Flying the Line

"Cree 927 you are clear for Takeoff runway 28. Call departures airborne when established heading" As I read back our clearance to the tower I start to advance the power levers. The captain calls out "Spoilers down, Autofeather armed, through 80%" as he then tweaks the levers to the 96% takeoff power. As we start to roll on runway 28 at Montreal's Pierre Elliot Trudeau Airport, its evident that we have a full load this morning as it takes a little while to start accelerating down the runway. "70 knots, Takeoff power set" I respond with a "cross-check" verifying that my airspeed indicator is showing the same thing and that the torque gauges are set appropriately. "V1. . . Rotate", we reach our rotation speed, I pull back firmly on the control column and the aircraft easily unsticks itself from the runway and continues to accelerate. What a feeling!  Through 400feet, I call for flaps zero, the bleed air on and climb  power as I start my turn to a heading of 320 for traffic sequencing in the Montreal Terminal area.

The captain switches over to the departures frequency and speaks to the controller who tells us to climb to our flight planned altitude of 19,000ft (or flight level 190 as its called above 18,000 ft) and to proceed direct to TAMKO, one of the way points on the airway to Chibougamau, QC; our first destination this morning. He today punches in TAMKO into our Flight Management System (FMS) and puts 19,000 in the altitude selector and I start the right turn. Since we are now flying in the right direction towards our destination, I accelerate to the enroute climb speed, while calling for the 'After takeoff checks' as we pass through 1500 feet above the ground. We confirm the landing gear and flaps are up, the climb power is set and he turns off different pumps and systems which we mainly use for takeoff and landing, confirms that the after takeoff checks are completed, then gets into the paperwork. Me, enjoying every second of the flight, I decide to hand fly up to 10,000 feet before I engage the autopilot to really get a feel of this bird. All the Dash 8's are the same, but every aircraft has its little quirks to it. I like to hand fly it to have it nicely trimmed out, it also allows me to feel how each aircraft handles, and makes it easier when disengaging the autopilot on approach so I already know how it flies. 

We break out of the overcast layer which is covering most of Southern Quebec and into the nice sunshine. Time to put the shades on, I engage the autopilot, we complete the 10,000ft checklist and dive into my flight bag for my shades. I ask the Captain what he thinks we will get for breakfast today, at the same time, we get a 'ding-dong' from the back, asking if we would like something to eat. The captain answers the flight attendants the call, then unlocks the door her come  into the flight deck. 'Phew!'  breakfast isn't too bad this morning! Some days are pretty good, others, well, don't seem so appealing: I was just happy it wasn't the breakfast which looked like a cross between a pancake, french toast, a sponge and a piece of apple pie. . . Nobody has been able to tell me what exactly it is yet, so I haven't been too keen on testing it so far. I also decide its time for a morning coffee, the captain decides to pass on the java: He's convinced the coffee on the airplanes leaving Montreal comes straight off the early morning Jazz flights from Moncton. I'll admit that it tastes different out of Montreal than all our other stations, but it's still palatable. I guess thats what 15 years of drinking the same coffee will do to you!

Levelling off at our cruise altitude, we set the cruise power and complete the cruise checks while letting the aircraft ride the southerly tailwinds. I'm doing the flying northbound this morning, meaning the Captain will be dealing with the paperwork and radios this morning. Southbound we will switch, so we share the flying equally. After our stop in Chibougamau, we have have another 5 stops up and along the James Bay coast. We call this one the 'milk run' as there are 6 stops up to Chisasibi, QC then another 6 back down to Montreal; its one of the longer flights with a duty day of about 13 hours, with almost 8 of it being flight time.

