The Not-so Routine Stand-Up:
Lastnight I had another stand-up, back to ABR which is one of our shorter (and least desireable) ones. I got back from our trip home for the holiday just in time to take a quick nap, shower and head for the airport.
I get there a bit early to learn the inbound delayed, but not enough to affect us going out. I head to the gate next door which is a bit quieter than our departure gate. I'm joined shortly thereafter by our young FA, then our CA. I'd met him once before in the crew lounge but had not flown with him. He's fresh off his CA upgrade in October, so is still high mins (adding 100' & 1/2 to all minimums for the first 100 hours.)
As we look over the release we see one of the Packs has been deferred. While not uncommon, it's still fairly rare and adds a bit more complexity to our job. Once on the plane we review the MEL and procedures for single Pack operations. One of the concerns is if you don't transfer the bleeds just right all that 10th stage manifold pressure gets directed toward that single Pack and you can get an over-pressure condition.
Well, sure enough....we take off, on climb out he calls for the After Takeoff Check which involves transferring the bleeds. I THOUGHT I did it right but we get the flashing caution messages and R PACK OVER PRESS message. Dang!!
He asks me to run the QRH while he advises ATC we need to level at 7,000' for a few minutes. I walk us through the QRH procedure which takes several minutes but eventually we end up with the bleeds transferred and the single working Pack doing what it's supposed to do. We head on to ABR.
The weather there is about 6,000' overcast so after a descent through the deck he shoots a nice visual and we're on the ground. 20 minutes later we're at the hotel and headed to our four hours of sleep.
The next morning we arrive to a frost-free plane (yay! No deicing!) then get the weather reports. Sadly, MSP is under a snow storm. And while the TAF doesn't look too bad, the current METAR is below his mins and, since it's a short flight (40 min.), we're told the METAR is controlling. Later, when the weather lightens up well above his minimums, we are told the TAF is now controlling and the TEMPO is below his minimums!
While waiting around we're re-reading the regs and computing our Flight Duty Period to figure out when we'd time out if the weather doesn't cooperate. That would get real ugly!
Three hours later we're in an acceptable segment of the TAF and the weather is good, so the dispatcher says, "Go now!" We quickly add a few hundred pounds of fuel to make up for what the APU has burned, then fueler over-fills us by another couple hundred pounds. Dang. Normally, we like a little extra. We definitely wanted enough, but knew we were pushing our maximum landing weight as it was. This was going to exacerbate that problem. Oh, well...
We get ready to fire up, but now there's a little frost on the wings! So, we deice and go through those protracted checklists for that little bit of frost. But we can't take any chances.
Finally we get airborne on my leg and climb out headed to MSP. We manage the bleeds swap without a hitch this time. Then we start looking at fuel and it appears we're going to be 600 lbs over weight at landing. So we start doing things to burn a little more fuel....fly faster, start down sooner, get dirty quicker, keep the power up, etc.
We advise ATC and they give us some vectors to squeeze someone else in ahead of us. I'm thirty miles out and have flaps out and drop the gear 20 miles out! Anything to burn more gas. Finally, we see the numbers we need as I hit the final approach fix. I still try my best to grease it on because we're at max landing weight. The CA reports seeing less than 100 fpm on the VSI just before touchdown. It was pretty soft, if I do say so myself....like a butterfly with sore feet!!
Mission accomplished. But I need a nap.
