The logbook gets reviewed for any inoperative items, and we look up any procedures that we need to perform as a result.

Flows are an important part of airline training. A flow is basically a checklist that you perform from memory - it tends to move in an easy-to-remember pattern that "flows" around the cockpit. The cockpit preparation flow moves up and down the overhead panel, across the instrument panel, and down the center pedestal. We check to make sure all the systems that should be on are active, make sure our emergency oxygen system is functioning correctly and ensure that required items (such as landing gear pins and windshield rain repellent) are in the airplane and filled.

While discussing the flows in class today we stopped and discussed the corresponding systems. It's a nice way to review aircraft systems while covering a little bit of procedures training.

In other news, it's so nice to be back. I feel like I can finally believe that I've been recalled and am going back to work! I'm waiting for my boyfriend to get done flying for the day so I can tell him all about it. :) Until then, perhaps some dinner and studying with my classmates!

Turn on the fire hose!

2010-05-02T22:21:00.003-04:00

Well I am in Ft. Lauderdale, ready to start training! This week is all ground school, starting at 0800. I did a bit of studying tonight but I am so exhausted from driving that I'm choosing to go to bed early instead! I want to be refreshed and ready for class tomorrow.

I will try my best to update every day!

Starting tomorrow I will definitely feel as if I'm drinking from a fire hose! Wish me luck!

CBTs

2010-04-20T21:27:00.002-04:00

I'm about a quarter of a way through my Computer Based Training, and I'm getting more and more excited. I can't believe that in 6 weeks I'm going to be back flying the line. I haven't forgotten as much as I was afraid of and as little things come back to me I get this thrill of "oh yeah! I remember this! I can't wait to do this with the real airplane again!"

Last night I studied the Electronic Information System (EIS) and the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU). The EIS contains all the screens in the cockpit that we receive information on. In the A320 there are 4 screens.

(http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/a320/images/A320_cockpit1.jpg)

The pair on the left are the captain's PFD (primary flight display) and ND (navigation display). On the right side are the first officer's PFD and ND. The two screens in the middle are the engine and warning display (E/WD) and the systems display (SD). Almost all the information we need in flight are on these 6 screens. You can use a control panel to change the system you view on the SD. It's one of the reasons I love the Airbus -- everything is presented in such a clear fashion.

The APU is what normally provides power and air conditioning when the engines aren't running. More commonly now we use external power and air for these functions as the APU burns fuel. It's basically a small jet engine mounted in the tail. It's geared into a generator that provides enough power for important systems while on the ground. It also provides the electricity and air needed to start the first engine. If you've ever been on a flight where the crew had to start an engine at the gate, this was probably because the APU was inoperative. I have had this happen a few times. I don't like flying without one because you've effectively lost a backup generator in case you have an engine failure. However, a broken APU isn't a good enough reason to cancel a flight!

Tonight's topics: the electrical, fire detection and GPS navigation systems. I'm so happy that I may do another section tonight. I love learning aircraft systems and I love this airplane! I can't wait to fly one again.

Getting rolling...

2010-04-19T10:45:00.003-04:00

I finished all my requirements for my graduate class just before the weekend. The information I've learned in air transportation management are things I can apply in real life, while analyzing my airline and others.

However, now that that's over it's time to start studying in earnest for recurrent. There's a lot to relearn -- with the exception of a few systems such as autoflight, I haven't really looked at most of the information since I was furlough. My game plan consists of the follow:

CBT - This is Computer Based Training. All the systems are presented through the CBT. It's semi-interactive and I've found it's one of the best ways for me to learn. I'll be going through this first.

AOM - Aircraft Operating Manual. There are 2 AOM volumes. VOL 1 is concerned with checklists and flows, which I need to get down before my first sim. AOM VOL 2 talks in-depth about the aircraft systems; it has some information that is not covered on the CBTs. However, it's about 1000 pages. Not exactly light reading! I like to actually read a chapter or two every trip since it's "company approved" reading material. It also helps you keep up with information you don't use every day.

Limitations - Luckily I never threw out my flashcards describing the limitations of the aircraft and systems. These are things like the highest airspeed you can have the windshield wipers on at, the speeds at which you can lower and retract the landing gear, etc. These are critical speeds you MUST have memorized. I hope to give myself a head start and know them before I show up to training May 3rd.

Ok, enough blogging. Time to get to work!

Preparation

2010-04-01T13:07:00.003-04:00

I decided to stay another week while my boyfriend hopefully finishes up his captain upgrade. It's taken over a week to just finish up one flight. Why is flying always like that? The weather on the Cape is fascinating. It can go from VFR to solid IFR in (quite literally) the blink of an eye. And no where else have I seen, on such a regular basis, 70 kt winds at 3000 feet. It's a demanding environment!

As for my training, that officially starts May 3rd. I'm currently trying to wrap up my grad school class ASAP so that I can concentrate on studying for recurrent. I have one more small paper to write, then our final exam, then two large papers. I have to see if I can finish up the small paper early and somehow work on the large papers while I'm studying up for the final.

AND in the middle of this I have to somehow fit a ton of A320 studying. EEK!

The important thing to do? Stay calm, make a list. First things first! I need to stop writing here and start writing this paper!

Good news!

2010-03-26T20:11:00.003-04:00

So I think that light out there may actually be the light at the end of the tunnel! Earlier this week, after dropping David off at the airport for a training flight (he's doing his Captain upgrade!) I checked my phone and saw 3 emails under the subject "I got just a RECALL phone call!" Needless to say I nearly crashed the car. The 3 emails were from fellow classmates at my airline that had just gotten THE phone call.

Commence the LONGEST hour of my life. And then, FINALLY, the phone rang and the caller ID was Spirit Airlines. Thank you G-d!!!

So, while it's not official-official, I should be back at work May 3rd!

I say it's "not official-official" because I still haven't gotten it in writing. Plus, in typical airline fashion, I never trust anything until it actually happens.

I'm pretty bummed that one of my best friends in the class didn't make the cut. Recall is in order of seniority, and it seems that I was the last one to get a call. Rumor has it that 4 people are still on the fence, so if two of those people bypass my friend will be in, as well.

Bypassing: telling an airline "thanks but not yet." A lot of people do this if they don't want to resign but they'd rather wait until they have a bit more seniority before they go back to flying. For example, if I'm the last person on the list I'm definitely going to be on reserve. Some people would rather wait until they can hold a line.

There are a lot of things I have to work out, but in general I'm very excited! It will be really nice to be flying again. David and I can afford an apartment closer to Baltimore to make his commute easier (although we don't know where he's based just yet). And I don't have to feel guilty about moving to Maryland as I'll be able to jumpseat home to visit my parents now!

And last but not least - I can actually do something with this blog again! I'm going to be writing much more, taking you through my preps for training, training and then the line. I'm hoping this blog will be a (hopefully not boring) insight into the average airline pilot's life.

Be back soon!!

Filing Taxes, Aviation Style

2010-02-01T12:49:00.000-05:00

I have an accountant. I know it sounds silly for someone who doesn’t belong in a high-income bracket to have an accountant. The $100 I pay him, however, usually results in a beautiful tax refund. Most people can easily file their taxes themselves and get a great refund. Pilots, on the other hand, should consider getting some extra help.

