It's 3:00 AM and I wake up to the sound of the phone ringing in my hotel room. No good ever comes from that sound.
"Oh what fresh hell is this?" to quote Dorothy Parker.
"This is crew scheduling. We're launching the standby. Pickup in the lobby is 3:40"
Sounds like my good deal week of hotel standby in Indianapolis just turned into work. But hey, I've got 40 minutes until show. Enough time for a shower and a cup of coffee.
Here's how hotel standby works. In the package business we sell reliability. To ensure the reliability of our network we will do things like fly an empty plane across the country every night to drop in and pick up any freight that gets "stranded".
Another way we ensure reliability is to station standby crews at some of our bases. This is how I happened to be spending the week in a hotel near the Indianapolis airport. For me this is a good deal. I can drive here from Ohio and not have to mess with taking the jump-seat to work. I'm only on call from 8:00 PM until 7:30 AM and the rest of the time I'm off. On a good week it's "snoozing for dollars". Reminds me of my days of sitting alert in SAC, except the room is a lot nicer.
Now one thing I've learned from my years in this job, is that the day to day operation tends to run very smoothly. Once there's a disruption, however, all bets are off. I call this "the later you are, the later you get".
Since they're calling me in on standby, I figure there's already been a disruption. Sure enough they're sending us to Milwaukee. That's normally an Airbus trip so I figure the Airbus must have broke and they're sending us instead. Should be an easy leg. It's only 45 minutes and the weather is good everywhere.
We're late, as I expected. It's well after 5:00 AM by the time we push back. We're just about the last ones out of the gate. I'm glad I had 5 hours sleep under my belt before the phone rang.
Tower sends us to a different runway than we expected so I have to redo my takeoff data as we taxi out. Nothing I haven't seen before. It's a standard "Let's screw with the First Officer" trick in the simulator. No big deal but it's a distraction I don't like.
Off to Milwaukee. I think I've been there once but it was probably 5 years ago. It's been about the same for the Captain. The good thing about a 45 minute flight is you don't have time to get bored. You also barely have time to get everything done that you need to.
We get "slam dunked" by approach control. They keep us high and fast longer than we'd like to be. The 757 will go down or slow down but it will not do both at the same time. They aggravate the problem by giving us a very tight vector towards the runway. They think they're doing us a favor but now we have even less room to slow down than we did before. Somehow we make it all work.
There are a lot of places this could have gone wrong. First night, first leg, unfamiliar airport, last minute runway change, a crew that hasn't flown together before. Interrupted sleep cycles. These are all risk factors. We didn't screw anything up, but that's the recipe for a screw-up.
Of course there's no ride to the hotel waiting for us. That would have been much too convenient. We call the taxi company and they had no idea that we would be there. Like I said, once there's a disruption it goes downhill from there. 20 minutes later our ride finally shows up.
Milwaukee was nice. It looks like they've fixed up their downtown since I was there last. It was the one highlight of the trip. I try to sleep but I only get a couple hours. You can't force your body to sleep if it doesn't want to. Looks like I'll have to "power through" on the way back to Indy.
8:10 PM - Call it fourteen hours after landing in Milwaukee and there's no ride to the airport. This is starting to become a trend. A couple of quick phone calls and a van shows up about 20 minutes later. That's OK. I suspect that nobody knows what we're doing anyways. I'm right.
Some days you're just snake-bit and find yourself thwarted at every turn. It's starting to seem like one of those days.
We get to the airport and we're informed that they don't know if we're going back to Indy or somewhere else. It turns out to be both. When they figure out what they want us to do we're headed to Detroit first (oh boy!) and then Indy. Detroit is also not one of my normal airports. I think I've landed there exactly once.
It looks like we're almost empty going to Detroit. This thing is going to be a rocket ship.
The only oddity is one thrust reverser is inoperative. No big deal. Just make sure the paperwork is correct and that I account for it when I do the takeoff and landing data.
We get our IFR clearance and of course there's a route change. No big deal. Happens all the time. It's just one more nonstandard thing on what's been a nonstandard trip.