We ask the Montreal Center (the controller) who is working the northerly airspace for the latest METAR (or hourly weather report from the airport. He gives us the latest sequence  240/12 G 25 VV008 5/8SM SN -3/-5 3014: In other words, the winds are from 240 degrees at 12knots, gusting to 25, A vertical visibility of 800ft (similar to a cloud ceiling) 5/8 of a statute mile visibility horizontally in moderate snow, a temperature of -3, dew point of - 5 and the altimeter setting 3014. Oh boy, this will be some fun! We will plan to use runway 23, so luckily the winds are straight down the pipe, however the visibility on the approach is right at the very minimums! Air Creebec has an Ops Spec (an operations specification - or a permit), granted by Transport Canada to allow us to used a reduced visibility on approaches than what most pilots are able to do. The minimums for the approach are 1 1/4 miles, but this permit allows us half the required visibility - equaling 5/8ths! With some very rough calculations, if the weather is actually at this visibility, and we are flying at our approach speed of 120 knots, or 2 nautical miles a minute, so at 5/8ths of a mile, we should be seeing the runway approximately 15 seconds before touch down! No room for error.Weather along the James Bay region can get pretty serious in the fall, when the bay has not yet frozen over and is retaining some heat, while the land gets cold. Significant amounts of moisture is picked up over the bay and carried over the colder land, causing low cloud, fog and icing (when the temperatures are hovering around and below the freezing point). Once the bay freezes over, the moisture source is cut drastically, leaving cold, dry air - and sunny blue skies! With the spring thaw, a similar situation occurs like in the fall, however its cold moist air from the bay, flowing over the warmer land, causing fog and low cloud once again.  Weather in the Chibougamau region is often caused by its elevation. The airport sits 1207 feet above sea level in central Quebec (as you can see from the map). As the moist air moves westward, it has no other choice but to rise as the terrain rises, forcing it to cool, where it eventually becomes fully saturated, causing clouds, rain and in the cooler months, snow - which is what is causing the weather today.  

I brief the Captain at the top of descent about the RNAV approach (a GPS approach flying waypoint to waypoint) which we will be conducting onto runway 23, and the event of a missed approach, what our intentions will be. Since we left Montreal at our gross takeoff weight, we were only able to fit the minimum amount of fuel on board:  (destination fuel, to conduct the approach/ missed approach,  proceed to our alternate airport and have 45 minutes reserve fuel to spare [which we can't use unless it's an emergency]) If we don't get visual contact at our minimum descent altitude, we will have to execute a missed approach and proceed to our alternate airport right away.

Crossing 10,000ft I call for the approach checks - the approach lights, hydraulic & fuel pumps come on, along with the seatbelt sign:  'bing!' Allowing the flight attendant to get the cabin ready for landing. Shortly after, we break through the top of the cloud layer and get right into the juice! "Time to earn todays pay" - 'click, click' with an orange light flashing, the autopilot's now disengaged and I'm hand flying. I call "Gear down, Flaps 15, landing checks" and we configure for landing, slowing to our final approach speed as we cross through 1000' above ground.  "Two hundred to minimums. . . one hundred to minimums. . . runway lights twelve o'clock" "Landing. I'm outside, you're inside" I state as I transition to runway coming into sight through the snow. "50ft, plus five. . . over the threshold you're right on REF… 10 feet, on REF"  'ERX… ERX' we touch down and the ground spoilers come up to assist with aerodynamic breaking. "Nice one" the captain says "50 knots, control locks on  and after landing checks:  lets not touch the breaks, this runway is like a skating rink." I complete the after landing flow as we taxi in. "Cree 927, check you're down at 16:31." One sector down, eleven more to go! Next stop.. Namisco

Along the East coast taking off of Eastmain Airport - Water sure looks cold!

Bring on the North!

Riding under the overcast layer southbound 'on the coast'

I'm already two months into my 6 month contract here at Air Creebec and can't believe how the time has flown by so far. Arriving in Montreal at the beginning of September started out at full tilt without a minute to spare, as the company was very short of Dash 8 pilots at both their Timmins and Montreal bases.