Airline and corporate pilots have a lot of business expenses that can add up over time. Obviously expenses such as hotel rooms the night before a trip (or crashpad rent) can be written off as a business expense, but have you thought about all the other incidentals that add up over time? Here’s a short list of the things I’ve learned over time I should keep receipts and records of. It’s not all-inclusive, obviously, but maybe it will get you some extra money back on your taxes this year!

- Uniforms: all those pilot shirts, metal shank-less shoes, trenchcoats, etc. can amount to a huge deduction.
- Van driver tips: on an average 4 day trip you could pay $7-10 to the driver taking you to the hotel and airport. 4 or 5 trips a month starts to add up! You don’t need a receipt from the van driver. I have a flight crew log (seen here) that I use to write down my OOOI (out-off-on-in, or your block/flight times) and also has spots for recording tips/meals.
- Speaking of meals: eating on the road is EXPENSIVE. You’re basically going to drop $20-30 on food every night, depending on where you’re staying that night. Keep those receipts, plus the ones from buying soda and snacks at the airport.
- Those Rx Serengeti’s? They’re expensive. And you probably wouldn’t have them if you weren’t flying 80 hours a month.
- Checkrides. My CFI checkride cost $300. CFII: $400. Get a receipt from your designated examiner.
- Last but not least – mileage. All those miles you spend driving to the airport add up to wear and tear on your car, not to mention gas. Keep track of those trips to and from the airport. Also if you’re paying for employee parking at the airport, keep the receipts from buying your parking passes. I have paid anywhere from $35-50 a month for employee parking.

I hope this gives you some ideas on getting the most back on your taxes. Just stay organized, I keep my receipts in a small file folder until tax time. Pilots spend a lot of time away from home and a lot of their own money in that time. There’s no reason to sacrifice more than you have to.

Interview!

2010-01-27T21:48:00.003-05:00

So I had an interview with a flight school today! It went very well, I went flying with the boss and he liked me. I have the job if I want it, which is great news!

I have to decide whether or not I can afford to move out of state to take the job. Apartment hunting will commence, but as well as trying to find a cheap place, the boyfriend and I have to figure out WHERE. That will depend on where he's based as a captain, which we won't know for about a month. If he gets either HGR or LNS we'll have to live close to one of those airports. If he's based somewhere like ALB, it won't matter because he'll just commute.

I like the flight school; they have nice, new airplanes and keep up on their maintenance. Every airplane's book has a sheet w/ the due dates for its annual, 100-hr, transponder and VOR checks. They should have lots of business in a few months -- I just have to figure out how to afford to eat until then.

Tomorrow would've started my 3rd year with Spirit. *sigh* It stinks being furloughed but I've kind of reached a happy medium, finally. I'm in a zen state, you could say. I can't just sit and wait to be recalled - I need to be productive and forget about them until I get that phone call.

On a funny note: today is my bear's 2nd birthday. Dave Bear -- he was a present from my boyfriend, David, the day I left for Spirit new hire training. I love this bear. It seems silly to be in my 20s and have a stuffed animal that I take on all my trips, but I like to say that he's a well traveled bear. He was there when I was practicing my flows, he helped keep me company when I was lonely. So I don't care if anyone thinks I'm silly; they're just jealous. :)

refocusing...or attempting to

2009-12-30T23:33:00.002-05:00

As I continually have issues trying to find a focus for my blog, I've run into yet another problem. I realize that everything I have to say will, by the time I write something, already have been said. Thanks, Twitter, for ruining my buzz.

I could talk about the American Airlines Jamaica runway incident, or the attack on NWA253, or all the silliness the TSA has been involved in. Unfortunately, those are all horses that have been beaten to death.

I fear that until I'm back at work, I won't have anything interesting to write about. Hopefully when I'm recalled I can continue with what I originally planned to do here, and talk about day to day life of an airline pilot. I still plan to, but recall could still be months or even a year away.

I'm finding that my true passion in aviation is safety. So I'd like to start focusing on that subject here. Unfortunately, there are already a few other blogs on the subject, and I'm having a hard time finding original information to cover.

So there. A few more excuses as to why the blog hasn't taken off yet. I remain, truly, your resident Airbus A320 semi-expert and aviation nut,

Mikel.

Crossing fingers...

2009-11-29T13:49:00.003-05:00

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!!

2009-07-20T11:05:00.002-04:00

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...

2009-07-15T16:27:00.002-04:00

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...

2009-07-05T01:35:00.004-04:00

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...

2009-06-25T23:45:00.003-04:00

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...

2009-06-24T18:26:00.001-04:00

“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

2009-06-09T15:35:00.002-04:00

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!

An explanation of fly-by-wire...

2009-06-01T10:17:00.007-04:00

As the time I've written this we don't know the fate of Air France flight 447. I pray that the passengers and crew found a miracle and are safe somewhere.

In the usual pattern of 24 hour new networks, I'm spending my morning yelling at the TV while some of their "aviation experts" speculate on the fate of an airplane they know nothing about. I don't know enough details to speculate myself (turbulence? lightning? electrical failure? There are too many possible causes) but I will give my piece on how a fly-by-wire airplane is controlled, and specifically an Airbus system.

Disclaimer: I hold an A320 type rating. There are differences between A320 systems and A330 systems, and I'm not as knowledgeable about the latter. So if I make an assumption about A330 systems that is incorrect, please forgive me. And feel free to comment/correct.

Fly-By-Wire
Fly-by-wire is a term used to explain how the control surfaces of an airplane are moved (control surfaces mean the ailerons, rudder and elevators, the movable pieces of the airplane that are used to control it).

The first method of moving control surfaces was by cable. When the pilot moves the yoke or stick and the rudder pedals, this directly manipulates cables that displace the control surfaces. This is still used effectively on smaller airplanes such as a Cessna 172.

The bigger an airplane gets, the larger the control surfaces must be, and the more force must be exerted by pilots to move them. So hydraulic controls became popular. The amount of force on the cables is amplified by hydraulic actuators that move the control surfaces. This is the most-utilized method used in airliners today.

Fly-by-wire airplanes operate differently. Any deflection of the yoke/stick/rudder pedals by the pilots is detected by computer sensors. The sensors determine the amount of deflection, or movement, needed in the control surfaces (using data such as airplane altitude and airspeed) and send this information to hydraulic actuators which then move the ailerons, elevators and rudder.

The major difference between cable-controlled airplanes and fly-by-wire airplanes is the use of, and dependence on, computers to control the airplane's movement.

Now onto the A320...

The A320 has 7 flight control computers:
2 ELACs: Elevator Aileron Computer (normal elevator and horizontal stabilizer control, as well as aileron control)
3 SECs: Spoilers Elevator Computer (spoiler control as well as standby elevator and stabilizer control)
2 FACs: Flight Augmentation Computer (electrical rudder control)

So you see that there are multiple levels of control for most of the control surfaces. If one set of computers was to fail you'd still have some control over the airplane.

