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Murphy’s Law states that “If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.” Murphy’s Law of Airline Pilots states that “If something can go wrong, it will go wrong and on the last leg of the trip before going home.” Well, without fail, this happned yesterday. It was supposed to be an easy 4-leg day…St. Louis to Pittsburgh then up to Hartford, Ct and back to Pittsburgh and then finally home to Richmond. We were supposed to start at 600a and be done by 230p.
We get to the airport in St. Louis at 515a, 45mins prior to departure. We arrive at the gate to find our airplane is missing. Hmm. Further investigations revealed that the airplane we were supposed to fly was one we actually flew 2 days before and it had an inoperative APU (Auxilary Power Unit). An APU basically is a mini jet engine at the back of the airplane which gives us electricity and AIR CONDITIONING while on the ground and the engines are not running. If anyone has been watching the news lately, they’ll see that most of the country is in the grips of a massive heat wave. AIR CONDITIONING would be nice to have! We’re told by the gate agents that maintenance came and took our plane and were working on it. Now we could only assume they were fixing the APU because, yea, that would make sense! Turns out they were acutally replacing the entire unit! Cool! I’ll take any delay if it means we have A/C, esp in the 145 beacuse the cockpit is essentially a mini-greenhouse, and last time I checked, I’m not a plant. So, 2 hours later, the plane arrives at the gate with a fresh APU and frosty-cold A/C. Whew…dodged a bullet! The passengers were also surprisingly understanding. So the gate agents boards the plane pretty much as soon as we get situated in the airplane. I go to do my walkaround of the airplane and find that one of the tires is showing thread…means it needs to be replaced. Now you would thinking coming from Maintenance they might have noticed this, but no. So, the airplane has to be jacked up to change the tire, and you can’t jack the airplane up with people on it…so…people go back in the terminal to wait…again. 1 hour later, we’re finally pushing back for Pittsburgh 3 hours late with frosty A/C and a fresh new tire.
The next two legs were pretty uneventful. On arrival back into Pittsburgh from Harford, Ct, Murphy starts to mess with us. Part of the afterlanding checklist is to start the APU so we can continue to cool the cabin once we get to the gate and shut the engines off. So, I go to spin up the APU, turn the switch to start and…usually there is a clicking and clacking of electrical relays opening and closing…and…of course there was nothing, but a Caution message on one of our screens that says APU FAIL accompanied by a APU HI OIL TEMP. I knew it was too good to be true. We couldn’t get away that easily. A brand new APU with maybe 3 hours on it and it’s broken…unbelievable, and it’s 99 degrees outside to boot. So we pull into the gate, dump the people off, and what comes strolling down the jetway…a fed. Or should I say and FAA Inspector. He informs us that he’ll be riding down to Richmond with us in the cockpit. Just a routine line check. Lovely. Just keeps getting better. FAA Inspectors aren’t nescessarily bad, they’re just kind of stressful and a pain, I think. Sitting there. Watching. Taking notes. Plus, having a third person in an already crammed in a tight non/ A/C’d cockpit makes it even better. Add to that those typical late-day thunderstorms are starting to pop and wouldn’t ya know it, right over our route from Pittsburgh to Richmond.
2 reroutes later, we’re finally in the air, and it my leg going to Richmond. We end up having to fly West almost to central Ohio before we can turn southeast towards Richmond to avoid the worst of the weather adding about 20 extra minutes to the flight. We get to Richmond and I manage a decent landing in a nice crosswind when I know in the back of my mind the fed in the jumpseat is watching every little control input I do.
I felt really bad handing off the airplane to the next crew. It should be illegal to operate that airplane with no APU when it’s that ungodly hot. The temperature in Richmond was 104F / 40C when we handed it over to them…good luck with that, boys…
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