Before and After

This past weekend was the Masters golf championship in Augusta, GA.. if you didn't already know that. Due to the event, US Airways schedules our planes on the route, for increased capacity. It's the only weekend during the year that we fly to AGS. I had never been there before, and was excited to see a new place... and see how things ran during the golf championship.

Took one flight down on Saturday, and while we didn't have that many passengers, the airport was still quite busy. Here's a view out the front:

Don't think you'd normally see a 737 in Augusta, or the 50+ corporate jets parked on a taxiway...

Fast forward to Monday, the day after the championship ended...

Looks a little different, eh?




On Sunday we spotted this Gulfstream in Savannah, GA.. enroute to Augusta. Cool paint job. Any guesses on who owns it? Check out the registration on the engine: N1KE


A strong line of storms moved across the country, arriving in Charlotte on Friday evening. There were plenty of diversions, late flights, canceled flights, you name it... but we were pretty lucky and ran on time. We took off out of Charlotte heading to Memphis, with the bulk of the storm system still to the west, moving in on CLT. It was pitch black as we picked our way through the storms, with only frequent flashes of lightning and our strobe lights reflecting off of the clouds that surrounded us. Moderate precipitation and turbulence and we worked to get over the thunderstorms and break out on the other side. We finally broke out of the system, to be greeted by a beautiful glimpse of the horizon with the last rays of light still visible as we chased the sun westward.

Evening rush hour in CLT. A 757 with blended winglets follows us in line for an 18L departure.

Enroute to IAD (Washington Dulles) in an empty United Express -700. "Air Shuttle 7000, traffic is a heavy C-17 at your 10 o'clock 8 miles, converging, 1,000' above you" Taken with my new camera, which I'm still trying to figure out how to use!

First ice of the season. A couple of months ago, descending into DTW (Detroit). Ice accumulates on our windshielf wipers as we pass through clouds at sub-freezing temperatures.

The windsock is sideways on the ground in DTW. A direct crosswind gusting to 27 knots makes for a fun landing. Let 'em off, put 'em on, back to CLT we go...

Picture time!

It's been a while, so I figured I'd post some pictures I've snapped over the past few weeks:

Sunset as we climb out of Missouri, St. Louis at the tail, Charlotte on the nose. On the way to STL the Captain and I were talking when I overheard a unique callsign on the radio. I held up my hand, "Did you hear that? I think he just said 'Air Force One''. Sure enough, the next transmission was Air Force One confirming a frequency change with the Air Traffic Controller. Huh. Kinda cool.

This one's for you Jennifer! On the ground in STL, a C-17 Globemaster cargo plane sits with Missouri Air National Guard F-15 Eagle's visibile behind. I wouldn't mind driving either.

Enroute from Colorado Springs to Phoenix, crossing the southern end of the Rockies. Cool how the broken cloud layer extends eastward from the mountains, while the west side is clear.

Another shot of the snow-capped Rockies as we near the border of Colorado/New Mexico. The night before, a 100 knot wind was at our tail pushing us towards COS at over 550 knots across the ground. In the morning, we have 120 knots of wind directly on our nose, struggling to do 380 knots over the ground.

Washington Dulles playing hide-n-seek in the fog.

'Uptown' Charlotte, trying its best to hide in the low fog layer. Approaches down to just above 'minimums', but luckily everyone was getting in.

5 points to whoever can guess where this picture was taken. Oh, and the points are redeemable for... nothing. Ha.

Can you spot the plane? If you can, you should point it out to me, then have your head checked because I'm fairly sure there aren't any in either of these pictures!

Just bored, playing with my camera and a pretty shot of the leaves changing outside of my apartment.

Hmmmm...

That doesn't look right... It's 6:20am in Newark. It's a nice cool Saturday morning; we're scheduled to fly to Charlotte, do a quick Raleigh-Durham roundtrip, and then deadhead to Kansas City. The following day we will fly from Kansas City to Phoenix, do some PHX flying, and then transition back to the East Coast. Or so we think.

I'm setting up the 'flight deck'; doing an 'acceptance inspection' testing individual systems on the aircraft while my Captain is outside checking the exterior. He comes in from the walkaround and says "Hey- come check out this tire". Hmmm.. I'm thinking there might be a small defect, and he wants my opinion on whether I think we should continue or try to get a new tire. Approaching the left main gear from over 20 feet away I can see the damage. "Holy crap. How did they not notice this last night?!" Ok. Maybe if the spot in question was resting on the bottom, it would have been hard to notice this during a postflight walkaround at night. Who knows? I don't.

Alright, we need a new tire. Too bad we're one of the only operators to fly this type aircraft into Newark, so the chances of them having a tire are slim to none! Sure enough, there isn't a tire on the field, so our company is putting one on the next flight up from Charlotte. It's going to be awhile, so we decide to go relax at the hotel intead of the airport. Our flight eventually canceled (sorry passengers, and gate agents!) and the plane was finally ready to be ferried back to Charlotte at 3:00pm. We missed our deadhead, and the PHX flying we were supposed to do the next day. But, we got to spend another night at home - so it wasn't all that bad!

A Jet Airways (carrier from India) 777-300ER being prepped for it's flight from Newark to Delhi. It's biiiig.

A Lufthansa 747 landing with the Manhattan skyline in the background.

_____________________________________

Just finished a 4 day trip yesterday with some interesting occurences. Our second night we overnighted in Memphis. The hotel van driver said things were crazy at the hotel and that they were completely sold out. Not really thinking, I asked why. "A lot of people are coming to Memphis to evacuate the Gulf Coast for Hurricane Gustav". Ohhhh yeah. Duh. That would explain all of the Mississippi and Louisiana license plates I see. This isn't the last we would see of Gustav on this trip.

Day 4 of 4. After leaving Harrisburg, PA I check in with New York center as 'Lifeguard' Air Shuttle 2663. NY: "Lifeguard Air Shuttle 2663, cleared direct Charlotte" Well that never happens. But today we're given priority handling, as we're operating as a Lifeguard flight. Medevac flights or flights carrying time sensitive transplant organs attach 'Lifeguard' to their callsign and are given priority handling. We've got a heart valve onboard, going for a transplant in Charlotte. Cool.

After dropping the heart valve and passengers off in Charlotte, we continue on to San Antonio before finishing the trip with a return to the Queen City. The weather in San Antonio is fine, but it's what remains between CLT and SAT that could be a problem.


The Captain expected our dispatcher to file our flight plan to the north of the storm thru Memphis towards Oklahoma, and then down into Texas. But that isn't the case; the paperwork shows us filed to Atlanta, then pretty much direct to San Antonio, a route that looks like it goes right through the meat of the remnants. I check the radar summary before we leave, and it's showing a line of storms through Mississippi with tops in the mid-30's, with some cells reaching above 50,000'. We should be able to top the storms that reach into the 30's, and we've got some extra fuel to go around those that reach higher.

We cruise west at 36,000' and are just at the tops of the clouds, getting a fairly smooth ride. No deviations on the way, and only a couple of zig-zag's on the way back at 37,000'. Not too bad at all.

Home for a couple of days, then back for another 4-day on Friday when Tropical Storm Hanna is predicted to make landfall in in the Southeast before tracking up into the Carolinas. My trip remains on the east coast till Saturday morning when it transitions to PHX. Hm. Convenient....

More pictures..

Uhhh, which one are we supposed to follow again? Number who-knows in line for takeoff, runway 18L, Charlotte. Sadly, this 30+ minute wait is a regular sight during US Airways 'pushes' in CLT.

A bittersweet sunset. Descending into Greensboro, NC, on a diversion due to a thunderstorm over the field in CLT. We held as long as we could, but ultimately had to divert to get some more fuel. Good news for the one passenger who was actually connecting in Charlotte to Greensboro! Bad news for the other 85.

We're at Flight Level 360 enroute to Houston, and this storm rises several thousand feet above us. The winds are out of the west at over 70 knots, creating a cool effect overtop of this towering cumulus.

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.

An F-16 departing TUS before us. I wouldn't mind driving that.

Sunrise in STL

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..

Oops!

No, it's not a new advertisement for US Airways, or two planes in love (well, maybe it is..). It's what happens when the rampers in Charlotte attempt to have a PSA airlines CRJ700(left) and CRJ200(right) occupy the same space at the same time. Also, it appears that the horizontal stabilizer and elevator are stronger than a rudder... good to know. According to rumors, the ramper pushing back one of the planes just walked off the job after the incident, knowing that he would face a drug test. Who knows if that's true. What's crazy is all that would really happen would be perhaps a drug test, and then a slap on the wrist; "don't do that again."

This is a day or two after the incident above. The -700 sporting a new, unpainted rudder.

A picture I took of three of our planes on the ramp in CLT. Nine-oh-Nine.

At Flight Level 330, we had already deviated around 2 thunderstorms, and from the looks ahead, we were going to have to go around some more.

You know what's crazy? RADAR. RAdioDetectionAndRanging. I flip a switch, and our radar sends out waves that bounce off of precipitation 160 miles away, then paint these pretty little pictures on our screens. It takes a few seconds for this to occur - to bounce off of rain drops 160 miles away, then come back so the precipitation can be mapped! Crazy talk. Approaching Jackson, MS, enroute to CLT from San Antonio. The radar image is mapping the storms that are seen out the front window. We would end up deviating around 2 more storms, and barely beating a line of storms into Charlotte. The wall of rain hit just as I was getting off the employee bus and walking to my truck. Perfect timing.

That's an arch.

That's me in front of an arch.

Deeeetroit. Downtown on the left, Canada across the water on the right.