It’s a Tri-Center night.
In fact it might just be the first Tri-Center night I can ever recall happening on BVA. Even during an official event I don’t think I’ve ever seen three center’s online at one time. For a United Regional pilot, that’s like a sign from God himself to go flying, so that’s exactly what we’ll do. And to have the planets align even further it was on a Thursday night for our regularly scheduled dispatch. How cool is that?
Flight Officer Jason has done a fine job on dispatch of stacking up about 30 jets from across ZBW and ZNY and all focused on KCLE as their destination. Thor Himself has also participated as well by brewing up some serious rollers over the Midwest and sending them down the alley to the Northeast just in time for our departure.
Our taxi from the United Regional terminal at bravo at JFK is south via Kilo to 4R for departure. With the jet pointed south on Kilo I can see lightning strikes to the south and it seems prudent to check in with departure quickly for an update on the position of the rollers. Departure indicates there are storms all around us. “Can you find a hole for us out of here?” I ask. Departure replies he’ll do the best he can, but delays are up to 2 hours at the moment so I may have to just punch through them if I want to get out of JFK anytime soon. “Roger that, we’ll depart now and take the best you can give us.”
Wheels are up and we start the Kennedy One departure turn to heading 100 and I can hear other company ships checking in… UAL618, 359, 373, 225, 195, 323, 221, and 435 are all up and clamoring for altitude and speed. The E175’s onboard weather radar is painting Thor’s work nicely with big splotches of yellow and red. The WX range is pegged at 100 miles and still the screen is covered with red and yellow paint. These are some pretty big storms, and I see that indeed we are completely surrounded by them.
Just as soon as we level out on heading 100 ZNY calls for a hard bank over to heading 030. “I have a short hole for you to punch through if you can make that turn.” We immediately comply just in time to skirt the very edge of a particularly large splotch of red and yellow. The lighting flashes are in such rapid succession that taking a picture of them reflecting off the belly of the Embraer as we turn is a very simple effort. I report back to center that we just clipped the edge of that roller and as we were coming around we saw speed fluxuations of 20-30 knts. Betty is leveling off the ship now to make up for that speed loss as center acknowledges our report and clears us heading 270 on course.
Climbing again now with the storms at our six and JFK nearly directly below I was able to snap one or two more photos of the 175 clearing 10K with lightning all around. Very cool stuff.
The remaining stretch to KCLE is uneventful and the route calls for crossing the Philipsburg VOR – the closest VOR to my home town of State College, PA. I remember in days past as a cadet in Civil Air Patrol going on missions out of MidState airport there and watching the search aircraft landing and departing. And now here I am, Han Solo, in the clouds rocketing over that airport at 28,000 feet. We’ve come a long way from boots on the ground at MidState Airport then, and it’s one of those days where there’s nothing I’d rather be doing than flying the line right here, right now.
A random voice calls out a little short song with a down island feel on coms. Some random pilot feeling pretty good felt the need to let everyone else know for 10 seconds or so. Apparently he’s not the only one feeling good tonight, and no one disagrees with his comment. A second random voice calls back on coms “sounds like someone has the mambo jambos.”
A third voice chimes back “If you’re happy and you know it….”
The mic clicks off….
2 or 3 seconds pass… wait for it…..wait for it… the mic clicks on again….
“Clap your hands”.
Approach into CLE is tight but smooth, and descending through the layers with one in front and one in back I decide to release Betty from her duties and bring this one in by hand. After all, company policy is every third landing by hand. Tonight is just as good a night as any to test out the emergency flight controls (stick and rudder).
Just as soon as Betty chirps her response that it’s My Aircraft we enter a zero viz cloud layer. Nice. Now I have one eyeball on the green and pink indicators, another eyeball on altitude, and a third eyeball on the speed (yes I have three eyeballs). Throttle is manual at this point and I am balancing the ship on the tip of a pin and being very aware the ground is coming up to meet me, AND I cannot accelerate past approach speed lest I overtake the ship in front of me. We punch out at about 800 feet and it’s hazy but clear enough to stick the landing and we roll smoothly out and off KILO from 24L.
5 or 6 company aircraft are already at the gate and setting up for the turnaround to the second leg. It’s still a bit hazy on the tarmac and I can see the grey skies above that are typical for this region of the country, and this kind of humid weather. With APU’s whining in the background and the smell of jet fuel in the air I take a moment during inspecting the jet for wrinkles and bumps to snap one last photo of all three varieties of company tailstacks. Very, very cool. What a fine day in the system it is today. What a fine day to be flying with United Regional.
Thanks Gang!
Come fly with us! For information on United Regional, please either visit our page on BVA at www.UnitedRegional.BostonVirtualATC.com or send an email to Chief Pilot Chuck at Chuck@BostonVirtualATC.com