I'm going to quickly go over the "levels of control" with the A320. Airbus calls these "laws." I'm glossing over certain points to keep this entry from becoming a novella.

In normal flight the computers are in "normal law." In normal law the pilots use the control stick to move the airplane. The airplane's computers actually prevent the airplane from stalling/overspeeding or undergoing any other maneuvers that may cause excessive stress on the airframe.

If computers start to fail on the airplane, it reverts into "alternate law." In alternate law you can still have some of the protections (i.e. stall protection) that you had in normal law.

Direct law is the next lowest level of control. I skipped over how the A320 is controlled by load factor demand and bank angle. So I'll just say that in direct law you control the A320 just like how'd you control any other airplane with a stick. Pull back and the nose will start to rise, move the stick left and the airplane will start to roll left.

Below direct law is "manual backup." If you were to lose all electrical power in the A320 your only hope of controlling the airplane is mechanical backup. This, I believe, has only happened once outside of testing. You would have to lose both engine generators, the APU (auxiliary power unit, another generator), drain your batteries and be unable to operate the RAT (ram air turbine, which is deployed from the bottom of the airplane and can provide limited power).

Pitch control is only available to the pilots through use of pitch trim, using the horizontal stabilizer of the A320 (it's called the THS, trimmable horizontal stabilizer).

Lateral control is only possible through use of the rudder pedals, which do have some direct linkage to the rudder.

When undergoing simulator training for the A320 type rating I had to try to fly the airplane using mechanic backup. It is NOT easy. It was nearly impossible to maintain level flight. Mechanical backup's purpose is to provide the pilots a way to keep the airplane stable while they troubleshoot the failed electrical system and flight control computers. I can't imagine anyone trying to land the airplane using mechanical backup. You simply don't have enough fine control.

Once again, this was all referenced from my A320 training and my A320 manuals. I don't know enough about the A330 to say whether all (or any) of this applies to the A330, but I'm going on the assumption that Airbus wouldn't have totally redesigned their fly-by-wire system for another airplane.

Pay your dues...

2009-05-14T11:01:00.003-04:00

It's coming out in the media, through the coverage of the Colgan 3407 crash, just how little regional airline pilots make. This isn't a surprise to any of us who fly the line, we've been through the same thing.

The First Officer aboard the Colgan Dash 8 made just over $16,000 last year. She was commuting from the Seattle area because she lived with her parents. Many of us have additional housing at our base, but this can get very expensive. They're called crashpads. It's usually set up in a house, with several bunk beds in each room. They're intended to be used only a few nights a month, if you have a trip that starts early in the morning or ends late at night. While I only paid about $250/month for my crashpad in Ft. Lauderdale, I paid $400/month for the one in San Juan. This was on top of the $800/month in rent I was paying for my house back home in Port Orange.

Most of the alumni from Embry-Riddle (including myself) graduated with tens of thousands of dollars worth of student loans that we used to finance our flight training. And we go to our first job and make, what, $20-30/hr? And yet, we are all professionals. We don't give less than 100% at our jobs because we don't make as much as we know we should. Our number one priority is the safety of our passengers, who trust us to be our absolute best.

Here you can look up the pay scales of all the regional airlines.

When you hear "oh this pilot is making $25/hr, that's a lot of money!" what you have to remember is that we don't get paid for 40 hrs/week like a normal full-time employee. We're paid from block out to block in, i.e. from when the airplane pushes back from the gate to when you pull into the gate at the end of the flight. All the time we're at the airport in between flights, even if it's 4 or 5 hours, we're not getting paid*. The average airline pilot pulls between 75-85 hours a month. So basically that $25/hr comes back down to more like $12.50/hr. That doesn't sound fair for someone's who's responsible for the safety of 50 (sometimes more) passengers, does it?

So maybe some good will come out of this. At least the optimist in me thinks so. However, the more realistic expectation is that this issue will, once again, go nowhere.

GirlsWithWings said it best: "So, regional airline pay front page news again. At least until some star decides to buy/adopt/birth another child."

Here's a great bit on "Wal-mart in the cockpit" by av8rdan a fellow blogger

*Cape Air does actually pay you for all your "duty time," when you show up in the morning until when you leave. But they also pay less/hour, so it's a trade off.

A bit of discussion on tailplane icing and Colgan 3407

2009-05-12T15:53:00.002-04:00

I was alerted by TheGimliGlider through Twitter today of this great video on tailplane icing. Watch

I remember, actually, seeing this video a couple years ago, whether it was at Embry-Riddle or during my CAL internship. And it's definitely worth a watch, especially if you're a pilot.

What I came away with is a definite feeling that the Captain and First Officer on Colgan 3407 felt that they were experiencing a tailplane stall. This, I believe, is evidenced by the CA's response to the stall by increasing back pressure against the stick-shaker and stick-pusher, which is a warning system used to prevent and correct a stall situation.

The FO's first response was to bring up the flaps and prompt the CA to see if he wished for landing gear retraction. This is part of the recovery procedure for tailplane icing, as the configuration change (specifically the lowering of flaps) usually causes the tailplane stall to finally occur.

According to the previous video, tailplane icing is evidenced by extreme nose-down pressure. Perhaps the CA mistook the stick-pusher for this control pressure? I'm still not sure as to why he ignored the stick-shaker in the first place, but due to the icing already observed by the crew (as stated in the CVR) it was a sensible assumption to believe that they were encountering a tailplane stall.

This brings me to the use of autopilot during the flight. I've spoken to a few Dash8 pilots, and all of them said that autopilot should never be used during icing conditions. This is reaffirmed by the video. AP prevents you from noticing the increased use of trim (since when activated, the AP assumes this function as well) and the lightened forward control pressure.

It's always said that an accident never has just one cause, it's a result of a chain of errors and events that ultimately lead up to the accident. As pilots we're charged with breaking this chain of errors, which could have started with us, or started with an airline policy or culture.

Safety is everyone's highest priority. The tragic events of Colgan 3407 remind us that we always have to be on our toes, we constantly have to educate ourselves and must consistently be on the lookout for that chain rattling at our cockpit door.

2009-05-12T12:03:00.003-04:00

I'm going to try to update more often now. At least there's been a lot of material in the news and in my personal life.

Today is the hearing on Colgan 3407. I've read the CVR transcript, it's pretty terrifying that the airplane did what it was supposed to do and yet we still had a crash. There's really no excuse for pilot error anymore, not with the sort of training we're given nowadays. I'm not in safety (though it's what I'm going to get my Master's in when I start that in a few weeks) but I know from experience that you're asking for trouble if you have a left-seat to left-seat upgrade between two different aircraft types. The accident would most likely have turned out differently if the captain had responded correctly to the stick shaker. 6.7 seconds of stick shaker is outrageous.

If I had flown the Dash 8 I could give better commentary, but from what my friends who are flying the Q400 tell me, you NEVER have the autopilot on during icing conditions. NEVER. And I think we're looking at, once again, a crew fairly new to the airplane using the AP to compensate for the workload they had.