Early morning departure out of Montreal - eastbound for Quebec City

The morning after I arrived in La Belle Ville, I was to report to the company's hangar at the Montreal Trudeau airport to start the line indoctrination training at 6:45 AM,  doing one of the daily scheduled flights up the James Bay and Hudson Bay coast. The company, being very ambitious, had me on a schedule of 14 days ON, trying to get me push through the line training as quickly as possible, to have me released onto the line, in the shortest amount of time. The line training is a series of flights to get new pilots accustom to the aircraft, routes and general day-to-day operations under the supervision of a training captain. In my case, since I had just come off the Dash 8 at LIAT two weeks earlier, it wasn't so much learning the airplane, but the differences in the two airlines Standard Operating Procedures and the airports that I would now be flying into. Within about 4 days, I had my 'line check' with the Operations Manager and I was released onto the line.

Route map for our Scheduled service

Im having quite a bit of fun here at Air Creebec, with the diversity in the type of flying we are doing. On top of the daily scheduled flights from Montreal  up the coast of the James Bay and Hudson's Bay coasts, we do a range of charters for many different Industries. Air Creebec has had its hands in charters with the SEBJ (Société d'énergie de la Baie James)/ Hydro-Quebec projects - creating Hydroelectric dams on the rivers in Northern Quebec, charters for a company called Goldcorp - doing gold exploration in Northern Quebec and the Quebec Courts, bringing the judge and jury up to the small communities in Quebec for prisoners to stand trial and have their fate decided for them.  A lot of our charter work is for crew transfers; bringing the workers to and from the cities in the southern parts of Quebec and Ontario up to the mines and hydroelectric dams for their rotations.

A Brief Change of Scenery

I'm on the move again! LIAT has recently granted me a leave of absence from the company for a period of six months due to slowing passenger demand for travel throughout the Caribbean. This resulted in a cut back in the frequency of flights in our network.  To add to this sluggish demand, many of the aircrafts are coming due for heavy maintenance checks, which most of the time means the aircrafts have to go up to Canada to be overhauled at Bombardier's plant (the aircraft's manufacturer). These checks can sometimes take the aircrafts offline between 2-4 weeks, depending on what needs to be done. After being informed by the Flight Operations department that there will some crew reductions in the short term, I figured I would see why is available elsewhere for the time being. Being the second most junior pilot on the seniority list can be quite nerve wracking especially when the word 'redundancy' starts spreading around the company.

The new ride departing CYUL (Montreal)

I've managed to get a contract to fly Dash 8s with Air Creebec; an airline serving the communities around the east and west coasts of James Bay up to the Hudson's Bay. The next six months will surely look like it will be very exciting and another great learning experience in different ways: Many of the airports that Air Creebec flies into are short gravel strips, which provides the life-line for most of these communities, as there aren't any roads apart from Ice roads in the winter that connect them together. I sure will miss flying in the Caribbean, the beach and the sea, but the time will be up before I know it. It has been a busy past couple weeks, dealing with bank accounts, getting documents to and from LIAT, getting rid of my apartment and selling my car. The chores came right down to the very last hour, finally making a deal to sell my car just by chance on the last night in Antigua and going to make the exchange only an hour before the flight to Toronto left! Needless to say, I don't have any material possessions to worry about down there right now, which is a huge relief, especially when getting into the heart of Hurricane season! From the looks of it, there won't be much beach weather for the next few days while Isaac passes through.




I've finally it up to Timmins, Ontario (one of Air Creebec's 3 pilot bases) for training this week, leaving Antigua on Saturday afternoon a Sunny 33C, feeling like it was into the mid-40's, only to be greeted in Northern Ontario to a cloudy 6 degrees- the skies looked like they were about to open up with snow! I am in the classroom all week doing the same fun company training, but next week will be in the Simulator!



I will be sure to update again shortly, that's all for now folks!

Cleared for the Straight in VOR Approach via OMREL

 

Photo of one of our aircraft just shortly after rotation in St Lucia. Thanks to Gianni Deligny, one of LIAT's First Officers (and professional photographers)

Well after several months of being in a holding pattern, I've finally decided to bring out the old pen and paper (AKA: IPad) and continue writing! What turned out to be 'a few weeks off' with Christmas around the corner, turned into a few more weeks studying and preparing for recurrent simulator, which turned into several more months of studying for my Canadian Airline Transport Pilot's Licence (ATPL). With recurrent simulator training right around the corner again in mid-July, I couldn't believe that the time flew by so quickly without any blog posts.



