My First Day

Yesterday was my very first day after my check to line, which basically means that I was released to endanger the general public, in charge of my very own jet.  I was scheduled to operate four flights, signing on at 1200 and signing off at 2205.  

I laugh in your general direction.

So, in the 24 hours or so prior to my duty, a lot of things changed.  More things changed than one would have thought were possible to be changed, but that I’m not going to go into because, ya know, Public Forum and all that.  I spent the morning helping Kaitlyn move house, went home for a quick nap at lunch time, and then got ready for work, only to get a phone call telling me not to leave home, as my aircraft was stuck elsewhere, waiting for a slot back into Brisbane.  This was nothing of the company’s fault, as there were pretty intense weather conditions yesterday afternoon in Brisbane, with our first proper thunderstorms of the year.  (Which of course I had been psyching myself up for all day, As You Do.)

I finally left for work at 1900, arriving into the office to find a lovely plate of Lamingtons, decorated with Aussie flags, to celebrate my becoming an Australian citizen.  How very sweet! 

And once we got to the aircraft, the fun really started.  I started with my walkaround, and my FO went inside to start the aircraft.  I came back around the aircraft to hear him asking someone for a ground cart, and I’m like what?  The APU won’t start?  Nah, mate (I’m an Aussie now) the batteries are flat.

Oh.

Right.

We checked all of the button positions to see whether B had left anything on depowering the aircraft when he left it – nope, all switches in the correct position.  We tried turning the batteries on again – they came on with their normal whirring, which increases in tone… and then decreased rapidly, the lights flickered, and silence, with the instruments reverting to what is called “electrical emergency” mode.  (During flight, if everything else fails, you still have 40 minutes on the batteries to land the aircraft safely.)

Not normal on the ground.

Not normal for flat batteries either: which, let’s face it, I wasn’t 100% sure about, having a grand total of 57 hours on the aircraft, during all of which I had someone more experienced than me being able to give me advice!  Ahah!  I now had an experienced FO who could give me advice! 

No?

Oh.  Just me then.

We couldn’t even check the batteries voltage to see whether they were charged, as the screen we needed wouldn’t switch on because of the abnormal electrical transfer.

We did all of the Useful Things like checking to make sure none of the CBs had popped, and checking to make sure that we hadn’t done Anything Stupid, and checking to see whether turning it on and off again would make a difference.

Nada.

The next step was to procure a ground cart to see whether we could get the APU started from that, as I wasn’t willing to give it a go on the batteries considering we couldn’t see the voltage on them, etc.  Maybe it would have started, who knows, but I didn’t intend to see.

Also, to make it even better, Operations had gone home for the night (it was now about 2130) and our engineer was Elsewhere Fixing Things.  Having ordered a ground cart via the Ops guy who was on the other end of the phone, I spoke to the engineer, who didn’t have anything else to add, except that it was probably the batteries.  I had a niggling doubt at this stage, suspecting the rain / electrical relays / Leprechauns, but in any case, we waited for a ground cart just to Make Sure.

The ground cart arrived, after some delay, and I hurried outside to meet them.  Did I know how to start it?  Nope, I presumed that as you brought the ground cart, you would know how to start it. 

No?

It’s your first time starting it?

You don’t know where the plug goes?   

Well that’s interesting, I’m not sure I know where it goes either.  I mean, my brain froze at that point in my life and I thought OH MY GOSH THEY NEVER COVERED THIS IN LINE TRAINING I MAY AS WELL KILL MYSELF NOW or something along those lines.  I mean yes, I knew perfectly well where it was but at This Specific Time that knowledge did not come to the forefront of my brain, so I proceeded to walk the wrong way around the airplane doing a grand tour before I came back to the front and said “oh yes there it is.” 

We had to wait for someone More Experienced to start the GPU (ground power unit) anyway, as pilots do have a habit of blowing the things up.  Or at least they did in my previous company so I thought I’d better not start poking at this one.

Finally, GPU started, we were able to power up the aircraft, get the APU started, check the battery voltage – it was fine - disconnect the GPU…. Whiiiirrrr.r…..uuuuuuuuhhhh….. electrical emergency again. 

Oh, for crying out loud.

Which may or may not have been what I actually said, but my blog, my rules, I choose to moderate my own language.  You’re welcome.

With the help of the engineer on the phone, we reset some things, and finally it was all working normally.  At this stage, it was well after 2200, and we were both ready to be finishing up – and hadn’t actually flown anywhere!

We then had to taxi the aircraft down the other end of the airport to collect the self-loading freight, refuel the aircraft – can you go without refuelling?  There aren’t any refuellers working this late?  No?  Oh well, we’ll see what we can do.  (they turned up)

After that, it was all pretty uneventful.  Nobody died, nobody was even injured, we managed to land twice without damaging the aircraft, and nothing even remotely dodgy was done.  So, in the end, a fairly uneventful trip.

You’re welcome, General Public.

I got home just before 0300.  They’ve given me the day off today though, so I can hardly complain!