The Days of our Lines

My day started this morning at 3:45 and the sound of the alarm on my cell phone. I have a sick fear of missing a show time and getting fired because of it, so I set 2 alarm clocks- within minutes of eachother. Plus- I know myself too well. I will procrastinate and not get up, therfore I set 4 alarms on my cell. 3:45, 3:50, 3:55, 4:00am. Plus my atomic/smart clock at 4:00am and 4:10am, respectively.

 Nevertheless- I was awake at 3:50 and up and in the shower by 55 minutes past the hour. My drive to the airport is a usual 30 minutes to trek 34 miles. Today, there is about 3 inches of snow on the back roads that I’m travelling on and I’m planning on getting in behind schedule, albeit still early. I get into the US Airways ops room at about 5:18 for a 5:20 show, the first crewmember to arrive. Next is our flight attendant Wendy and the captain. We head out to the airplane to do our morning runup. The airplane, like the roads is covered with thick, wet, heavy snow. I do my exterior preflight and jump up into the cockpit for the day.

 Lucky me! There are no weight and balance forms or TOLD cards in the airplane. Now when we finish the runup, I’ve got go back into ops and get those- a measley 200 yard walk, or more. Dreading that it’s only 23 degrees outside- I put my jacket back on and walk back into the building and get my paperwork. I get back to the airplane and we start boarding. As a new FO, budgeting my time is imperative or else I will start slowing down the operation. I have to get the ATIS, Clearance, Fuel info, runway and climb limits, and then the paperwork gets going fast and things start piling up in the cockpit. Within minutes of passengers getting in their seats, the flight attendant with throw her load form into cockpit which has her passenger count and their zone (A, B, C or D). I need everything that is on that sheet because it will go on our Load Manifest (W&B form). Usually within seconds of that, the OF-11 (pronounced ‘oh-eff-eleven’) comes into the cockpit with what bags were loaded into our cargo compartment and their respective section. In the Saab it is either C1 or C2 (US Airways calls is R1 and R2). Once I get the information, I begin my math. Once I get ramp weight, TO weight and Landing weights I tell the captain “GO FOR 28.5″. All that means is I’m ready for index limits for a TO weight of 28,500. He’ll spin the wheel and spit them out and I’ll copy them down onto the form. I’ll give it one more glance to make sure I filled out everything and I hand it over on my clipboard to the captain. I immediately begin getting Vspeeds for TO and TO power. In the Saab we do reduced power takeoffs based on reduced power incentive given to us by our engine owners, General Electric. I get the speeds and settings, write them down and boom. The doors are closed and I’m calling for push.

Today, since we’re covered in snow we’ve got to go to the deice pad. We’re taking type 1 today. With type 1 we have 6 minutes from the last application to get off the ground. In Ithaca, NY there is 1 deice pad. There are 4 airplanes that spend the night there. (2 Air Wisconsin CRJs, 1 Colgan Saab and 1 Mesaba Saab). The deice pad is in hot demand on winter mornings. The problem is, the CRJ and Northwest Saab are all earlier departures than our 6:20am to New York’s La Guardia. The CRJ takes 40 minutes to deice. The Northwest Saab takes 1 hour. You see, the snow was SO thick and heavy that it was taking 25 minutes to deice 1 wing. It took us SO long to deice that a ground stop came up for us as we were taxiing out, luckily the people in the Ithaca tower worked their magic and we avoided further delay.

 So it’s my leg and we’re on our way to LGA. As we get closed the Captain picks up the weather and talks to Ops on the ground. He gets our gate and request other special things like a LAV service and catering. He passed on the weather to me- seems as though there is clear skies and gusty winds in NYC at 320@21G32. In LaGuardia they’re doing the Expressway Visual to runway 31, an amazing approach as it gives the people in back a beautiful view of downtown Manhattan. Because I like this approach so much, I decide to turn off the autopilot coming down the Hudson. I land the airplane with two small thuds and the captain tells me excellent job. He takes the airplane and I’ve got the radios now.

 My today is…

ITH-LGA 0620 0745

LGA-ITH 0810 0945

ITH-LGA 1020 1129

LGA-ITH 1159 1324

 We reboard and head back to Ithaca for a rather uneventful flight. When we get back ITH we find out the winds in LGA are worse and they’ve started to use the same runway for takeoffs and landings. This is inevitably means a ground stop. Sure as shit, we’ve got a wheels up time of 1123, which is not too long because we’re already behind schedule from this morning’s deice fiasco.

 We go inside, shoot some shit and board up and head back out. Luckily, the ice that was on our wings from our decent into Ithaca has melted and we dont need a deice. We board up and head back to the big apple. It was a nice flight, very bumpy. In LGA they had switched to the Localizer to runway 31, the tower reports +/- 10 kt shear on final from 2000 feet all the way to the ground. Luckily it’s my leg again. I flew it well and touched down extremely smooth, on speed and in the touchdown zone and I got another seal of approval from my captain telling me “You’re the best I’ve seen in a long time”. Which put a smile on my face, no less.

Everyone is on board and we’re headed back to Ithaca. Short wait in line for takeoff…about 10 airplane which is pretty short for LGA midday. Back in Ithaca- we’ve got the to be the bad guy and tell the afternoon crew that there will be a 2 hour groundstop for LGA. The bad part of that is, they had a show time of 1250, and we didn’t even land until 1350.

The MEL’s that we had on our airplane today were-

Nose wheel steering, rudder limiter (which restricted us to 180 knots) and finally the flight attendant jumpseat.

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