Anatomy of a Delay

Anatomy of a Delay

So, there we were, enjoying our 3 hour sit at New York's JFK. We had just flown in from Raleigh-Durham (RDU) and were waiting to leave for Baltimore (BWI) and then on home to Chicago (ORD.)

When we landed, we saw that our plane was already on the gate, but we knew with a 3 hour sit, there was a good chance they could steal our airplane for a different flight, so better to keep our bags with us or drop them in the crew lounge than go set up house in an airplane only to have it taken away.

About 40 minutes before departure time, paperwork in hand, we head down to start setting up the airplane and get ready for our flight.

We get to the bottom of the jetbridge, and we notice that the airplane has been left on (most likely the entire time.) Great... everything will be warmed up.

Warm indeed. We unlock the cockpit door, and get hit with a Mid-August Texas style wave of heat. It is at least 110F in there. Oh, and one of our computer screens is out.

Specifically, the center one, the EICAS (Engine Info, Crew Alert). Great. So my FO starts doing a little diagnostics on the screen while I call maintenance out. We power down, power back up, still nothing. Then we use a 'reversionary' mode to have the computer 'print' the screen's information on a multi-function display on the FOs side. Works fine.

So we most likely (95%) have a dead tube.

Maintenance appears about departure time (we held off boarding... nothing like having mechanics haul important electronic bits back and forth in front of the pax.. kind of unnerving.)

Our mechanic does a quick check "Yup... got a problem with the screen." (btw, not a Texas drawl... this was JFK, after all... hear Brooklyn when you hear those words in your head.)

So, I go up to the gate to tell the agents we're going to be a little bit.

Here are the possibilities in order of ease to difficult to repair.

Screen is 'confused,' so swapping the screen out with the one next to it could work.

Tube is blown... Easy to fix, unless you don't have a tube. We have a fix we could do with that, though... we could swap it out and the FO would fly looking at my instruments, basically.

"Monster under the hood." There is something wrong with the line between the computer generator and the screen. This could take all night to fix.

Mechanic says "Give me 10 minutes, you'll be all set to go."

10 minutes turns into 20... then into 45... It's not the screen; they swap the screens out, and it works just fine. So, it is the Monster Under The Hood. Great. They're going to have to chase sparks down wires to fix the problem.

Now realize, the gate agents don't know what is going on, and the passengers want as much information as possible. "When are we going to board?" "When maintenance has the airplane fixed" "How long will that take?" "They don't know." "Why not?" "Because it is a mechanical problem, they have to diagnose the problem, correct the problem, and then see if their correction actually fixed the problem." "So when will we arrive in Baltimore?" "About an hour and 15 minutes after you leave here.""So why don't they know how long it will take to fix?""Because Nostradamus neglected to add aircraft delays to his book of prognostications.""So why haven't we boarded yet?" <bang> (Gate agent shoots herself.)

For my non-airline friends------

Please realize.... There is only so much information that anyone has at any given time. The mechanics are busy repairing the aircraft, if we keep bugging them "Are you done yet?" It will take longer. IF we have no other information to give... well.. you can ask us 100 times, but if the answer is still "We don't know" and you have not seen anyone come up and say "Here is how long it takes" nor have you seen a phone ring and the agent say "Ah, ok, so it will be done in 10 minutes and we can board," Then the odds are there is no new information to give anyone. Round about your 15,000 passenger asking you roughly the same question rephrased over and over, you've had enough. Most agents get to deal with a half dozen (sometimes more, sometimes less) flights in an 8 hour shift, many times alone, many times boarding 120+ passengers (mainline flying here) for each one, with special needs, wheelchairs, missed connections, medical issues, screaming kids... yadda... yadda... yadda... If you want to know why the agent seems like he or she is looking right through you, the answer is because most likely, they ARE.

I call our routing department (part of the Systems Operation Command/Control) to see if there is an unattached airplane coming in to land at JFK that we can steal while they are working on ours. Here is what I find out.

We have no spares in the Northeast (not a surprise, spare airplanes have gone the way of the Dodo bird and Carrier Pigeon.) but they do have an aircraft that is overnighting at LGA. If they don't have an airport ready (standby) crew, they can cab us down from JFK to LGA )at 9pm,) we can fly the airplane that is just landing at LGA up to JFK, and then we can continue to BWI and ORD.

Holy crap, that sounds like fun! (sarcasm, a literary technique I was told of once.)

So we hang up, and I look at my FO, and he tells me that going to LGA might be an adventure... "think of the stories!" I say; however, things never work out that way.

It would take 3 minutes to fly between the two airports as the crow flies, but with the runway arrival and departure configuration they were using, we would probably have to fly out over the Hamptons to get back in... and they were running pretty good delays in and out of LGA... sssooo... it would be easily an hour, hour+30 flight. Then we would be looking at going illegal in BWI. All we wanted to do was get home, really (The pax can come for the ride. When I hear passengers talk about the 'crazy chances' pilots take, I usually fire back with "You know, I'm a father, and I just want to get home to my wife and son. If I land safe, you land safe.")

Finally, they find us an airplane that happened to be landing at JFK. It was planned to go to Toronto, but the Toronto crew was going to have to wait for the ready crew at LGA to fly an airplane up for them (yup.. they did it.)

We left a good 90 minutes late.

Funny moment right towards the end-- We were loading our gear on board, and a mechanic came to me and said he wanted to take the dimmer panel off of my plane to use it to test the one on the broken plane. I told him to get off my plane and find another one... you're NOT taking apart my perfectly good plane when we are about to board an hour and a half late, even if it is for only "10 minutes and I'll be right back, honest."

Been a while since I did a proper aviation post... there ya go.

Cheers!

Scott