For those of you unsure what a hold is an oval or race-track shaped pattern which we manoeuvre the aircraft in over a fixed point in space by using gps co-ordinates or a distance and bearing from a navigation facility: Because we can't just stop in the air, air traffic control may request us to hold: most often occurring in the arrival phase of flight, just before executing the approach, and any can be due to many things like; slower traffic head, weather at the airport or congestion of landing and departing traffic. I've included a picture of one of the instrument approach plates to the Antigua's V.C. Bird Airport to give you a picture as to what it looks like. You can see on the picture, there is a five letter word 'OMREL' with a racetrack to the Northwest of it. It shows on the approach plate that there are left turns. After making the left turn and going away from OMREL on the outbound leg, we use a timer to accurately adjust the time we spend flying away from the point to correctly estimate a one minute inbound leg (from the time we turn back towards the fix to the time we cross over it).  Every LIAT pilot knows this spot in the Caribbean exceptionally well, because Antigua's air traffic control is known to clear pilots to OMREL even on the most severe clear day, with not a single cloud or aircraft in the airspace. I will work on explaining more of this approach plate in future blogs.


In other news, we had a bit of a disaster in Antigua just recently. Two weekends ago LIAT had one of its two hangers go up in flames one night. Rumors are one of the golf carts the maintenance department uses for getting from the hanger to the ramp had been plugged in all weekend, the battery over charged and exploded. This caused quite the fireworks display for Antigua, causing one of the worst fires the island has seen. I think a hanger is one of the most dangerous places to have a fire. With Jet fuels, oils and lubricants and 100% oxygen stored there, it is a recipe for disaster if there are sparks or an ignition source.

This shot below was taken from the runway showing one of our two hangers on fire.



That night there were winds very strong winds in Antigua, fueling the fire creating such an intense heat that it hindered the firefighters from getting anywhere close to where the flames actually were. What's not seen in this picture is that there was actually an airplane in both hangers that night.


Shot of the hanger ingulfed in flames so much so that it's not even visible.


Aftermath of the hanger. The sliding door in the middle is the only thing holding the roof up.





This picture is showing the lost aircraft inside the hanger. The heat was so intense it melted the aircraft into pieces of scrap that look like pop cans. The only things recognize-able are the two engine mounts being held up by scaffolding and the boarding stairs at the bottom of the ladder.


The disaster is a tremendous loss to LIAT, as they had owned that hanger and the four adjacent buildings on the right; the inner two being destroyed by fire and outer two destroyed by smoke. The aircraft was one of the oldest in our fleet, however it was only leased. V2-LGH (the aircrafts call sign) had been in the hanger for 3 weeks getting a major overhaul where the company and the company had just put approximately 3million XCD into it. The company has estimated its insured losses at 35 million Eastern Caribbean dollars, with the uninsured losses being dramatically more.

Snapshots

Howdy all!

It's been quite a while since I've updated the blog! My camera hasn't been out and as active as it has in the past, however, I thought I'd post a few pictures I have snapped in the last 2 months.

This is the Caribbean Airlines Boeing 737 that overran the runway in Guyana. They dragged it over and its now sitting on its tail in two pieces in a hanger at the airport there.

Early morning flight down the island chain. At the time, we were over Guadeloupe, with Dominica in front and Martinique in the distance.

The small island of Montserratt, with the volcano which still seems to cough from time to time

Sunset enroute to Antigua from Barbados at FL (flight level) 230

Nice Sunset in St. Lucia, after a rain shower

Early morning Departure out of Barbados, looking at the north half of the island, enroute to Dominica

Company traffic on the ramp in Dominica

Line Training and Flying the Line

Line training is finally complete after 4 months of training. It took some serious dedication to work and studying, but it sure has paid off sa far. I've been 'flying the line' now for just about a month now, and it has been fantastic!

