Bad Transformer, Bad

Aug 12, 2008

Tonight is packed.  Our departure ticket shows upwards of 20 United Regional flights all departing within half an hour of each other bound for all corners of the Northeast. The weather is good, but not too good.  Challenging would be the word. Arrival at KACK is expected to be the usual zero visibility from black of night and summer shrouds of fog.  Call me crazy but I’m looking forward to it. Just last week my sky babe and I were taking a long weekend on Block Island and I spent many hours in between shrimp cocktails watching the fog roll in and describing to my girl (ad nausium to her I’m sure) how dangerous that fog is.  How the sea and sky become one, the horizon vanishes, and the region conspires to swallow unsuspecting pilots whole. JFK Jr’s Piper was lost in that very fog in this very area not much more than a decade ago.  Yes, last weekend more than a few hours were spent on the deck of the Spring House Hotel sipping Coronas and watching GA aircraft scramble into KBID airfield before the dusk turned to night.  As much as I was on vacation, more than a small part of me wanted to be up there with those GA’s.  I should have brought my aviation scanner with me, then at least I could listen in. It’s a sickness, I know.

But just as we’re getting ready to preflight our ERJ145 tonight the bad news comes in. All traffic is temporarily and immediately grounded. Word is that a power transformer responsible for powering air traffic control’s systems has blown up leaving FlightDesk and radar systems all black.  Oh well.  Nothing to do now except find a quiet spot away from the glare of frustrated passengers, grab a Starbucks, power up the laptop and wait it out.

Good time to update my blog too.  It’s been weeks since my last update, but not for lack of interesting things happening. It’s mostly from flying nonstop for weeks now.  And not only have we been flying a ton, we’ve also been training a ton of United Regional pilots. There have been a number of promotions, routes have been added, and there’s even talk of a new aircraft coming to the line soon too – some Super MD80's we inherited from the Continental merger. Super nice if you ask me.  Plus there’s the constant rotation.  Mother is constantly sending pilots on routes all over the country.  We’ve even had some of our best pilots sent off on loan to other airlines. Captain Conner has been working with Delta Connection, and just last week I received word that Flight Officers Ian and Eric were both loaned out to operations in the Far East.“ Additional training and cultural awareness” Mother calls it.

I call it the draft.  Just like major league baseball Mother will fiddle with the mix and seniority of flight crews and regions in a never ending attempt to create the best combination of pilots and skills for a particular duty, or perhaps even for cross training.  Last I heard FO Eric was working with China Airlines doing FMC training with crews on the Big Iron.  FO Ian I heard was running a UPS MD11 freighter on long hauls to build up hours towards his Captain’s qualification.

As for me, our crew had also been rotated out to the Hawaiian Islands for a week.  Mother apparently saw a need for additional pilots to shuttle tourists on short hops between the islands. The only thing that keeps me from feeling completely displaced while halfway around the globe are the familiar voices on coms of captains and officers I have trained and flown with.  Soon I’m hearing coms from Bill flying the shuttle runs, Branden bringing in a 737 in from San Diego, Mariano in a hold over Lanai, Jim, Javier, and even Peter in UAL615 who unfortunately had to declare an emergency when his gear didn’t give 3 green lights.  That was a little tense to listen to but I’ve had it happen too.  I could close my eyes and hear the warning horn and the three yellow lights blazing in his face all the way down.  Fortunately it was just a bad indicator.  UAL615 ship and crew made it down safely.

Towards the end of our rotation we were sent out to the Midway Islands on a company charter flight to pick up a team of biologists working there for a few months. So with 16,000 pounds of fuel onboard, the trusty CRJ roars out of Henderson Field (PMDY) to ferry 40 scientists over to the Big Island where A/C, real showers, and connecting flights to home await.

Departure from Henderson Field is eventless, and the air is smooth as we set the GPS for DANNO.  The FP indicates a three hour flight before entering the BOOKE8 pipeline, and then more than 200 miles after that to PHNL.  With one big long straight line to fly and thousands of square miles of ocean to cover the flight quickly becomes a battle against fatigue.  But it also affords plenty of time to think.  And in this case to think about the ferocious battle that occurred here over 60 years ago.

7 aircraft carriers, 2 battleships, nearly 50 support ships and hundreds of aircraft slugged it out here in the Battle of Midway.  How surreal it is to be traversing the very same airspace where the turning point in the War in the Pacific took place.  Flying the very same routes that, had we not won that battle, Japanese bombers would be using to attack Americans in Hawaii.  And if we lost Hawaii...?  I can’t help but reflect on the lives that were lost in this very sky and sea nearly 7 decades ago.  It’s one thing to read about it, but it’s an entirely other thing to be here flying it.