The FO also had complained that she was sick and exhausted. She commuted from the Seattle area to the east coast for the trip, on a red eye. Now that's personal choice, but it's not smart. When I was based in SJU, my trips usually started at 0500. I commuted from MCO on a flight that arrived in SJU at 1500 the day before. This killed one of my days off, but the only other flight I could take arrived at 2100 that night, and I didn't want to risk being exhausted the next morning. You have to make sacrifices and realize your own physical limits.

As for calling in sick...it's a problem in the airline world. Personally, I get one or two sinus infections every year. I have a deviated septum and when I get a sinus infection it tends to last for 2-3 weeks. You can't call in sick for 2 weeks when you're flying the line, so at a point, you have to just decide to grin and bear it (usually at the point when I can survive without dayquil). You're not 100% but crew schedulers aren't airline pilots and don't understand that you need a few more days off.

It's funny how obvious, common sense things get a bit convoluted when they get mixed in with airline procedures.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming...

2009-05-11T12:21:00.002-04:00

As usually happens in my life, EVERYTHING HAPPENED AT ONCE last month.

David found out his base was changing - so we had to figure out where, when and how he was getting up there.

As soon as we found out where and when (Hagerstown, MD) and May 1st, I started to look for jobs.

Unfortunately, this meant everything else in life had to kind of stop. So my CFII went on hold (even though I should have had it done in 2 weeks, but I underestimated the tediousness of the CFII) for a few weeks. Ok, a month. Don't judge me!

Went to Sun n Fun for two days, saw some amazing airplanes and a few amazing people. I didn't really take pictures because my point n shoot is not suited for airshows. Dad and I went on Friday and stayed for some of the night airshow. My favorite airshow performance is always the twilight Aeroshell show. I have a love for the T-6 Texan that's unrivaled by any other airplane, and I love the combination of the roar of the Pratts with that calm stillness of twilight. Oh, and whoever came up with the idea of lighting up their exhaust? Genius.

David and I were lucky enough to run into a lot of our friends from Embry-Riddle on Saturday, so we had company. The 99s have a great house on premises with A/C and a bathroom, so I usually base myself out of there for Sun n Fun. Met some very nice ladies, as always! We attended the ERAU Alumni luncheon and I was lucky enough to win a pair of Vidalo HD sunglasses! They were a special pair with Elaine Larsen's signature embroidered on the case. Elaine is the driver of a jet dragster sponsored by Embry-Riddle, and she's just a wonderful person. Her husband is her crew chief and is so supportive! It's great.

So that's my Sun n Fun summary.

I just got back from a few days in Maryland, as David and I took the Autotrain (which is always worth the money) up north. We looked for apartments, which was harder than we thought, but we should have a place soon. David's just waiting until I get a job offer. I interviewed with a flight school at KHGR last week and am waiting to hear back from them. So in the meantime I came back to Florida to complete my CFII (zzzzz) and get some more personal things taken care of. Which I should probably get around to doing :)

Finding the motivation...or is it confidence?

2009-04-14T00:25:00.003-04:00

I've almost completed my CFII (certified flight instructor - instrument - this allows me to give instrument rating instruction, which a normal CFI does not allow you to do) but have reached a weird impasse. I haven't flown in 3 weeks. I need to take my written exam, which isn't hard, but for some reason I can't get motivated to study. I'm not motivated to finish the rating itself, even though I'm very near completion. I'm starting to think the culprit isn't my lack of motivation, it's my lack of self-confidence.

I've never been that confident of a pilot. I've spent very little time flying solo, just because I've done the minimum required to get my flight ratings and typically can't afford just to take a plane out by myself. But as a result of this I also don't have a lot of confidence in my ability as a pilot. I know I'm not alone in this, but it seems the only solution is just to fly more.

When I flew for Spirit I gained a lot of self-confidence, knowing that I had the ability to not just fly the A320 series but also be GOOD at flying it. I had lots of compliments from captains that I was one of the better First Officers they had flown with. But you don't really fly the A319s/321s, you mostly just manage them. Very little of the work in that airplane is hand-flying. It's mostly working the autopilot. I was very good at that, but really, you could probably get any intelligent person pretty competent in the A320 series. I knew deep down that my "stick and rudder" skills were suffering behind the controls of a jet. And I was very, very rusty.

David says that you don't become a bad pilot. That you start out bad or you don't, and good pilots just get rusty. I trust his opinion as an experience CFI that I don't suck. But it's hard to cognitively realize that AND put it into practice.

While I keep saying "I'm not crazy about being a flight instructor" I don't mean that I think flight instructing is beneath me or that I shouldn't have to go through it. I know how important it is. I've seen how a few hundred hours of flight instructing turned David from a good pilot to a GREAT pilot. I want that experience, I want the self-confidence that comes with that.

-------------

Hopefully The Move (yes, capitalized) will fix some problems. David is moving back up north for the summer season and as soon as I can find employment up there I'm going, as well. I'd prefer to find something involving flight instruction (so my CFI/CFII isn't a waste) but I'm looking for traffic watch, aerial surveying or even plane detailing. Anything having to do with airplanes, really.

Ramp checks

2009-02-25T16:33:00.002-05:00

"Hi there, we're with the FAA!"

The most dreaded words in existance.

I will, up front, say that I have had no true negative experiences with the FAA. At most they've been nuisances. Like ramp checks! You'll have one, at some point. It's inevitable, like the one time you don't check for traffic before taking the runway, someone's going to land on top of you.

Ramp checks do serve a useful purpose. They allow the FAA to do random spot checks of pilots and aircraft to ensure that everyone's playing by the right rules. Deep down inside, I'm happy about these checks and balances that result in safer flying for everyone.

Still doesn't stop your stomach from dropping down to your feet, though.

I was ramp checked once before, in Nassau, while I was flying for Spirit. No big deal, we had everything in order and then managed to convince him to sit in the back and check over the flight attendants manuals instead of taking the jumpseat. I'm pretty meticulous about my logbook and licenses anyways, so there's really nothing I usually have to worry about.

Here's a little bit about Ramp Checks 101:

The first thing the FAA is going to check is your personal information. Your license(s) and medical need to be in order, since these have to be on your person at all times. Your logbook only has to be "accessible," which means at home, not in Antarctica.

Next they'll move on to the airplane. This is why, ladies and gents, ARROW is such an important acronym. I'll be the first to admit that if I'm flying the same plane over and over again on a regular basis, I may not check ARROW every time. I'm horrible, I know. I learned my lesson today, youbetcha. Because nothing feels worse than "oh, wow, I hope that's in there."

ARROW = all the documents that must be on an airplane every single flight: airworthiness certificate, registration, the aircraft's operating handbook and the weight and balance. The other R comes from your restricted radiotelephone operator's license, which you have to have if you're flying international. I have one, but wasn't requested to provide it.

Next they're going to check around the airplane, make sure no parts are falling off, and making sure you have all the instruments required for the operation you were performing/are going to perform. The requirements differ if you're operating under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) during the day or at night, or Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). This is another thing that I don't think most of us check every time we go flying if we've been in the same plane recently. And we really should!

