From the Flight Deck

What does it mean when the pilot instructs the flight attendants to "prepare for crosscheck"?

The first leg, flight 1139 (Toronto to Denver) starts off well, just a few bumps over TVC (Traverse city) for about 10 minutes with a few thunderstorms to duck around topped at 30,000. Like most large airports one does not know which runway you’ll be assigned until well into the approach. Denver is no exception. Of course, you try to make an educated guess based on the ATIS and wind direction, but when there are six different pieces of real estate i.e. 12 runways it can be a crapshoot. When checking in with Denver arrival we were told runway 26 for us. This required our third runway change in the computers. I begin to change the runway, the F/O is flying the first leg, and I noticed my MCDU (Multifunction Control Display Unit) is frozen. The MCDU is the interface used to communicate with the FMGC (Flight Management Guidance System). Okay I thought, I’ll use the F/O’s. It freezes up. By this time we are on vectors and things are happening. We are about seven thousand feet AGL and we run into light to moderate turbulence. Like Calgary, Denver gets a lot of bumps due to daytime heating, but there are no clouds giving a heads up. Temperatures are mid to high twenties, but the air mass is dry, dew point around 4C. I call it the “dry heaves.” After trying to “hard tune” frequencies (back up) I remember to check the secondary flight plan because everything in the primary flight plan fell out i.e. disappeared. The data was still there and I manage to get the runway in the “box” just prior to the final vector for runway 26. The F/O handled it well as I worked as a “one arm paper hanger.” Lucky it was VFR, no clouds in sight, so if need be we could have turned off all the magic and flew it like a DC-9.

Flight 1040 (DEN-YYZ)

We knew those thunderstorms in western Ontario may be an issue on the return flight. The TAF was calling for a 30% chance for our arrival. We were holding YUL (Montreal) as an alternate and we were tankering three tonnes of extra fuel. Flight dispatch has a program, which determines whether buying cheaper fuel is worth carrying. Pilots like tankering fuel because nowadays fuel calculations are done with a “sharpened pencil.”

While enroute a SIGMET is issued stating a solid line of TSTMS tops to 55,000 feet is now observed in Western Ontario with possible GR (hail) and FC (Funnel cloud). I had to remind the F/O of the acronym FC. The amended TAF timed the thunderstorms to be either over the airport or passed to the east for our arrival. A datalink from dispatch confirmed the thunderstorms have passed and the Toronto airport is open for business. However, I knew things would be backed up on the ground because of the “red alert.” That’s when all ground personnel (rampies, fuelers, marshallers) walk off the site and everything comes to a grinding halt. Sure enough after landing we are told to taxi to the CDF (Central Deice Facility) and wait. I make an announcement for the passengers on the right hand side to look out and they will see 30 other airplanes waiting for a gate. Chaos. It turned out, several tornadoes had spawned. A B777 reported a funnel cloud to the north while on final approach.

Flight 470 YYZ-YOW (Ottawa)

Things at the airport had gone off the rails. The inbound Tokyo flight (B777) diverted to the small airport of YXU (London, Ontario). Many others diverted to BUF (Buffalo). We get our flight plan after clearing customs and everything is showing on sked for us. Hmmm? I guess as I get older I get a little more cynical. We go to our gate only to find the outbound flight has not departed and there isn’t even an airplane for the posted outbound Edmonton flight. We call flight dispatch, they don’t know. We talk to STOC (Station Operations Control), they don’t know and passengers ask us what’s going on and you guessed it, we don’t know.

Now our “duty period” is becoming a major issue. Basically we are good for 13 hours of duty time. We started at noon and it’s now midnight without an airplane or an assigned gate. Finally an airplane arrives after waiting 20 minutes for a marshaller to guide them in. The arriving captain takes me aside and says two things: the in-charge is a little different and the cockpit temperature is wonky. There’s a history in the logbook snags stating it takes quite some time to cool the flight deck.

We are fuelled and catered and ready to board. We are expecting a full flight but a flight attendant bolts because of duty time. We are now capped at 120 passengers (1:40) with three flight attendants. But wait a minute, there is no agent to board. Finally boarding starts at a snail’s pace while the entire time we are watching our duty time and the weather indicating TSTMS are hitting YOW. Finally after 1:30 a.m we are airborne after getting a special sequence number because we are outside YYZ’s curfew time.

The ride to YOW is smooth, but our radar is painting WX (weather) to the south. The surface winds are from the south at 15 knots. Should we do a straight in ILS 07 approach with a southwest tailwind of 50 knots aloft or shoot the back course approach onto 25? Ottawa is the capital of Canada but it only has a backwards-back course into the prevailing westerlies. Sure they have an ILS on 07 and 32, but it sure would be nice to see an upgrade because for a back course on an Airbus, it’s like one notch below a “pan,pan,pan.” As we are vectored during the wee hours of the night heavy showers are invading from the south. All the time, I am trying to cool the flight deck as the temperature soars to 28C. The F/O is doing a fine job although while on short final I suggest we go to “medium” on the auto braking because of standing water. The wipers are at full blast and we can feel the antiskid working as we slow on the runway with full reverse. We get to the hotel at 3:00 a.m. The life of an airline pilot, you gotta love it!