Anyone go into PIT yesterday?

[kellwolf]

Yeah....just yeah. I had a simple MSP-PIT out and back that turned into a friggin ordeal from hell. Everything was going smooth, and my CA and I were fat, dumb and happy cruising along bs'ing about 80s hair bands. Then we hear "Flagship, can you slow to min cruise speed, otherwise we're gonna have to hold you. PIT is closed for some airshow thing." So, no problem. Pull out the book, look up min cruise, and throttle back.

Hand off to the next control. "Flagship, I've got holding instructions when you're ready." Great. So, we hold for about 30 minutes and they tell us "You're EFC time is gonna get pushed back another 15." Well, we were just discussing how we were gonna be at min fuel at the PREVIOUS EFC time. After conferring with dispatch, it's decided we go to CAK for fuel (we were almost on top of it anyway). Turns out the NOTAM was screwed up. The one we had (and Eagle and a few others) said that 28R was still going to be open for air carrier use. Guess they decided to close the whole thing so the Blue Angels could have their fun.

So, I play "kung fu fighting FO" to get everything set up for the slam dunk into CAK, get on the ground, get fueled in under 8 minutes, and start taxiing out. "Flaghip, PIT just went on a ground stop." So, we discuss sitting at the gate or in the penalty box. Dispatch gave us some extra fuel in case this happened again, so we take the penalty box option. Shut down both engines, leave the APU running, and wait. And wait. And wait. Ground finally calls us and says "Ground stop is lifted, but they closed the airport again. It'll open again in 40 mins." So, we decide to sit there for another 20, then start em up and leave since it's only a 20 min flight from CAK to PIT (so we would be getting there right when the airport opened). 20 minutes later, we crank 'em up, call ground and here "Flaghsip, you're not gonna believe this. They just closed it again."

We call dispatch, who keeps bugging PIT tower to find out when they are gonna open up. Every time he called he got the same response "Just a few more minutes." Meanwhile, we've got a cancer patient in the back and 44 other people that have been stuck on a CRJ for over four hours. We decide to go back to the gate, get more fuel and let these poor people off.

Get back to the gate, pop the door, and (you guessed it) PIT opens up. So, we get fuel, load 'em back up and we're finally off.

Pretty interesting experience for my first divert...

[wheelsup]

gotta love block or better, diverts, etc.

helps the paycheck quite nicely.

[stuckingfk]

Originally Posted by wheelsup

gotta love block or better, diverts, etc.

helps the paycheck quite nicely.

Except if you're Mesa...

[Alchemy]

Okay, I realize that PIT looks like a ghost town, but it's still a "major airport". Why are they closing this place down for "airshow practice", or even having an airshow there at all?

You're telling me there's not another airport with a 10,000 ft runway somewhere in the Pittsburgh area where they can do this? I heard planes in CLE and PHL sitting around waiting for their wheels up times to PIT for this on thursday....seems dumb.

[kellwolf]

Originally Posted by stuckingfk

Except if you're Mesa...

Or on reserve...... still probably won't break 75 hours this month.

[wheelsup]

Originally Posted by stuckingfk

Except if you're Mesa...

no they like it too - all they care about is building time to "move on" so every little bit helps.

the FO's want to build time to reach 1000 TT to go to skywest and the CA's want to build time to go to Southwest, which also only pays scheduled credit time (hence why they like the mesa guys so much, they are used to it).

[BobDDuck]

I was going to post this under a separate thread, but this one is perfect for it.

Title was going to be something like "so you really want to be a regional pilot".

Anyhow, we are flying the last flight of the night from Charlotte to Gainesville. We are running behind by about 30 minutes due to having to hold on the way into Charlotte because approach apparently lost all of their radios. Don't know how that happened, but we were about 2 minutes from diverting to GSO to refuel when we finally got cleared in.

So I run in and grab the paperwork in Charlotte. No alternate and about 600 pounds of extra gas spread out over holding and tanker fuel. (Holding is generic for actually holding and for deviating/slowing down. Tanker is for bringing gas with you if it is cheaper where you start from then where you are going, although we just use it for some "just in case stuff".) The weather is good in Gainesville and the TAF is showing a possibility of scattered showers after our arrival time. I pull up the radar on the gate computer and low and behold see Florida style thunderstorms all over the place, but mostly to the sound and west. So, off we go.

We get about 90 miles out and tune in the ASOS (tower closes at 10:30 and it was around 11:30 now). The ASOS gives us the bad news. Winds 140@16 Gusting 25. Visibility 2 1/2 miles. Ceiling overcast at 900. Heavy Rain. Lighting All quadrants.

Great. Of course, the only ILS they have is or runway 29, which means we are going to be shooting a GPS approach for 11. I haven't shot a GPS since the sim. Fun. We make the turn so we can actually see the airport on the radar and it is covered in red. Even better. Approach allows us to take delayed vectors out to the west where it was clear and try to come around the back and shoot the approach between two cells we saw on the radar. That doesn't work as the ASOS is now reporting a 300 foot ceiling and 1 mile visibility. We need 600-1 1/2. A quick check of our fuel and a mental figure to JAX or TLH tells us we can mess around for a while. I spend the next 25 minutes spinning the heading bug as we fly a box pattern at about a 10 mile final. There is an ASA plane holding on the final approach fix, and at one point they request to try the approach but decide not to when JAX tells them the visibility. Wise move.