Hours into the flight the exhausted scientists are sleeping, and even the flight attendants are reading books.  We are about two thirds of the way through the flight and I’m running out of things I can use to keep myself from losing focus when a futuristic “ping” sound emanates from my flight bag.  Ahh, someone is sending my Droid phone a text (had to ditch the iPhone… bad antennas). Even though we are in the middle of the ocean and far from a cell tower I’m amazed the range these things have at 31,000 feet.  Happily enough, the ping is from FO Eric.

“Check your 12 o’clock” he says. Hmmm, Ok, let’s see.  Like scanners on a starship looking for signs of life I reset the TCAS for its maximum 40 mile range, and sure enough it pings a single ship at the very edge of the screen.  A quick check of FlightAware.com on the Droid reveals that it is CAL18 – FO Eric’s ship.  Big sucker too.  A 747-400 out of Tokyo en route to Honolulu. “Nice”..  I reply via text.

It turns out this is his last run in the cultural exchange and he left Tokyo at O’dark thirty local this morning, crossed the international dateline at sunrise, and will be returning to the world of United at Honolulu.  As luck would have it, the Universe provided him with a spectacular sunrise to remember CAL by, and he’s sending some pictures over.  He also tells me that FO Ian was rotating back this morning as well, and Ian’s MD11 and Eric’s 747-800 both departed together. He sent over some pictures on the Droid to show.  Very cool.  I love airplane pictures, and the ones he sent are pretty awesome.

Back at the concourse at Bradley and the Droid chirps again.  A controller friend of mine has sent a note saying power is coming back and ATC will be up soon.  Thank goodness.  I know PAX and pilots alike are anxious to get out of here, and soon it will be a mad dash for the sky. Time to head for the aircraft and get her spooled up.  Air captains throughout the concourse all have the same idea and PAX have noticed the increased activity by uniformed personnel and are starting to stir as well. Time to pick up the pace.  I want to be first in cue just as soon as ATC is online again otherwise we’ll be stuck waiting for clearance for another hour.

Power and avionics in the ERJ are lit, clearance delivery announces ATC service is restored and suddenly coms are ablaze with requests for departures.  We’re lucky to get in the cue quickly and our flight is underway, only 3 hours late.  Off we go screaming into the night air once again.

Traffic is heavy and ATC is tight.  Once again I hear the calls of familiar voices – UAL74, UAL428 and even my controller friend running arrival at KACK.  TCAS reveals one long string of aircraft and ATC is a nonstop machine gun of instructions.  It’s a little ridiculous in fact.  I’ve never heard calls and responses so fast and so non-stop.  Nothing but super pro pilots and controllers machine gunning instructions and responses at each other.  I wonder if the poor KACK arrival controller even has time to breathe in between calls.

As we near Nantucket I can see this approach is going to be fast and hot.  There’s another aircraft already turning across our path headed for runway 24 not more than 2 miles in front of us. ATC vectors us around sharply to follow that bogie, and in and down we disappear into the usual black murk of the fog. It’s zero viz as usual all the way down to the deck.  ATC has our initial approach above the glide slope - too high for Betty to take over - so we are hands on, blind, and descending fast.  The usual breakout at about 800 feet and 2 miles comes quickly but shows us just a bit to the right of the centerline. 

A kick of the left rudder and a quick request for power from the twin Rolls Royce Allison engines puts us in a floating crab angle for the centerline.  A Delta 737 is at the hold short and is requesting to get out ahead of us.  “Not going to happen,” I think to myself.  ATC responds more diplomatically with instructions to hold for an aircraft 2 miles inbound.  30 seconds later the ERJ crabs over to the centerline right at the numbers, and with a right kick to the rudder and a chop of the power she glides to a straight on landing just shy of midfield. The Delta is anxious to get out of Dodge so we keep power up to exit off the echo taxiway to the right.  Over to the ramp and we’re unloading and loading pax quickly, and resetting the ship to depart again for KBOS with probably the fastest turnaround we’ve done all year.  There’s a huge backlog of frustrated loved ones to shuttle home and we’d love to do our best to accommodate them as best we can.  Mere minutes after arrival and we are back on the taxiway, cleared to roll and tearing back up through the black murk to punch into the moonlit sky yet again.

Altitude and speed are ramping up as best as we can make it happen.  There’s lost time to make up for, the controllers are machine gunning instructions again, and TCAS is full of aircraft.

Me? I'm grinning ear to ear.