It's my leg and the 757 doesn't disappoint. Lightly loaded it heads down the runway like a muscle car and climbs out like a T-38.
Detroit is busier than I expect this time of night. We get the "usual" treatment from approach control. Slow down. Speed up. Descend now. Be at 11,000 feet 60 miles from this point. Lots of typing in the FMS computer to make it all happen.
The weather is great so we're setting up for a visual approach. Even in good weather, we always back it up with an instrument approach. You can never have too much information.
As I line up on final I'm noticing some really weird indications from the Instrument Landing System. It's showing me well right of course and well above the glideslope. My old fashioned Mark 1 eyeball is showing me right on. Something ain't right.
Let's see. That's the correct runway out ahead (Detroit has 6). We crossed the outer marker at the correct altitude. We have the correct ILS frequency in. There's no visual glideslope indicator (PAPI or VASI) for this runway but the GPS says I'm right on the money.
I decide to trust the GPS. If I follow the ILS it's going to take me right into the dirt. Right about now the Ground Proximity Warning System starts yelling "Glideslope! Glideslope!" - it thinks we're too high and wants us to get down.
Two pairs of eyeballs plus the GPS decide that we're right and the ILS is wrong. We turn the ILS off which seems to make everybody happy because it gets quiet again.
We ask the tower what's up and they tell us they're doing maintenance on the ILS for that runway. Either they neglected to tell us or we missed it. Everybody makes mistakes. That's why we crosscheck things in this business.
The Detroit ramp team is good. They have us loaded and out of there like a NASCAR pit crew. Normally we have all our briefings and checklists done long before the plane is loaded. Not this time. We were actually scrambling to keep up with them.
Of course our clearance is for a different departure procedure than the one we'd flight planned. Can't have anything go according to plan now can we?
The Captain offers me this leg as well since the last one was so short. I never turn down a leg when it's offered to me.
We're blasting down the runway, accelerating past 60 knots or so when the red lights and warning horns start blaring in the cockpit. I look down at the display and it says "Spoilers" in red. The plane thinks that the speed brakes are extended. To takeoff now would be a really bad idea. The Captain takes the jet and rejects the takeoff. Mind you we still have only one thrust reverser which makes it a little more interesting. I'm starting to feel like I'm in the simulator.
We determine that the speed brakes really were down (where they should be) just that the handle wasn't firmly in the detent. There's a little micro-switch somewhere that tells the computer that the handle is down and it's not getting the message. We cycle the handle a few times and make sure it's firmly latched this time.
Of course we have to redo the takeoff data because the "box" erased it after we rejected the takeoff. Run the checklists again and we're ready to give it another shot.
We elect to try the takeoff again and this time it's uneventful. If I can get through the next 40 minutes or so I'll be back in Indy.
We're just north of Muncie when I see it. At first I thought it was the green-white beacon for a small airport. Except it stayed green. Some waste of oxygen down there is shining a laser at us.
Fortunately he didn't get a direct hit on the cockpit. I say "he" because I figure 90% chance it's a guy. "Hey! Hold my beer and watch this!" I figure it was about 10 miles away so the beam was fairly diffused.
We call it in to approach control who passes it on to law enforcement. A couple minutes later the bastard does it again! Luckily his aim is even worse this time. I look away more quickly this time and stick a checklist in the window as a "shield".
That's a federal offense by the way. A $10,000 fine and up to 5 years in prison. I hope the FBI finds you. It's not funny. You could damage my eyesight or dazzle us at the wrong time and we put 300,000 pounds of screaming metal and jet fuel into a suburban neighborhood. There are enough things in this job that can ruin my day without having to worry about assholes like you.
I make what I dare say was a pretty nice approach into Indy. Right around 100 feet we hit the wake turbulence from the MD-11 that landed in front of us. Nothing too bad but I wasn't expecting it. In this business you have to keep your guard up until the chocks are in place and the engines are shut down.
So let's see. In one 24 hour period I've had a 3:00 AM wake-up, been lased twice and rejected one takeoff. Plus all the other odds and ends. Just another day at the office.
Of course there was no hotel van waiting for us. I'd have been disappointed if there was.