A Republic Airlines Embraer E175 in the morning light, with the St. Louis tower in the background.
The first of two alarms went off at 4:15am for the second 5:15am showtime in a row. I turned the second alarm off and crawled out of bed. Even after getting to bed early and a long night's sleep, I'm still mad at the world at this hour. I don't think I'll ever enjoy getting up this early. Wide awake now, but the passengers in the boarding area look tired as we pass and head down the jetway. The plane is dark when we arrive, but it hasn't had a long night's sleep like I have. The crew bringing her in the night before had to divert to Memphis to get fuel and wait out the thunderstorms barreling through St. Louis. Looking at the log book, the crew didn't block in till just before 3:00am, and here we are two hours later waking her up. No wonder they can be temper mental at times.
"Gulftest 5, cleared for takeoff runway 9"
The location is Savannah, GA. The plane is a Gulfstream G650, the latest and greatest corporate jet slated to hit the market in the next couple of years. The G550 is one of the most sought after biz jets around, and the 650 will have the fastest cruise speed and one of the longest ranges of any corporate jet. If I had $50 million, I'd buy one.
Ominous clouds in the line of storms we just crossed
We pushed from the gate only a couple of minutes late enroute to Detroit with 79 passengers, but Charlotte was running north operations (taking off and landing runways 36 left and right, to the north), resulting in about a 3 mile taxi to the end of the runway. We single engine taxied to save fuel, but had already burned several hundred pounds by the time we were number one for takeoff some 40 minutes after we pushed from the gate. So far, so good; pretty typical taxi for north ops. But this wouldn't be a typical trip to Detroit.
The first clue came from CLT ground control; "Air Shuttle 2616, stay with me for your release to DTW". (A 'release' or 'wheels up' time is due to traffic flow and management into busy airports, or when weather is causing unusual delays at an airport) Uh oh. Detroit doesn't normally require a wheels up time from CLT.
The second clue came just a few minutes into flight; "Air Shuttle 2616, we've got a reroute for you, advise when ready to copy". Hmm.. sometimes the reroute can actually be shorter, but not this time. We were cleared to a point well to the west of DTW, then back to the northeast to the airport. The new route added 30 minutes of flight time, and dropped our projected fuel at destination by over 1000 lbs.
The problem? A line of thunderstorms running west to east, just south of the Detroit area. ATC was sending everyone to the west of the line, then back to the northeast once clear. This put our forecasted fuel load under our planned reserve upon landing. The Captain and I discussed our options, and also were in contact with our Dispatcher. We decided to continue, and if we encountered any other delays we would divert and get more fuel before continuing.
As we got closer to the line, our radar started to depict each cell. Not only could we see gaps between the cells on the radar, but we could see the same thing out the windows. ATC approved our deviations to the right of course, we seated the flight attendants in case it got bumpy, and picked our way through the line of storms. This more direct route put us on the ground 10 minutes late, with plenty of fuel on board. During my postflight walkaround I asked the fueler to throw on an extra 1000 lbs of fuel for our return flight, knowing we would have to either cross or go around the same line of storms. Life on the line continues..
Phoenix Sky Harbor
An Airbus pushing back next to us in Tucson, enroute to Charlotte. We wished that we were on that flight heading home, rather than TUS>PHX>SAT>CLT.