The most important thing you need to remember is to be nice! Nothing will get you a ramp check that is more like a *ahem* very private physical if you're rude to the FAA. Smile, answer their questions, and besides that, shut the heck up. Most people tend to ramble when their nervous. As a pilot you learn to NEVER DO THIS. Next thing you know you're talking about the different types of Class E airspace and VFR cloud clearances. After all, they're not doing this (hopefully) because of some sadistic desire to see you sweat. They're trying to keep everyone safe.

AOPA has written a nice article on what the FAA can and cannot check, as well as the actions both you and they can take: "Pilot Information Center: Ramp Checks"

Options!! Or "how do I avoid eating ramen until I make Captain?"

2009-02-24T22:59:00.000-05:00

OK, so we see that the airline industry isn't doing any better. I just applied for acceptance to Embry-Riddle's Master's program. I figure I can get a few scholarships (that Summa Cum Laude will come in handy for something finally) and fund the rest with (yet more) loans. Supposedly it's easier to get financial aid for graduate degrees than undergrad right now.

I'm planning on getting a Master's in Aeronautical Science with an Aviation Safety specialty. I wanted to get the degree in straight "safety science" but that's only offered at the Prescott, AZ campus, not online.

The point of the graduate degree is this: with a B.S. in aeronautical science, I can do one thing: fly an airplane. No one's exactly looking for a "aeronautical scientist." But with a master's in aviation safety, I can get a cool job with, for instance, the NTSB. I have this strange obsession with figuring out airplane accidents. I will sit and watch "Seconds from Disaster" over and over and over again.

Overall this seems like a good idea. Except that it worries me that, still, my only marketable talents involve aviation. A lot of other pilots I've talked to have a 2nd job. Some own a flight school back home. Others are involved in something completely unrelated to aviation. Carpenters, electricians, things like that.

So now I'm wondering, should I learn a non-aviation marketable skill as well? David and I are planning on owning our own crafts/hobby shop in the future. Airplane models, trains, stuff like that. He's amazingly knowledgeable about all of it and I enjoy building models, too. We may have a chance in a few years to buy an acquaintance's business, if we have the capital. But at our current rate of barely making enough to feed ourselves and pay off our student loan debt, I don't know if we'll have it.

On my days off, when I was working, I was bored silly. You have to understand that, as an airline pilot, you work weird schedules. Usually I was 4 days on, 4 days off. Dave works 3/3. And you have weird days off. Sometimes you have weekends off but usually your days off are in the middle of the week. I felt much more productive when I had something to do on those days off. Make a little extra money, you know?

So any suggestions?

What's QOL?

2009-01-22T23:51:00.005-05:00

Job search update:

I've gotten my application into another airline, we'll see how this goes. It's a place I would be THRILLED to work at. I'm very impressed by their management style and their appreciation of their employees. I'd be taking a very considerable pay cut to go there, but I think it's worth it.

It comes down to QOL: Quality of Life.

I wish I could express to people still in flight school the important of choosing a job that will give you good QOL. Since my experience is with Embry-Riddle, this is who I'll use as an example.

When I was at ERAU, the emphasis at the school was on "flying big iron." Get out there, fly the jet. There are a huge number of aviation jobs out there. Flight instructing, banner towing, fire watch, charter flying in turbo-props, regional jet jockeying, et cetera. But it seemed that, upon leaving ERAU, "Thou must get a jet job."

There's nothing wrong with this. But, what I try to emphasize to people, is that you are NOT a failure if your first job out of flight instructing is flying propeller-driven aircraft. You are not crazy if this was your goal in the first place.

We fly because we LOVE TO FLY. No, I don't want to drive a 172 the rest of my life. I want to fly new and exciting airplane. Heck, I ADORE the A320 series. I love that jet. But I will be overjoyed to go fly a Cessna 402!! It's a great airplane. No, it's not pressurized, so I would not be cruising at FL390. But there's something about flying at 1,000 feet AGL at 180 kts over Cape Cod with the humpback whales beneath that excites me. It's romantic.

What you have to find out for yourself is what will bring you quality of life. I know a lot of people who love flying for a regional. They spend their days off jumpseating all over the world, and it works for them. I couldn't be happier that they've all found a place for themselves where they love their flying.

Other people might love the corporate life. Or the charter/135 life. Or maybe, like our much-loved "lifer" CFIs at ERAU, bringing the love of flying to their students is what makes them happiest. Maybe your calling is flying cancelled checks and body parts in the middle of the night. What I'm saying is, "do what you love." Do what is going to keep your love of flying burning.

QOL isn't about money. Flying, for those that truly love it, is never about the money. QOL, to me, is about the airplane, the destinations, the duty schedule. Feeling appreciated by your passengers (or boxes if you're a freight dawg!) or your management and flying with good people.

The airlines aren't the "end all be all." Find your niche. Find what floats your boat (or gives you lift, rather). Don't let yourself become bitter - if you find yourself losing your passion for flight, it's time to find a new job.

Stay true to your reason for flying, and make your own QOL!!

"Within all of us is a varying amount of space lint and star dust, the residue from our creation. Most are too busy to notice it, and it is stronger in some than others. It is strongest in those of us who fly and is responsible for an unconscious, subtle desire to slip into some wings and try for the elusive boundaries of our origin." (K.O. Eckland, "Footprints On Clouds")

I've been really bad....

2009-01-20T16:53:00.002-05:00

I'm trying to resurrect this blog again. It's been a few months. Maybe I should rename it "Confessions of a Bitter Airline Pilot." Basically I've avoided writing because I've been so bitter. Getting furloughed, just as I was really starting to get into the groove of airline life, just as I had hit that point when you fly a new airplane that you "get" it, was tremendously hard on me.

It was really bad for a while...I'm living at home with my parents, and I think that if I hadn't been here I would've had a hard time avoiding drinking myself silly.

I actually did ok there for a while. For the first month or two I was absorbed with supporting my boyfriend as he was in new hire training with Cape Air in Massachusetts. But one day it just hit me. I was flying home from visiting David in Cape Cod, and left the day before he started IOE. The landing in TPA was something I would've loved...beautiful clear night, unrestricted vis, light xwind. And it just hit me as we touched down how much I desperately missed flying the bus, how much I missed the lifestyle. How much I hated having to put my liquids in a plastic bag and not being able to use the crew line. The loss of being able to chat up a flight crew without them thinking I was crazy. The pride I had being a 25 year old woman sitting in the cockpit of a jet with 150 pax behind me. I felt so empowered...and then all of a sudden, here I was, a 25 year old woman with no job prospects and no self-worth.

I don't think I felt better until around the holidays. David's the one who saved me, who got me out of this stupor I was in. I was working on my CFI so that I could flight instruct, and passed my checkride on Dec. 19th. I felt much better, had a bit of my self-esteem back.

Unfortunately, it's now a month later and I'm still unemployed. I'm trying to get my CFII but I'm having a difficult time staying motivated. I planned to have it done by now so I could be working. But I've applied to flight schools in Tampa and Ft. Myers/Naples, and no one's hiring. Most have a surplus of instructors. Same goes at Embry-Riddle. There's rumors they'll have to furlough, too. And what does a furloughed CFI do for work? McDonald's?

Everyone knows that your job plan changes every 5 minutes, but here's mine:
Keep trying to get a flying job, whether it's instructing or survey or banner towing.
I'm applying to Cape Air, but I'm below their minimums. Hopefully I'll still get an interview.
But if that doesn't happen, in May, I'll move up to either Maryland or Massachusetts with David, depending on if he's based in HYA or BWI. If it's HYA I'll try and CFI up there and work at Cape Air Ops or be a ramper, if it's BWI I'm sure I can get a ticket agent job at BWI.

All my hopes and dreams rest on Cape Air now...I'm such a Cape Air fangirl now, I want to work there so bad!!!

MochaHagotdi!!

Sitting, unfortunately not on the dock of the bay...

2008-09-01T22:59:00.001-04:00

Day 1 of 3 of the uncompensated reserve sit.
Flew a MYR turn and a MCO turn today with another one of ACY's super-nice Captains...I need to figure out how to get to Boston easily from here. If I can, after recall I want to be based up here.

Tomorrow I've been assigned a RSW turn...show time isn't until 1150, which is nice. No open time left for the 3rd, so I probably won't work unless someone calls in sick. So hopefully that means I can sleep in, go over to Smithville and pick up that stuffed white buffalo, go on down to Ocean City and go to one of our ground crew guy's shop that he owns with his wife and then head on over to the airport to catch a flight home.

I have to be out of my house on Sunday, which means Thursday is packing/throwing stuff out day, Friday/Saturday are moving days (hoping to get everything done Friday) and cleaning days to get the house ready.

Then I think I'm going to hang out in Daytona for a few days to help David pack up for his move, then go home to get my life in order. Hopefully get David to come back with me for a couple days. I want to spend every second I can with him before he leaves for "the north."

Other than that I need to get started on my CFI as soon as practicable and sit around and wait for a phone call from Spirit. Or news that they've closed shop, whichever comes first.

3 days down, I to go...

2008-08-17T16:38:00.001-04:00

Back at the hotel after a long day of flying...numerous personal crises led to me not going to sleep until 11pm. Up at 4am, flew from 0600 to 1500, blah. I'm exhausted!!!

The trips were uneventful...best weather I've seen at MCO in a long time, but shittastic turbulence between SAV and ILM. Moderate chop from 240 up to around 380...so basically no escaping.

And to top it all off my flight home doesn't operate tomorrow, so I have to get on the last flight to FLL, then catch the last flight from FLL to MCO. I'll get home sometime around midnight. I really really hope I get a nap at some point tomorrow.

Just another day in NJ

2008-08-15T20:02:00.002-04:00

Flew a FLL turn this morning with a nice captain. Actually, it was a good all-around crew. Some of the nicest F/As, too. It was pretty uneventful, which is how you typically want flights to go :) Good omen of the day: a cricket chilling out on our nose during the walk-around!! Got back around noon and have done....jack since then. Kind of depressing, not going to lie. I was going to go somewhere but I wasn't really feeling up to it. But on the plus side I did get a lot done on David's scarf, I'm finally on the last ball! My goal is to get it done before the end of the month. Then work on something for my sister's birthday.In the meantime I'm trying to watch a couple episodes of The Venture Bros. but the hotel internet goes from being perfectly normal to obscenely slow. The next 3 days entail the oh-so-exciting ACY-MYR-ACY-MCO-ACY...at least I'm back with Captain of the month, so I can relax a little and get back in a groove. I'm going to try and go to sleep now, but it's hard when it's still light outside.

2008-08-14T20:15:00.002-04:00

It's not a huge conspiracy, just a little one.

It's interesting how much I've learned about the airline industry in these 6 months, even more interesting how much more there is to learn.

Here's how the chain of events is working right now:
Spirit decides to furlough 45 pilots starting 8/1, and another 80 starting 9/1 (including yours truly).
The initial furlough results in a huge amount of open time being available.
95% of the pilot base refuse to pick up said open time (5% remain whores!), since logic maintains that if you don't have enough pilots to cover all your time, maybe you should hire more!

I love how this works...hopefully it'll lead to us getting recalled sooner.

I heard a rumor that they're offering 400% pay to people who pick up open time; while I'd be tempted, I'd still be taking work away from furloughed pilots. Don't be a whore!

I'm in ACY now for a 4 day starting tomorrow morning. I traded my 30th for tomorrow so that another FO could go on a church trip. He's obnoxiously into religion but at least hasn't tried to "save" me yet, so I'll give him credit for that.

So I work tomorrow through the 18th (which happens to be my 25 birthday, yay me!), then the 23rd/24th and the 31st (which I'm going to try and get rid of). Thank goodness I have a lot of days off.

Which, speaking of, I need to do something nice for Dave. He's been putting up with so much lately, and he's been under a huge amount of stress, too, that I feel like I should do something for him. I mean, I bought him a card to send him tomorrow, but that's not really enough...must think of cute stuff to do for him. I'd get him a model kit he wants but the kid HAS everything he wants (well, that I can afford). Anyone have any ideas?

Too bad I can't find some super-rare Martin stuff in an antique shop - he'd love that.

I also need to find some time to go to Houston, while trying to find time to go to Tampa and pack up all my stuff in my room there to make room for all my stuff I'm moving from the Creek. Ah crazy time!!!

Yay I turn 25 on Monday!! Maybe I should contact ATC with "Good morning Washington Center, Spiritwings 347, level 360, and it's my birthday today!"

Finding it hard to write..

2008-08-12T16:55:00.001-04:00

I really want to update this more, but find it hard to get motivated since I know I'm probably the only one reading it. I've found twitter is pretty easy for I guess what you could call mini-blogging. I try to post something with twitter when something interesting happens. I always intend to write an update about it at some point, but never do...

...mostly at the moment I'm having a hard time feeling anything but depressed, anxious or angry. My birthday is less than a week and I can't even get excited. All I think is "ok, wow, I finally can rent a cheap rental car, which'll help me save money this month." I have 7 more days of flying left this month, and all I want is to get a new job. Dave's leaving for Cape Air in October and I'm afraid I'll never see him again. I'm stressed out about moving out of the house. I can't even enjoy playing WiiSports right now. Having days off is great but I just feel like I'm in Dave's way, because he has work and things to do but I know he wants to hang out with me. I don't have a routine when I'm home and that bothers me. I feel like I need to get some sort of part time job so I have that to do on my days off, but what do I do? I want it to be something drama free (i.e. no retail, preferably no people at all) and something where I can set my own hours. Oh, and preferably make some extra cash.

basically I'm feeling very lost right now...like I'm drifting around with nothing to anchor myself to.

Here it goes again...

2008-07-12T18:53:00.002-04:00

Starting September 1st I can truly call myself a real airline pilot...

...I'm getting furloughed!!

They say you're not an airline pilot until..

2008-07-10T15:17:00.002-04:00

So it looks as if I'll be displaced to ACY starting August 1st as a result of the 45 furloughs that Spirit's enacting.

Unfortunately we already know there's going to be a 2nd, even larger furlough, we're just all sitting around waiting for it to happen, which is even more frustrating.

