I Heart NY

My last trip found me practicing the hub and spoke model out of LaGuardia in Flushing, NY (I never grew up, that's grade A toilet humor right there...). I guess you could say "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Or actually vice versa. You see, tropical storm Hannah was making it's way up the East Coast, right about the time we departed southwestern VA for the northeast. After a quick trip to NY, followed by an early end to the first day in Baltimore, we awoke on day two to the beginnings of Hannah. You only need to have ever watched The Weather Channel to know what bad weather can do to New York's big three airports, and we were already anticipating a change in plans along the way. We easily made it to LaGuardia in time for three hours of airport appreciation, prior to launching to Burlington, VT. Flights to Washington, DC, Baltimore, and Philadelphia were already starting to show as cancelled on the board. We all thought that we might be spending the night in Burlington, because there was no way we were making it back to NY. Thanks to Hannah's hefty winds, we arrived in Burlington a good 30 minutes ahead of schedule. There were already ground stops for traffic destined for Newark and JFK, but not LaGuardia. This is practically unheard of. We decided to load up the passengers as soon as we could and get the heck out before that changed. The nice tailwinds we enjoyed were now ferocious headwinds. We were only managing about 160 kts on the ride back, which gave the ice lots of time to accumulate. This was actually my first ever flight into "known icing conditions", and it was interesting, to say the least. We were being assaulted by sleet, or ice pellets as it is more commonly referred to in aviation-speak. We broke out of the rain band about 70 miles from the airport, and it was eerily clear below us all the way back. We could see the next band approaching from the south, and thought for sure we'd never leave for Syracuse.

Well, about an hour later I'm doing my preflight in preparation to depart to Syracuse. Doesn't dispatch know about the tropical storm? I guess not, because they are determined to get these 6 people to upstate NY. We made such phenomenal time on our trip to Burlington that we were still ahead of schedule, so we loaded up our 6 and pushed back just as the next rain band really started to dump some water on the airport. The path from the gate to runway 13 was wide open, but ground didn't send us straight to the end of the departure runway, which could only mean one thing. Sure enough, as we were crossing runway 22 we were told to turn "right on DD, hold short of the windsock, shut 'em down". By this time the rain is falling so heavily we can't see the terminal anymore. The captain calls operations, and I make a PA to our passengers to tell them the good news: all departures are stopped and there is no ETA on when that restriction will be lifted. The line of planes is growing behind us, at least we're first. Operations gives us 90 minutes before we have to return to the gate and release our priso....er, passengers. After the much-publicized JetBlue fiasco with the ice storm a few years ago, the Port Authority of NY/NJ has some new rules governing how long you can keep passengers on an aircraft on the ground. One hour and twelve minutes later, a mere eighteen minutes to go before we have to return our passengers, we get the instruction to start both engines, monitor tower, and be ready to go. Within five minutes we are airborne and trying to find a path through all of the red and yellow radar returns, but there is so much rain that there is no path; we are along for the ride. Our airplane handles turbulence very well, but it can't have been a fun ride for the passengers. Thankfully, the tailwind we enjoyed on the way to Vermont was still blowing this way, and it pushed us to Syracuse in about 40 minutes. The wind was blowing steadily down the runway, and I made an uneventful landing after breaking out of the low cloud deck. Tomorrow, all of this would be gone and we'd be left with beautiful weather, which allowed me to fly my first "Expressway Visual" to runway 31. I didn't get a picture of that, but I did manage to snap one prior to commencing the approach (things get pretty busy at that time...):



And one from the first morning, following the Hudson river prior to making a u-turn for landing:

Hub and Spoke

So far I'm 37 "cycles" into my SOE, or, Supervised Operating Experience. A cycle is quite simply one leg from point A to point B. All but two of my cycles have included Charlotte (CLT) as one of those two points. I don't understand how the bean counters figure out when to schedule flights and how those flights are matched to connecting flights, but I find it fascinating. We all come in at the same time, and we all leave around the same time in waves. CLT has a flow control program in place for arriving flights, to help ensure that when you get there, you'll have a gate available. The New York airports attempt this by using "wheels-up" times to control the flow of airborne traffic during heavy times, but so I'm impressed by CLT's system. When we get here, our gate is always open, and we rarely have to wait on the ramp. During push times, when everyone is racing to leave, it can get pretty cramped, especially when trying to get from the express terminal, around the two massive Airbuses that always seem to be parked at the end of D terminal. On that note, talk about poor capacity planning; who thought it would be a good idea to put international flights, especially an A340-600, like, the longest airliner in existence, right where the majority of flights - regional aircraft - have to taxi in order to leave or arrive? It's a self imposed choke point, and causes all sorts of problems at the wrong times. Depending on the ramp controller, it can be better (Jimmy!) - or worse (not Jimmy).

After 40 hours in the airplane I'm starting to really get a feel for flying it. I still have a bit of trouble coming into the smaller airports after leaving CLT, specifically with my speed. After the CLT controllers have you keep your speed up for sequencing, you have free reign at other airports, which often ends up with me high and fast. Luckily, we fly an aircraft that can slow down and drop in on a dime, but I'm trying not to use its capabilities as a crutch and instead use better planning and judgement. Coming into Roanoke the other afternoon I was so high that I couldn't slow down, and ended up having to circle to another runway (embarrassing).

Last night's flight, the only one of the day, had us leaving the relaxed atmosphere of the south for the hectic, congested airspace that is NYC. I'm actually based in LGA, but this was my first time there. Aside from not understanding what the heck they were saying, it was a beautiful night and we were actually early to arrive and early to leave. The sunset on the way back to Roanoke was a nice treat: