For those of you with the yearning to know what life's like at a regional, here it goes(yes I am really that bored!!)....after enjoying my total of 38 hours at home this week with my wife and 7 week old daughter - I was called for a reserve trip last night - an 'easy' highspeed from DTW to AVP and back this morning. It was my first time to AVP for a long time and my FO was also an old Allegheny guy that was based at BGM with me so I was looking forward to visitng our old stomping grounds(AVP was a common destination for BGM crews)...walk onto a black airplane because the external power on the jet bridge doesn't work but no big deal, mechanic tells me that the #1 ice detector has been MEL'd - again, not a huge deal. As is standard practice we are min fueled with a mere 17 minutes of contingency fuel before we would have to dip into our reserve fuel - actually we had 400 lbs of C-Fuel and how the crap we could get 17 minutes out of 400 lbs in the CRJ is beyond me. Anyway, we finally get things going and shut the door and block out...I happen to glance at ED2 and see we have 1 more status message than we should have - "MAIN BATT CHRGR"...quick glance at the QRH indicates that the main battery charger is not functioning(duh!)....I have enough hours in the Challenger/CRJ to know that a battery problem is usually a minor annoyance at worst so I consider going anyway but being the rule abiding Captain that I am, since we're still waiting for a pushback crew I call maint. on the cell phone to get the circuit breaker reset sequence(they don't call it the 'Reset Jet' for nothing!!) - long story short, main ended up coming out and MEL'ing the main battery charger - has anyone flown a CRJ with a battery charger MEL'd?? What a pain in the marbles - to my amazement you lose a TON of stuff including service lights, both clocks(even the time display on the the MFD's), APR, APU, etc. etc.
We finally get to the hotel several hours late meaning that if I go right to bed I MIGHT be able to squeeze in 3 hours of sleep before we have to get up and head back to the airport. The morning flight to DTW went amazingly smooth, except that it was colder than a witch's t.....well let's just say it was really cold at 5:30 am with no APU.
Back in DTW - I head to Bob Evans to grab a decent breakfast (where I actually fall asleep waiting on my food), then I take a nap in my car(because I'm too cheap to pay for a hotel today since I have another trip tonight), then to Borders to hang out for a while and catch up on some reading and now I'm sitting at Panera having lunch and bumming the free wireless internet while I bore you with this thread and wonder if I'm going to have a job next week. Since my laptop battery is about dead, I'll probably head to the mall in a few minutes to walk around and mingle with the retired, unemployed, and other slackers that have nothing better to do during the day. Maybe another short nap before I go back to the airport for my deadhead to Green Bay, 7 hours of ground time, and a 0600 launch back to DTW tomorrow morning.
Don't just sit there drooling folks, Pinnacle is still hiring so if you hurry and get your application in, you too can be living the American Dream!!
(I wish I could remember the phrase for 'seize the day' but it escapes me at the moment)
Jason
We finally get to the hotel several hours late meaning that if I go right to bed I MIGHT be able to squeeze in 3 hours of sleep before we have to get up and head back to the airport. The morning flight to DTW went amazingly smooth, except that it was colder than a witch's t.....well let's just say it was really cold at 5:30 am with no APU.
Back in DTW - I head to Bob Evans to grab a decent breakfast (where I actually fall asleep waiting on my food), then I take a nap in my car(because I'm too cheap to pay for a hotel today since I have another trip tonight), then to Borders to hang out for a while and catch up on some reading and now I'm sitting at Panera having lunch and bumming the free wireless internet while I bore you with this thread and wonder if I'm going to have a job next week. Since my laptop battery is about dead, I'll probably head to the mall in a few minutes to walk around and mingle with the retired, unemployed, and other slackers that have nothing better to do during the day. Maybe another short nap before I go back to the airport for my deadhead to Green Bay, 7 hours of ground time, and a 0600 launch back to DTW tomorrow morning.
Don't just sit there drooling folks, Pinnacle is still hiring so if you hurry and get your application in, you too can be living the American Dream!!
(I wish I could remember the phrase for 'seize the day' but it escapes me at the moment)
Jason
tags Chris,where are your