From the Flight Deck

What is that bright ball in the sky?

The pictures in my last post were somewhat gloomy according to one reader, "The Halifax hotel pics looked SO bleak! You must be longing for spring!! On average how long will you have to go on deicing? " So, I decided to use this photo compliments of 'tail spotter Erik'. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Captain Ian will be heading to BGI (Barbados) for some vitamin D during a layover. I will finish up the month with a Montego Bay, Jamaica turn this Monday out of Halifax. But for me the downtime is 50 minutes.


As I mentioned in a few posts, my maximum projected flying hours was limited t0 82 hours. (Contract restricted) If I had exceeded this limit 'crew sked' would have dropped my next three day pairing with me losing 15 flight hours - translating into 67 hours pay instead of 82. Well, I'm happy to announce everything is intact although today it came close.


CYYZ-CYHZ-CYYZ


This morning we took an A320 which arrived from an Edmonton 'red eye' to Halifax. The forecast snow did not start in Toronto (though it was starting) so the wings were clean, or so we thought. We call the deice coordinator only to find a bit of rime icing adhering to the leading edge picked up on the approach.



I make the mandatory announcement we would be heading to the "world's largest deice center" and I estimated it would be an extra 15 minutes. (I'm getting tired of making these 'deice' announcements so I thought I'd spruce it up) We close up with a full load, push back and taxi out to a huge line up. Oh oh, my projected flight time will overshoot 82 hours. The process took 45 minutes. Not because of the deice center, but ground control had to get aircraft across the active runway because the winds were howling from the northwest as the 33s were active. I made 40 minutes of block growth on this flight. Just one leg back to Toronto. After a 'hot air' maintenance issue we push back ten minutes late. Luckily the winds were out of the south so it blew warm air in. Translation -no deicing required. Things were looking good because the flight plan had us 10 minutes under schedule. But hold on, the snow and high winds are affecting operations in Toronto. "Air Canada 121, you are cleared to the Simcoe (YSO) VOR to hold. Oh oh. I'm going to blow the maximum time for the month. You're probably thinking, this guy is more concerned about pay than the holding pattern.



"Air Canada 121 your hold is cancelled." Music to my ears. Dougie boy greases it on after a near go-around because of a late clearing Dash 8. I set the parking brake and I'm 81:30 minutes for the month. It sounds greedy, petty, selfish and self-consuming but you ask any airline pilot and they will confess they watch their block time to within the minute.

**NEW** This picture of the Vestergaard Elepha nt Beta was sent today by student 'Chris'

It was plus one, so the facility was at idle. So far this year the CDF deiced 9500 aircraft. It's been slow for the CDF but I see Toronto maybe be getting snow on Monday. The day I go back to work. Winter is not over yet.

Here one of the students gets checked out on the deice truck simulator. It's tougher than it looks. Every year each deicer must be re certified just like pilots.

Inside the cab of the Vestergaard Elephant Beta. It has more joysticks than my Airbus.


The orange rod is the "tusk" of the Elephant Beta. As soon as it makes contact with an airplane the truck stops and shuts down. A great safety feature.

Type I fluid (orange) inside the truck's holding tank (6000 litres)

Type IV. It's colour changed to this lime florescent green about two years ago. This anti-icing is similiar to a liquid plastic with a shear speed of 180 knots. Cost, almost $4 Cdn per litre.

I know Ian is regrouping and printing a new flight plan as I post. In fact, I took a quick peak and things are resurrecting quite nicely from the ashes. Ian loves aviation and it's clearly depicted by his well writeen posts.

Here's Ian's new address: http://www.ian-theflyingscotsman.blogspot.com

and watch his new blog get airborne.

First officer seat removed - down to single pilot operation. Not really, but at least I got your attention.









Maintenance removing the old seat. The delay took two hours waiting for replacement/installation.








I get more take and landings in a three day pairing than some of the wide body drivers do in three months. Yes, I miss the long haul.


Day one proves to be uneventful. We get to the short layover hotel in Halifax with time to spare for a debriefing cocktail. Translation the "beer math" added up. At A C it's 12 hours from "bottle to throttle." Many layover cities have short layover hotels and downtown layover hotels for longer layovers. In Canada, there's Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver with two sets of hotels. The flight attendants are pretty much the same with some diferences.


Day two starts with a 4:00 a.m wake up. It's my leg and I notice a YAW DAMPER #1 fault during the ramp checks. The rudder has two dampeners and we thought because of the brisk wind outside it had something to do with it. We beckon maintenance. There is no circuit breaker reset for this.


It's 6:00 a.m and these guys have been up all night. One of them says, "oh sh$t" when he sees the snag. Not a good thing when maintenance says this. Off to work they go pulling circuit breakers and activating hydraulic pumps. They wanted it fixed because they knew in order to dispatch this aircraft under an MEL, it would entail climbing up into the tail and pulling a cannon plug to the yaw damper. Not a fun thing to be doing at the end of a midnight shift with the winds blowing.


