A Typical Weekday Morning...

I've been working mornings for the past few weeks up here at Northwestern, and I've been asked a few times, and I figured I would give you the low-down on what exactly happens in the morning.

The Ramp guys are the first to show up in the morning 6 AM sharp: hours before the sun decides its time to get up! The first thing we have to do is get the aircrafts ready for the early morning schedules flights. Most mornings there are 3 flights, however it can range from 2-4 depending on the day of the week. After checking what has been cleaned and prepped from the night before, we set out pretty quickly to ensure that what wasn't done the night before gets finished before the pilots arrive. Making sure there is no snags (problems) with the aircrafts; that they are polished from nose to tail on the outside and vacuumed and disinfected with seat belts crossed on the inside.

The first crew shows up around 6:45 to do the preflight inspections; making sure the aircraft is airworthy. Once ready, its pushed outside to be fueled. In the mean time, the next crew arrives to check the next aircraft. We tow the first aircraft to the terminal to be loaded with bags, freight and cargo and is sent off. By that time the second aircraft is being fueled and the third crew arrives. The process goes pretty systematically and before you know it the last flight leaves around 8AM.

My partner cleaning the landing gear, while the First Officer is doing the preflight walk around

Aircraft being pushed out of the Hanger to be fueled

We head back down to the hanger to check the morning Charters, to see if there are any special flights, in which we would have to continue prepping other planes. If not, time for break! (Just kidding, there's never any time for breaks around here!) There are always random jobs to be done around the hanger, whether its testing the fuel in the Large fuel cells outside, sweeping or mopping the hanger or other general maintenance or chores.

Around 9:30, the first flight which we sent out to Yellowknife returns, in which we greet the aircraft, and unload its passengers, bags and cargo. Its fueled back up and cleaned inside very quickly before loading it back up to send off to Edmonton on the daily Sched.

After this flight leaves, there aren't any other flights departing or arriving Fort Smith until after 3, leaving plenty of time to do many of the odd jobs around the hangers or outside. This week, the company has just hired a new Captain, so we have spent a lot of time prepping and fueling aircrafts.

This morning we had some fog roll through, and although the aircraft fly on instruments, you need a certain minimum visibility for landing and taking off. The fog so thick that the distance you could see was less than 1/4 mile. Our Yellowknife return flight was delayed along with one of the several charters we do to the gold mines.

Maintenance had a chance to do some last minute work on the aircraft while we waited for the fog to lift