There are two big things to talk about for this entry.
Before that, I’ll say I have really enjoyed flying as captain. I have about 250 hours in the left seat and I’ve really found a nice comfort zone in my new position. It’s great being the boss and being responsible for the flight. I’m starting to think I stayed a first officer for a bit too long, but my quality of life was more important to me and I really didn’t know any better at the time anyway. It gives me a whole new enjoyment in this job and has rejuvenated my excitement for this career. Plus, it’s very nice to have the big paycheck after making so little money flying these past few years.
The first piece of news is that I had my first real emergency three weeks ago. On the last leg of a 4-day trip we were about 20 miles out on approach to Houston, at nighttime in visual meteorological conditions. Everything was going along just fine and my first officer and I were looking forward to the end of a long trip. Suddenly we were both startled by a flock of birds that appeared in our windshield, up at about 3000 feet. The birds flew off to the right side of the aircraft and we were relieved that we didn’t hit any of them, until we heard our right engine fail as a result of ingesting one or more of the birds. We verified on our displays that the engine was no longer running. She was flying this leg so I got out our emergency checklists and began running the first and most important items. It’s hard to describe the feeling when it happened, but I think that my initial reaction was disbelief – that this was something that doesn’t happen in real life, only in the simulators. Nevertheless, we faced the fact that we were now a single-engine aircraft. She was doing an excellent job flying so I continued to handle the checklists and communications. I declared an emergency with Houston approach and elected to continue the landing rather than delay it and spend more time up there since there was reason to believe that we could possibly have a fire or damage to other parts of the aircraft. After taking care of all the proper procedures, we found ourselves on the ground 5-7 minutes after the bird strike occurred. After we taxied clear of the runway we were surrounded by fire trucks who were there to verify that we did not have a fire and were safe to continue taxiing to the gate. We parked at the gate and everyone deplaned normally.
All in all, it really wasn’t a big deal. We train for single-engine procedures all the time in the simulator and there was no reason to think that the flight wouldn’t be safely completed. Still, it’s a strange feeling. We were both shaking after we parked the aircraft and were surprised to see how much damage a bird could cause to an engine at 250 knots when we walked outside and took a look at it. I found out later that this was the first time in the history of ExpressJet Airlines that a bird strike caused an engine failure in the regional jet. When you consider we do about 1500 flights a day and have been operating for 33 years, I really should have gone out and bought a lottery ticket that night since the odds would be about the same. In any case, I learned a lot from the emergency. Everybody involved (air traffic control, airport fire and rescue, etc.) did a fantastic job helping us out. I think one of the things that sticks out in my memory is when air traffic control asked how many souls we had on board and how much fuel we were carrying, which are standard questions whenever you declare an emergency, my first in 13 years of flying.
I filed all the necessary paperwork the next day and in recreating the experience on paper I was happy to know that we did not violate any regulations or mishandle the emergency in any way. And now I suppose I’ll have something to discuss in any future airline interviews. Oddly enough this was my second bird strike this year – the other was during takeoff and merely bounced off my wing. Still, I really do like birds and hate the fact that they have to get out of my way when they see me now since apparently my airplane is a bird magnet.
The other big news is that I am transferring bases from Houston to Ontario, California. As I explained in previous entries, Continental took away about 25% of our flying starting this year and gave it to Chautauqua Airlines instead. ExpressJet elected to keep the 69 airplanes however, choosing to use them to pursue other flying opportunities. We already have 15 of them operating as charter aircraft, another 10 are slated to fly for another, as-of-yet-unannounced airline, and the remaining 44 will operate as ExpressJet Airlines under our own brand. This is similar to what Independence Air did a couple of years back, but hopefully not too similar since they failed miserably. For one thing, it represents only 16% of our fleet, instead of our entire operation, and we plan on flying between smaller cities that do not currently have non-stop service instead of blowing into another major airline’s hub an attempting to compete with them directly. I’d say it has a reasonably good chance of success but only time will tell. Our new pilot domiciles will be Ontario and San Antonio. Instead of remaining in Houston flying routes for Continental, I decided to transfer to Ontario and fly in the ExpressJet branded operation. It is a much shorter commute for me (one hour flight instead of three) and I also have the option to drive it once in a while as it is only 230 miles by car. It should be enjoyable flying as we’ll be going to mostly cities on the west coast, and should present new challenges in terms of the general operation of running our own airline. I’m actually really looking forward to it – I’ll be transferring on April 1st. I’ll also have a great deal more seniority in Ontario which will help with my quality of life. I’ll be bidding #53 out of 170 on the Ontario captain list which is a seniority level I didn’t think I could achieve for years to come.
So tomorrow Carey and I are driving my old Toyota Camry from Houston back to Las Vegas so I can use it to drive to Ontario when necessary, although I’ll probably do the commute by air most of the time since it is a short flight and there are 13 flights a day amongst Southwest and America West. We both enjoy road trips so it should be a nice few days.
So please, go to xjet.com and buy a ticket for your next flight!