They fix it! It's off to deicing for a quick spray with frost on the wings. We had a curfew restriction for landing in YUL. We could not touch down prior to 7:00 a.m and the flight plan was showing 10 minutes under sked. Our maintenance situation and deicing fixed that.


In YUL we had an aircraft switch and a trek through American customs. It took over 20 minutes to get through security/customs and that was the fast track. The flight is full. We arrive at gate 75 but the boarding screen said Los Vegas. We were confused and rest assured the passengers were too. No airplane. There's rumbling there might be a maintenance issue.


After switching gates and boarding the airplane it's learned the First officer's seat sinks to the floor during landing and take off. Not a good thing. It's a 320 so the seats are mechanical and not electric.


The seat must be replaced. There is one getting refurbished in the shop and if that didn't work they would rob one from another airplane. Finally, after 2 hours we are on our merry way to frigid Florida, but not before we transit a jet stream depicted to be blowing a whopping 210 knots from the west. My 'in-charge' said two days before he encountered some of the worst turbulence in his career from it. Our wind read out clocked the winds at 270 degrees at 185 knots and we only got a few bumps. We elected to stay low and it worked out nicely.


Luckily the weather gods were friendlier that day. We arrive in Orlando with a maximum temperature of 9 degrees C, two hours late and had to wait 15 minutes for the gate to open up.
Needless to say it was off to a local pub for debriefing beverages. Another early wake up but day three proved uneventful.


The life of an airline pilot.

Downtown Victoria, British Columbia in front of the Empress Hotel where one can still attend afternoon tea. Meteorologically speaking, Victoria is the best place to live in Canada. Heck, look how green the grass is and it's February!













Victoria harbour where one can watch float planes come and go. Our layover hotel is a 3-5 minute walk to here.








Yours truly in front of the seaplane terminal. This picture was taken by a friendly passerby. Security was heightened at the terminal because of the Olympics in Vancouver. I was thinking of using my jumpseat reciprocal agreement (free passes) to take a flight to YVR and back. My f/o said he did it during a YVR layover. The price is right, but I gave it a miss. Next time.











I flew to Victoria on Sunday and laid over for 30 hours. I flew the now infamous flight 190 back to Toronto this morning. You may remember about a year ago this flight encountered severe wake turbulence from a passing B747.


I didn't officially start my month's flying until the 10th, because I bid for some days off to possibly rendezvous with the "Flying Scotsman." And as you know, Captain Ian took sick with appendicitis. Those Boeing guys. lol


So why was I touring Victoria? This month, February, I was projecting a measly 69 hours of flying. Our DMM (Designated Monthly Maximum) is a low 75 hours. We either get paid what we fly or the DMM and that's if we have time in the bank. (The time bank can accumulate up to 20 hours or we deduct from it to a maximum of -13.5 hours) By taking this Victoria layover I now topped up my projected flying up to 79:55. However, there is a glitch. Frequently, I joke we pilots must be part time lawyers because we are always asking ourselves, "is this legal or am I legal to fly?"
This holds true for our confining contract. Don't get me wrong, we all need to adhere to the contract, but sometimes it just doesn't make sense.


Our maximum flying we are allowed for this month (it changes every month) is 82 hours. I have 2 hours and 5 minutes to play with. Winter months is conducive to block growth because of deicing, stronger headwinds, slower operations, etc. Plus we get paid what the flight was blocked at or what we actually flew whichever is greater. A case in point, our flight this morning was worth 4:25 but because of weaker tailwinds the flight was 4:35. Already I made 10 minutes in block growth. What happens if I am going to bust the 82 hour max? Crew scheduling will drop my last pairing and I'm back where I started, at lower than desirable hours. It's called the "one minute outbound" rule. If I'm projecting one minute over the projected monthly max, I'm toast. This is where I throw my hands up.


A few years ago when I flew internationally, I could have flown to Tokyo and back which would have topped me up nicely for the month, but I was denied the pairing. Why? Because I was projecting 3 minutes over. I could flown to the other side of the world and back but denied because of a confining contract.


I'm off to YUL (Montreal) early tomorrow morning. They are forecasting snow overnight so Captain Doug will most likely be visiting the deice center and you can rest assure I'll be watching my projected maximum for the month.


It's all fun and games, and yes it's still worth it!

Here's one question from enRoute's February issue. The question was sent in from "follower" Lukas Kusiak in Montreal. Thanks Lukas.

Please note, that is not me in the photo. Although I am getting greyer, balding, and will probably be wearing glasses when I have my next medical. I talked about seniority on my last post, and it's one of the repercussions of moving up in the pecking order- age.