The big problem is that we are at 5000 feet burning gas quickly and the weather isn't moving at all. Winds at 5000 are around 4 knots which is no where near fast enough to move the weather off the field. After waiting 30 minutes and having no luck we decide to divert to JAX. We ACARS dispatch and call ops at GNV to let them know we won't be coming in. We then head north-east to KJAX as ASA decides to break through the line and divert to Daytona.

JAX is overcast at 600 but with an ILS we have no problems getting on the ground. The problem we do have is that apparently everybody (ground operations) has gone home for the night. Luckily there was a ramper finishing cleaning a Mainline Airbus who was able to park us, and even more lucky was the fact that two CSAs were just walking out of the airport when they saw a long CRJ taxi in. Bless their hearts they came back out to the gates and took over the passengers for us.

The good news continued in the fact that scheduling actually found a nice hotel for us and we were able to find a taxi to get us there. We got to the hotel around 2 am after starting the day at 10 am. 9 hours of rest later were back at the airport ferrying our plan to Charlotte and then dead heading back to Gainesville to pick up our trip. Today was another 14 hour day ending up ironically enough in Gainesville again. At least we made it in this time.

Moral of the story. This job, while mostly fun can lead to some long hours. The problem is that when you are tired is often when you need to be making your best decisions.

Because a picture is worth a whole lot of words, here's the flight track. Keep in mind it is from about 1 hour after we landed so the weather has moved some but you get the picture. Notice too how nice my box pattern was considering I was just using the heading bug

[Cruise]

Yep, I was in PIT yesterday as well. It was a crazy mess.......thought for a moment I wound up in LGA instead. It's so rare these days, to see PIT all backed up and holding planes all over the place.

We had been given holding instructions by Cleveland and just as we were entering the hold.....cleared direct MMJ. We never even made on turn in the hold....SWEET! However, getting out of PIT was another story. There was quite the conga line. I saw one XJT plane holding short of the taxiway for at least one hour before the ground stop lifted. Fortunately for us, I got to watch the Blue's practice from the food court and by the time our departure time came around, the airport was open again and we only waited about 20 minutes to get out.....way better than many!

On a side note, I'm commuting home tomorrow and unfortunately, it's gonna be through PIT. I could get hosed w/ the airshow ground stops

[CFIse]

Originally Posted by stuckingfk

Except if you're Mesa...

Diverts work just fine for Mesa. Holding doesn't work out so well.

Better for you not to talk about things you don't understand.

[Mr_Creepy]

Originally Posted by CFIse

Diverts work just fine for Mesa. Holding doesn't work out so well.

Better for you not to talk about things you don't understand.

Yeah he must not know about that little clause in the contract

[blee256]

Originally Posted by CFIse

Diverts work just fine for Mesa. Holding doesn't work out so well.

Better for you not to talk about things you don't understand.

correct, i heard if you divert or do a gate return, you get paid for all of it.

[wheelsup]

how many grievences are outstanding at MAG? We hit an all time high here the other day of 32 from 2 a year ago. It seems management everywhere just doesn't like to follow contracts anymore.

the big one went to arbitration a few days ago and we should know by mid-november.

[stuckingfk]

Originally Posted by CFIse

Diverts work just fine for Mesa. Holding doesn't work out so well.

Better for you not to talk about things you don't understand.

Didn't know that about gate returns or diverts. Thanks for sharing!

Having said that, MESA still sucks. What kind of place wouldn't pay you for holding? I think it'd be funny if the pilots just quit flying after the block time passed and the plane crashed. Maybe their company would rethink their policy?

disclaimer: I don't want anyone to die or get hurt, just think it would kind of ironic.

[wheelsup]

Originally Posted by stuckingfk

. What kind of place wouldn't pay you for holding?

southwest, they pay historical credit time only I believe.

That being said, their payrate is a LOT higher.

[Bandit_Driver]

I had the same thing happen to me in 2004 when I was flying out of there daily. It was almost comical with all the diverts and holds and the same useless NOTAM that the airport would be open for scheduled airline trafffic.

[Callous]

Originally Posted by stuckingfk

Didn't know that about gate returns or diverts. Thanks for sharing!

Having said that, MESA still sucks. What kind of place wouldn't pay you for holding? I think it'd be funny if the pilots just quit flying after the block time passed and the plane crashed. Maybe their company would rethink their policy?

disclaimer: I don't want anyone to die or get hurt, just think it would kind of ironic.

Or if the pilots held an auction to see where they would actually land. Cash only.

[GaTechKid]

I enjoyed the Blue Angels practice from inside the terminal. Then I enjoyed my weekend off while all you other poor sob's dealt with the actual air show. Oh, and there's a military base at PIT which is why they had the air show there.

Nice creep to a Mesa bash by the way. Perhaps we can add a jab to Blowjets too?

[kellwolf]

Why couldn't they use the military base? They use a decomissioned base whenever they come to MEM. Had to shake my fist at the shiny jets all parked nicely in a row as we taxiied by them in PIT.....

[GaTechKid]

The static aircraft were over at the military base but the base is right by runway 32. The Blue Angels/stunt aircraft had to use the airspace right over the airport which is why it was closed to commercial traffic.

It would have made more sense to hold it at a reliever airport like Allegheny but I'm not the dufus in charge.