Got to fly to Montego Bay, Jamaica in the 321 the other day with an all-female crew! I've never seen so many terrified men in my life :P

Unfortunately we left at max ZFW which meant we had very, very little extra fuel. We basically left at the minimum required by law each time. We were so heavy in the 321 that the captain and I decided that the best course of action was to use TOGA power both takeoffs since we had very little available stopping distance. Those Jamaicans can pack!!

I've been on reserve all week, off duty finally tomorrow. I can't wait to get home and see David, I've seen him so little lately. I already got two trips for next week so that'll relieve some of my boredom!

Also, lines come out at noon tomorrow so I'll spend part of my afternoon trying to decipher that. See how it'll be in ACY! There's also been a phone message from the union saying that the company didn't include our 4 days off in between trips, so we'll see if that's still there tomorrow. Hopefully the union raises enough of a stink that we get our days off back! The majority of the pilot base commutes, we need those 4 days off!!

Tales from ATL

2008-06-13T17:47:00.002-04:00

Had an interesting day in ATL the day before yesterday. Had a flight from MCO to ATL and got onto the arrival before having to hold due to wx over the airport. Finally got cleared in after about 20 minutes, if 10 more minutes had passed we would've had to divert to Columbia (what dispatcher didn't think we'd need holding fuel?).

In ATL the lovely ground crew disconnected our external power before the APU Gen was spooled. Fifi no like-y. So we were delayed as a result of having to let Fifi refigure out where she was.

Aaaaand then ATL decided to switch from the 9's to the 27's. Spirit 138, you're now 872nd in line for departure!! That was a 50 minute taxi right there :)

Working 6 days in a row this week. I'm tiiiiired.

Well crap...

2008-06-03T16:37:00.001-04:00

I've been trying to keep this news from my parents, but it looks like, thanks to some blabbermouth in our airline that the news is out.

Crap.

Ok, I'm back

2008-06-02T15:42:00.002-04:00

I've been slacking off on the blog for far too long.

A quick update on life, month by month:

January - my last month at ERAU. Spent studying for new hire class at Spirit and hanging out with friends. Stressing out with Dave over whether or not we'd be able to stay together through training (we're still together, thank goodness!). Left for Spirit at the end of the month.

February - Spent almost every waking moment either at new hire class or in the hotel studying for new hire class :) Every other moment usually involved beer. Class was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be, I really took to the Airbus well. I wasn't really updating through training because I was busy, depressed about not being at home, not really knowing what to update about, etc etc.

March - went through my new hire sims at Airbus in Miami. Didn't post then because I was really stressed out and angsty. My sims were all from 11pm-3am, the hotel was shitty and my sim partner pissed me off sometimes. But I did pass my type rating ride on March 7th and started IOE late March.

April - more IOE. Didn't post then because I was having a hard time on IOE, mostly with my approaches and landings. Had a hard time getting the sight picture down on final and it took me a while to get used to the weight and speed of what I was flying. But I finally got off IOE in mid April and started flying the line.

May - on the line, based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Basically hated being based there. I don't speak any Spanish so it was hard to communicate with people. They'd just pretend to not speak English, ugh. And my schedule was such that I lost a day off before and after each trip commuting to PR. I value my days off, they're the only time I get to see Dave or my family, I don't want to waste them flying to PR. So I bid for and received a base change to FLL. Which meant sitting reserve instead of being on the line.

June - currently I'm sitting on reserve. Yesterday I actually got a call for a Port-Au-Prince turn, but didn't get any work today. So I'm sitting around the crashpad (which thank goodness is awesome) and trying to keep myself from eating myself to death :) Which is why knitting is awesome.

So...I'm going to try and keep this updated more. I finally reached my dream of flying big sexy jets and get paid for them, so I should write about it!!

Hooray!!

2007-12-10T23:42:00.000-05:00

Two HUGE things off my shoulders today...

1: I gave my boss notice...no sneaking around pretending I didn't just get a job!!

2: I'm FINALLY a full commercially rated pilot! No more of this "commercial multi-engine land, instrument airplane, private privileges single engine land" business. I can now officially say I am a "commercial single- and multi-engine, instrument airplane." Phew!!

The checkride went really well. I showed him the best steep spiral I've ever done and a decent 8s on pylons (during which he was getting the ATIS for Flagler and Ormond and calling each field to see how many airplanes were in the pattern). We then proceeded to Ormond for a normal landing, followed by a short-field takeoff, go-around on the first power off 180, damn good landing on the 2nd power off 180, soft-field takeoff (I LOOOOOVE SOFT FIELD) and a near-perfect soft-field landing in DAB. The checkpilot flew a lot, which was nice but also good for him because we got from point A to point B much faster. Basically we didn't get a plane until about 30 minutes after check-in time, and it took 45 minutes from engine start to takeoff (seriously it was like KATL today, the damned ground controller couldn't handle all the traffic).

Anyways! Woohoo!!

Oh geez I almost forgot...about an hour after my checkride David and I flew the club airplane to KMLB! His roommates were doing a CFII XC and we tagged along to go to dinner at Meg O'Malley's pub. Food: amazing. Stomach ache from overeating: not so amazing. But the air was smooth and the skies clear, so what else could you ask for?

And to think I used to say I didn't want a pilot boyfriend ;)

Checkride, part deux.

2007-12-09T18:18:00.000-05:00

I have my re-check tomorrow at 2...ack!!
But it's with the same checkpilot, who's really not going to want to fail me...so as long as I don't totally fuck up again, I'll be good.

It's been too long...

2007-12-04T10:44:00.000-05:00

I really should update more often. Now that Ravelry is up people may actually read this, hehe. So...updates!

STILL waiting on my single add-on checkride. I'll try to make this long story brief. I failed my checkride on the 26th. Oral went fine, but I totally screwed up my steep spirals and just couldn't concentrate enough after that to do decently. 25 knot winds from the south at 3000 feet, holy cow! And we had a solid 15 or 16kt crosswind on landing at Flagler. If I have landed in crosswinds like that, it's been a couple years. And on a checkride, geez!!

You'd think, what, a few more flights and back on for the flight, right? Well our team manager assigns a new student to his instructors as soon as they sign off a student, since there's a huge waiting list. So Henry had to figure out how to schedule us both...it wasn't really working out. On top of that Henry started getting on me for really really really minor things in my flying. If it was before my first checkride it would've helped, but I already had very little self-confidence after the failed flight, so this basically destroyed what I had left.

After 2 flights where I came home and had breakdowns, the boyfriend said that if I didn't ask for an instructor change he'd drag me to see our team manager himself. He had the same problem with his CFII and didn't want me to waste more time or money. And as much as I like Henry, I had to do it. On top of everything, I had only flown 4 times in the month since my checkride.

So last night I flew with my new instructor (who I flew with once before when Henry was busy) and things are much much better. This guy is a top-notch instructor. Lots of tailwheel and aerobatic time, and he's just amazing at teaching me the really fine control of the airplane that I need. We did 9 soft-field touch and goes and 3 power off 180s and my confidence is really coming back. The soft fields are getting sooooo pretty now that I'm being really aggressive with the rudder and not freaking out that we're using up 1/2 of a 3200ft runway just trying to bleed off airspeed. My power offs are really good, too!! I'm within PTS every time.

Gotta go out and practice, though....

Boyfriend update: he's fantastic. I don't want to get too mushy, but *twirls* he's awesome. We've had a lot of fun in the last couple months! Which makes the next topic especially hard.

I got a job. In Fort Lauderdale.

Spirit Airlines hired me and 7 other ERAU grads to be A320 first officers, starting January 28th. I'll have to write a whole post about it, because I'm freaking out over the whole thing. Neither of us are looking forward to our relationship taking on that airline feeling yet...but I really have to take this opportunity while it's available. I love him, honestly. At least I'm keeping my house in the creek, and he really wants to get on with XOjet, which is based in FLL, too. *crosses fingers*

Ok, I'll write more, but lunchtime is here.
Next time on my blog...
1. Spirit!
2. Knitting update. Or, revenge of the yarn fairy.

duh

2007-10-22T16:16:00.000-04:00

Oh! This weekend!

Sadly no pictures, but my camera was dead and the wx was sucky anyways. Dave and I were planning on taking the club plane over to Tampa for the weekend. Friday there was significant tstorms lined up EXACTLY with the route of flight. How does that happen? Anyways, so we took advantage of living in Spruce Creek to fly home. I cannot even begin to tell you how much fun it is to land, taxi to your house, and park the airplane there. Afterwards we went to Downwinds with Mike, Chex, Liam, Dan, Natsu and Brian (former CAL intern coordinator and ASA ATR pilot par excellence). Mmm mahi mahi sandwich.

Dave and I woke up at oh-dark-30 Saturday morning, realized that even at 0700 it's not light out yet, and went back to sleep. At 0800, we got up again and checked the wx. The cold front from the day before is still on top of us, so we decide to wait it out a bit. But since the whole trip was predicated on the airshow at Whitted, we figure maybe it's not going to happen...and an hour and a half later, the wx still sucks.

So plan b! Roll out of bed and go to breakfast at Downwinds...decide that the wx isn't too bad to do some local. So after calling up the guys down at KTIX for a "weather briefing," haha, Dave, Mike and myself hop in the 172 (conveniently parked at the house!) and take the 20 minute hop to KTIX.

At the 123....sheet metal work!!!! Cal says I definitely have "the touch" when it comes to riveting but I can't tell if he's just trying to sweet-talk me. Dave thinks it's ridiculously sexy that I like to rivet, so he lets me do it as much as I want. <3

Saturday afternoon...naptime, hanging out, overall fun and relaxing! Kristin came over to crash around 11 and we woke up at 0600 (oddly enough my body just assumed it was going to work and was ok with this). After seeing her off I went over to Dave's to go back to sleep (he woke up a few hours later trying to figure out how I got there ^.^). Then FLORIDA MALL, *drool*. JASON'S DELI *DROOOOOOOL*

And it rained. A LOT.

Ok so that was my weekend. :))

Oooooh we're halfway there....

2007-10-22T16:04:00.000-04:00

I passed my single-engine add on oral today!! 1/2way to being a commercial pilot with asel and amel and instrument (no more dorky 'private pilot priveledges single engine').

The oral was...interesting. It was only about 45 minutes and I think the check pilot figured out about 10 minutes in that I knew what I was talking about because almost every question was so far out there that I wasn't even expected to know it. However we must've spent 20 minutes on maneuvering speed and how stall speed changes with bank angle and whoa. Then I don't think we even went over 5 systems. But come on, it's a 172. After fuel, avionics and electrical, what is there to go over?

All in all, everything was very abstract and "let's test your correlation level of learning," whereas my previous commercial oral was much more "tell me about the electrical system of the seminole." It was a workout of an oral, let me tell you!!

Waiting for the flight to get scheduled...in an hour I'm off the hook for it being tomorrow, which is nice because the Wx is no good for practice today. Hard to do chandelles when the ceilings are 2500 bkn.

In knitting + flying news, I got invited to Fly n' Stitch on ravelry!! It is so cool to see a group full of pilots and dispatchers who knit ;) Hopefully a few of us can go to Women in Aviation next March and have a little knitting meeting!!

David took this a few weeks ago when we were flying, it's my new favorite picture:

An introduction...

2007-07-10T21:15:00.000-04:00

I realized while writing my "first post" that since this in a new blog for me, I should spend the time to write a decent introduction.

Well, this is me:
I guess you could say that my most domination trait is: I fly airplanes. I'm 23 years old and I've been flying airplanes since I was 18. I've always been obsessed with space (my first word was "moon" and my first Cabbage Patch kid was an astronaut) and flying is my greatest passion. Pilots are a different breed. You know those bumper stickers that say "my wife told me I had to pick her or fishing...I'll miss my wife?" Well, that's actually true for pilots. Flying is something so ingrained in your soul that it really is an inseparable part of you. I have my commercial multi-engine rating, instrument rating, plus my high performance, complex and high-altitude endorsements. My mom says this means I can fly big airplanes really high into bad weather.

I (for the next 14 1/2 hours) am a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL. Tomorrow is my last day of school! On Monday I start my first "big girl" job, as flight security officer at ERAU. I didn't want to leave Daytona yet, so I managed to get this job. I'll be in charge of the security for our flightline. Basically I'll be making sure people who aren't supposed to have access to our planes don't, and issuing/re-issuing security badges to our students and flight instructors. There are a lot of benefits, the largest being free tuition and discounts on flight training. So as soon as possible I'm starting my single-engine add-on for my commercial rating and then start my flight instructor rating.

Speaking of flight instructing, I have a really cute guy right now who's a flight instructor at school. We met two years ago because we were both in Women in Aviation. David's joke was "I like women, I like aviation, so I'm here!" We joke that it finally worked out for him :) He's a cutie, a huge airplane dork like me. Plus he's totally crazy about me, so that's wonderful. I unfortunately just got out of a really long relationship so I've got a really big emotional barrier up against him. I just don't trust myself anymore. On the upside, there are a lot of things that ultimately caused the demise of my last relationship that aren't problems with David. So we'll see what happens there. I'm just enjoying myself day to day.

Let's see, what else. Well, I'm a 2nd generation Florida native, which I hear is pretty weird. And no, I'm still not used to the heat. My joke about Floridians is that we just go in the pool from noon until around 3pm, then there's a thunderstorm, and by 6 that's done and it's not too hot to be outside anymore. My best friend is Spencer, who's my Jimminy Cricket/co-pilot/overall rock. People call us the odd couple, but we get along mostly because we think the same way.

I'm not really an overachiever in the strict sense, because I can be a total slacker if I'm not feeling into it. However, I do call myself a smarty-pants, just because I've always been in gifted classes, went to an International Baccalaureate high school, and if I get an A in this last class I'll be graduating with a 4.0. I work my ass off for what I want. :)

Really the purpose of this journal is to have something that no one I know reads. I had a livejournal for about 6 years, but this is a whole new chapter for me, so I feel like I need to start something over. Plus, having something that my ex, plus all my old friends from high school, won't see is a plus. My purpose is to do something more than ramble about my day.