In the 3 weeks of my line training, I have seen a lot, (or so I think); however others tell me that I have truly seen nothing yet, which i sure do believe. I've had the opportunity to fly into almost every island in the caribbean (with the exception of Martinique and The Dominican Republic) which lies between Puerto Rico in the north and Guyana in the south. Our flights range from very short sectors of St Kitts to Nevis at approximately 6 minutes from takeoff to landing to long sectors between Barbados and Guyana and Trinidad and Curacao which are both each over 2 hours long. It's a good mix and keeps things interesting and never 'routine'. To add to that, Flight Operations likes to keep us on our toes by changing flights, routes, times, schedules, stops and everything else in between.

In my time at LIAT so far, I've flown around different heads of state, met many different types of people, skirted around hurricanes and tropical storms and have flown instrument approaches down to minimum altitudes with the minimal visibility with Tropical waves and depressions passing overhead. My time here has also provided me with many  'only in the tropics...' type moments where you can stand back and chuckle to yourself. Some can be quite funny, but others quite frustrating.

Another thing that comes to mind is the Malibu rum commercials, this seems ridiculous, but I actually find a lot of similarities down here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCdX8kLv4JI


Anyways, I figured I'd post a view from 'the office' as I land at George Charles airport in Castries, St. Lucia. The Sandals resort is just to the north of the airport (left) and the harbor is on the right. This video was taken a few weeks back on a nice clear evening. As you can see, at the end of the runway there are hills right at the end of it. This makes it even more important to always know exactly where you are, especially in instrument meteorological conditions (clouds AKA IMC).

 This past Monday, we had a day which started in Georgetown, Guyana, took us to Barbados, St. Lucia, Dominica, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Lucia, Antigua. (no other airline pilots can say they are doing more takeoffs and landings than us, but that's another story!) Leaving Barbados for the last time that night, the captain went on the PA and was telling the passengers how the weather is beautiful there and we should be in 5 min ahead of schedule, as we had just arrived from there minutes before. On approach into St Lucia, the controllers put us into a holding pattern over the NDB (the navigation beacon at the airfield) as there was an American registered aircraft executing an instrument approach, the captain figured he probably wasn't familiar with the area and instead of calling the field in sight and executing a visual approach, like most do in fair conditions to save time and fuel he was going to do the full approach. While holding overhead the field, we had the airport in sight below a few scattered clouds. The aircraft ahead  didnt have the field in sight at the missed approach point and had to execute a missed approach, he climbed back up, tried it again, and finally made it in the second time.

The captain was the one flying so he figured he would do the instrument approach as well, even though we had the field right ahead below us. Sure enough on final, with the runway lights in sight we do the final set up, extending the landing flaps and the gear, then all of a sudden bam! Complete blackness... we hit a rain shower, and lost all visibility, we continue to the last point we can before we have to go around, but nothing.. Captain calls "go-around, set power", I call the  "positive climb" and he responds with "gear up, flaps 15" as he is making the turn just over where the runway would be, if we were able to see it. We climb back up and hold at the safe altitude above the terrain, waiting for it to clear up. We get back up and find that we can see the airport perfectly from up there. We decide to call a visual approach and orbit down staying off the coast and away from dangerous mountains that we cloud barely see from e blackness of the night. From the way we approached we could see that there was just one little line shower which was exactly in line with e final approach course of the instrument approach. Finally, the second time we make it in. Phew! As we taxi in, there is a wall of rain chasing us in. No light little sprinkle, some torrential downpour! The poor people probably had high hopes of returning to some fair weather after the Captain gave his briefing. I had to joke with him on the final sector about how it came to bite him in the ass!

Flying in and out isn't particularly challenging, but our aircrafts do not have the climb gradient to safely clear the hills at the end of the runway should we lose an engine right after takeoff when it is fully loaded. For safety precautions, at certain airports we have to do something called a 'performance turn' which is a climbing turn at 50 feet above the ground to a specific heading which would bring us into a safe heading and altitude should we lose an engine any time after the go-no go (rotation point). The performance turns are quite fun, and differ with airports depending in where the terrain is or not. I will try and get some videos at some of the different airports.

