The Friday Brief: A Nice Day To Fly a Kite
But, not such a nice day to fly an airplane
This week I went back to work for the first time in three weeks. We’d planned a trip to Tokyo, then plans changed when we lost dad. We did sneak in a quick trip to the Caribbean, which was cut short by IT issues challenging our non-revenue travel plans.
I didn’t fly the Mooney during that stretch, either, which added to my frustration. Finally, my scheduled trip rolled up and off I went. I met my first officer at the gate, and as we walked down to the plane, I explained all that had happened, and how it’d been weeks since I’d last flown. “Watch me like a hawk,” I told him. “And speak up when you catch something.”
We really enjoyed working together but as the trip progressed, a light breeze across the eastern half of the country kicked up into a more gusty affair. Over the course of one day, we saw 30+ knot gusts in Omaha, then Atlanta, and finally in Asheville. The same wind value in each of these cities brought unique challenges. For landing in Omaha, I clicked the autothrottles off and kept the engine power up through each of the gusts, which were a quartering headwind. It wasn’t a bad ride down final, and I managed a nice enough landing out of it. It was Joe’s turn for the next two legs, and in the back of my mind, Asheville loomed large. Joe is new both to the company and to the aircraft type, and I’m a pretty junior first-time captain. Asheville is a challenging airport on a good day, throw in a good breeze and you’d best bring your A-game.
In Atlanta, that 30-knot mess was a crosswind. Joe tacked on a few extra knots down final and absolutely nailed his landing. Any doubts I had about Joe flying the next leg were gone as we swapped planes and boarded up the Asheville crowd. Before we pushed off the gate, I keyed up the PA system for the welcome aboard announcement.
“If you’ve stepped outside here in Atlanta today, you know it’s a nice day to fly a kite. It’s not such a great day to fly a plane. Once you settle in here at the gate, plan on saying buckled in until we land in Asheville, please, as it will be a bumpy ride into the mountains today.”
In Asheville the wind was straight down the runway, but still gusting to 30 knots, much like everywhere else we’d been that day. The thing with Asheville is that it sits in a mountain valley, and the turbulence kicked up as the air churns over the terrain is fierce. As we’d walked between planes in Atlanta, I had called our dispatcher and gotten an alternate airport added to our flight plan because of the wind, in case we encountered wind shear. I wanted enough fuel to try twice in Asheville and then go to Greenville, South Carolina. The dispatcher didn’t blink an eye, and added the fuel to our release.
We got bounced around pretty good, coming down final approach. Having the extra fuel for options was cheap insurance and alleviated my concerns, but wound up not needing the backup plan when landed on the first try.
It was a good day of flying, with some challenges to help knock the rust off after that stretch of time on the ground.
Two days later, the wind had calmed, and chatting with one of my favorite coworkers, I got invited on a fly-out for lunch in Eufaula, Alabama. An all-you-can-eat buffet just a few yards from the FBO there slings all the deep-friend and/or slow cooked southern staples from your grandma’s church cookbook.
NEWS
Hey, there’s some news this week.
You can’t make this stuff up: The Tennessee state legislature is taking up a bill to ban Chemtrails. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary on a motorcycle.
A Buffalo, New York man was arrested for pointing a laser at a Delta flight on March 1. Being “lased” is annoying and a major safety threat as the concentrated bright light can cause lasting vision damage to the pilots in addition to the immediate issue of ruining night vision. Generally, these incidents go unpunished unless the offender also points their laser at a police aircraft. This time, a neighbor turned the suspect in, as he’d allegedly also shone the laser into their house as well.
One man arrested, one at large for allegedly embezzling nearly $800K from John Travolta’s company, Constellation Productions. Constellation productions operates Travolta’s fleet of aircraft, including an Eclipse very light jet and two Falcon business jets. The two men, Jean Paul Lacruz Romero and Jorden Coursey, reportedly began invoicing aviation fuel purchases for Constellation Productions via a third party “discount fuel brokerage,” a company whose principal partner was Lacruz Romero’s wife. A combination of administrative fees, inflated fuel prices, or misrepresented gallon amounts added up to the $785,050 amount, a portion of which was allegedly distributed between the two pilots.
In Europe, EASA regulators have grounded the Blackshape BS 115 trainer. The grounding comes on the heels of an in-flight breakup of a Blackshape BK160 in Malaysia. The two models share a number of common design elements, and while EASA hasn’t cited the exact reasons for grounding the BS 115, the Malaysian accident preliminary report clearly states that a wing was found 560 meters from the main wreckage’s impact.
A Singapore Airlines Airbus A350-900 nearly pushed back for departure with pitot tube covers installed. A nearby refueler noticed the covers still in place and prevented a possible catastrophe. Installing the covers for a two-hour turn was in line with company policy, and the failure seems to have been with an engineer who was supposed to remove the covers signing off that he had removed them, but then not actually removing said covers. In speaking to a few A350 pilots here in the USA, covering the pitot tubes on a turn is not standard procedure for them.
Boeing highlights eliminating “travel work” as a key area for improving quality control. Fuselages assembled by Spirit Aerosystems sometimes still had tasks remaining to be completed when sent to Boeing’s plant in Washington, and following through on those tasks seems to have been a problem. Going forward, Boeing plans to only accept fuselages from Spirit Aerosystems if all tasks are complete, creating the near-certainty of increased delivery delays.
On the heels of its failed merger with Spirit, JetBlue is slashing routes. In addition to drawing down about one-third of its LAX flying, the company also plans to exit numerous markets in South America and some smaller domestic markets across the USA. The company cites numerous Airbus A321neos with the Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan requiring inspections as a key factor in the company’s inability to continue covering their network.
An opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle argues that raising the mandatory pilot retirement age from 65 to 67 is the proper solution to the flurry of 10 safety incidents at United Airlines in recent weeks. “Some pilots flying the largest planes in the sky, such as the Airbus 380, have not encountered so much as a burned-out light bulb,” the authors wrote. Interestingly, raising the retirement age to 67 would only affect American carriers and apply to flights conducted within American airspace. No airlines in the United States operate the A380.
That approach into the valley in Asheville is what flying is all about! Absolutely breathtaking, on a calm day.