St Vincent is another funny airport we fly into. It's nestled into a bit of a valley on the south-eastern coast of the island. The runway is so short and the hills at the end of it are high enough and surround it in a way that after a certain point, you are committed to landing, regardless if a cow strolls across the runway or not (and it does happen! We ran over two wild dogs landing in Antigua on Monday). The terrain is just too great that a go around might be able to be executed, but in the unlikely event of an engine failure, it might not be able to out climb the hills. You land into the valley one way (into the tradewinds) and then takeoff out to the sea on the down sloping runway with the wind up your tail.

 The airport has a red flashing light on a rock about a quarter mile back from the runway threshold called 'Cane Garden' and that tells us when we are committed. There are a few other lights on top of the hills to show where the top of the terrain outlining where the highest points are. Any time any of these lights aren't visible or aren't working, you can't legally and safely takeoff or land, so any operations get put on hold pretty quickly if any can't be seen!

On the subject with lighting in St. Vincent, on a sector during the first week of line training we were holding above the NDB at the airport waiting for a few aircrafts to takeoff (to give us some space to park on their tiny ramp) when all the airport lights went off. Runway lights, red terrain light and all! There were a few good chirps from different pilots, provided some solid entertainment while we waited for the lights to be fixed. On our way to the hotel, we found out a centipede was crawling around and shorted the circuits.


Below is a picture of Georgetown, Guyana, with the sea-wall and the mighty Atlantic. The river that you can see is the Demerra river which is actually quite large. The land you see on the left is not actually the other side, ratherIt hosts on of the largest floating bridges in the world. The taxi driver was telling us that it's quite a process to actually open and close it to let boat traffic pass, that it actually takes a couple hours to open and close it. In the picture if you look carefully, you can see a little airstrip to the east of the city (Oglie, I believe it's called), they are expanding it, and putting in an instrument approach so we can start doing schedules service there, giving us an advantage as it is almost in town, as opposed to the current airport which is about an hour away. Our Dash 8s would be able to get in without a problem, but Redjet and Caribbean Airlines jets wouldn't have the required runway needed to land.

I haven't  done much exploring in Guyana yet, we get in quite late at night and leave at lunch the next day, and the airport is literally in the middle of nowhere. Here are some pictures of the Guyana countryside

 

I will start updating this on a more weekly basis with the islands I explore and the things which take place at 25,000ft. If there are any questions about flying, airports, airplanes or aviation in general, I surely will do a post about it, or find an answer to your question.

Signing off at an altitude which could be deemed sweater weather!

Observation Flights

V2-LEF (Dash 8-100)

Greetings from the Tropics!

My understanding is that the temperature is pushing about 38 or 39 C up in Canada right now: Today was a gorgeous 28 degrees with a strong breeze from the North-east, absolutely magnificent! I feel for all of you who had to sweat it out up there!


I thought I'd post a picture of my apartment building which I'm currently living in - a newish one bedroom apartment (only 6 or so months old) in the Northern part of the island. It's right next to a golf course, and about a five minute drive to the airport, grocery store and the beach, yes!

The piece of cement which you see in front with the steel re-enforcement sticking out is actually
an enclosed housing which holds the apartments washing machine

I've been plugging away at the training program set out by LIAT: We have spent several weeks in the classroom and the time is coming to finally transition from the class to the aircraft. There have been many hours spent reading and learning the operations manuals, doing other training like; dangerous goods, safety and emergency, SMS. All of which may not be as fun as flying the actual airplane, but are as equally important. This weeks schedule held a mix of observation flights and some classroom work. I spent Wednesday shadowing and observing a crew from the 'Jump-seat', from check-in to shut down of the last flight of the day: Giving me some good experience to observe, ask questions and learn what actually happens, when it happens and why it happens - before I have to go do it myself.

Yesterday's schedule was to Check-in, in Antigua at 10:30 in the morning to go direct to Barbados, then back to Antigua with a stop in St. Lucia, before going to St. Kitts and back. A good mix of long and short flights. Each days starts with meeting up with the Captain, First Officer and Flight Attendant in the Operations Control Center at the Headquarters, just down the road from the airport. This is the place where we get the weather and route briefings, aircraft assignment and find out any special notices which may affect us on our trips. We were assigned V2-LEF, one of the 3 of LIATS Dash 8 100's. (These hold 37 people, as opposed to the 15 other Dash 8 300's which hold 50).

Doing the walk-around with the First Officer on the first flight

The first officer and I went to the aircraft to set up the aircraft and do the First Flight of the Day Checks, as this would be first flight for the day for V2-LEF. I got to see how things were set up inside (radio's, nav equip., etc.) and did the walk around (or external check) on the aircraft, where he pointed out all the areas to check and pay special attention to. For the most part, the Captain usually does the internal systems checks and the First Officer does the walk around. Anyways, everything checked out, they boarded the flight slightly early so we started up and down the road we went! The flight time was 1:20 and a major portion of the time in cruise was spent asking 'why' and 'what' trying to pick everything I could out of their experiences.

On approach into Barbados we had an Air Conditioning Pack Hot Caution light illuminate, which I found to be really interesting to see actual problems (or annoyances) occurring and to see them dealing with it, as opposed to just reading about 'what to do' in the QRH (Quick Reference Handbook) which gets pulled out anytime something occurs in the aircraft. A step-by-step book to help solve problems. The Air Conditioning Pack is just the unit which is run off of engine bleed air to cool the cabin and one of the ducts to the cabin was indicating hot. The Captain suspected it was just a faulty sensor, (and was confirmed when we landed) but the QRH said to shut down the Pack for the rest of the flight, which just made for a warmer approach into Barbados. The Dash 8 100's only have 1 air conditioning machine, as the -300's have 2.

Following the West coast in Barbados to intercept Final Approach into Barbados

About the pass over Oistens on Final Approach

Upon landing in Barbados we were informed we were being switched off the St. Lucia- Antigua flight, and now supposed to do the flight direct to Antigua, as they had a full load for the 300 series. It was good as it gave us a little more time on the ground (although we arrived early) to have the Engineers in Barbados see if they could fix the Air Conditioning Pack.

After some poking around up there, they thought they had fixed the problem. A good thing too because it was 32 degrees outside, and we had a full flight! I could only imagine what it would be like to be sitting in that airplane with 41 sweaty people on board, with no air conditioning! We boarded the aircraft, and up the road we went. We reached Antigua without any other problems. The aircraft's are aging, however LIAT's maintenance and engineering department do an amazing job at keeping the aircraft's in top shape.

Our next legs were to St. Kitts and back, which if you are not familiar is a very short flight. It's about 65 miles to the Northwest, but in a Dash 8 you get there in no time at all. The flight time is 20 minutes from Takeoff to Landing, and you are doing all the same checks as you would on the longer flights, just in a much shorter period of time! It was non-stop work for the crew, between checklists, briefings, calculating the fuel burn and arrival time and talking to Air Traffic Control. The crew had quite the rhythm and it worked out very smoothly. I am told those are the most challenging routes for new First Officers, who are new to the area, new to the aircraft and new to the speed that the aircraft is traveling at. I could only imagine what the flight is like when they have the route from St. Kitts to Nevis - its literally a stone's throw across a channel: 6 minute flight from takeoff to touch down.

On final Approach into St. Kitts

Basseterre, St. Kitts

The traffic agents in St. Kitts were pretty efficient at getting the passengers off the aircraft and loading the Antigua bound passengers so we only spent a few minutes on the ground before heading back. Once again, another walk in the park for the well seasoned crew. We landed in Antigua 10 minutes early on a 20 minute flight - hows that for on-time performance!

Doing the walk-around in St. Kitts under an overcast layer
(which was appreciated after a hot day in the sun)

It was a great day, and a huge learning curve. On Monday, my sim partner and I will be taking turns doing Touch and Go's (Takeoff's and Landings) in the aircraft, which will be unbelievably exciting to get to handle the controls of the real aircraft for the first time. Tuesday I observe on a St. Martin turn-around and the end of the week will commence with Line Training, where we actually start acting as a First Officer on Scheduled service with a Training Captain!